SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH COUNCIL

VOLUME 29 . NUMBER 3 . SEPTEMBER 1975 605 THIRD AVENUE· NEW YORK, N.Y. 10016

WORK AND PERSONALITY IN THE MIDDLE YEARS

THE "MIDDLE YEARS" PERIOD is a largely unexplored phase of the human life cycle, receiving relatively little attention from students of human development .who have tended to concentrate on childhood, adolescence, or old age. For example, there are no major research institutes devoted to the middle years in contrast to the other periods in the life cycle. Contrary to the view that this is a stable period of life, the Council's Committee on Work and Personality in the Middle Years 1 believes that it may encompass major life challenges and may be for many a time of sweeping personality changes. Consequently, taking the midlife period as an entry point into the study of various life-span processes is a strategy for examining continuity in the midst of change and for locating the missing pieces in the study of the individual over a lifetime.

Giv~n the new social patterns and policy issues that have emerged in the 1970s, this seems a highly appropri­ate time for the social sciences to focus on the middle years. Increasing numbers of people are retiring early,

• Orville G. Brim. Jr .. chairman of the Committee on Work and Personality in the Middle Years. is president of the Foundation for Child Development (New York). He is author and coauthor of several books on human development. including Socialization after Childhood, John Wiley & Sons. 1966. Ronald P. Abeles is a social psychologist who serves as staff for the committee. He has published papers in the area of attitudes and political behavior and is coauthor of Human Aggression and Conflict, Prentice-Hall. 1975.

10ther members of the committee presently include Paul Baltes. Pennsylvania State University; Victor R. Fuchs. National Bureau of Econo~ic Research (Stanford); Janet Z. Giele. Harvard University (appomted June 1975); David A. Hamburg. Stanford University; Robert L. Kahn. University of Michigan; Jack Ladinsky. University of Wisconsin; Robert A. LeVine. University of Chicago; Gardner Lindzey. Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (Stan­ford); Matilda White Riley. Bowdoin College. Harriet Zuckerman. Columbia University. was a member of the committee from September 1972 to September 1974. David A. Statt served as staff until June 1974.

by Orville G. Brim) Jr. and Ronald P. Abeles ,.,

are changin'g to second careers, and are obtaining edu­cation in midlife. Increasing numbers of women are entering or reentering the labor market in the middle years. Social science knowledge is needed to illuminate the policy issues that are accompanying these trends and to provide the basis for constructive social planning in connection with them. While it is clearly much too early to delineate many protocols for social intervention, a better understanding of the middle years may well point to interventions in various occupational groups to facilitate personal and organizational goals. Con­ceivably; these might take the form of shifts in the distribution of income and security levels in the career trajectory, provisions for occupational sabbaticals, or shifts in occupations for both blue and white collar workers.

Definitions of middle age differ, depending on whether biological, chronological, or self-perceptive criteria are

CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE

29 Work and Personality in the Middle Years-Orville G. Brim, Jr. and Ronald P. Abeles

34 New Perspectives for the Study of Western Europe­Suzanne D. Berger, Gerald D. Feldman, Gudmund Hernes, Joseph LaPalombara, Philippe C. Schmitter and Allan A. Silver '

37 X:nv.ironmen~al and Spatial Cognition in African So-Cieties-DavId Slea and Edward Soja

40 Committee Briefs

41 Council Staff: Appointments

42 Postdoctoral Grants

43 New Publications

44 Council Fellowships and Grants: Application Dead­lines

44 New Chinese Studies Program

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employed. Social definitions of what it means to be "middle aged" are not tied closely to chronological age and they vary by social class.2 Blue collar workers, for example, typically say that middle age comes earlier than do white collar workers.s This may be explained by different achievement trajectories, including differences in the age of peak income and security attainment. In addition to occupation, variations both in the sense of mastery and control over life and in the degree to which achievement in work shapes one's sense of self may also influence how middle age is defined.

Work and the middle years

The study of transitions between work and non work is particularly appropriate to a research program con­cerned with the middle years, because an occupational career is best understood as a sequence of work roles that differ from each other and that differ in relation­ship to the non work aspects of life. In terms of time demands, the work role 4 increases in young adulthood, either gradually or abruptly, and, for men, is generally sustained over the succeeding decades at the culturally­decreed 35 or 40 hours per week. For women, the pat­tern is more complex and has probably been more af­fected by social change. Both men and women, however, are likely to hold numerous jobs, and both have life patterns in which work is likely to show a period of dominance, more or less prolonged, among other major life activities. To understand what it means to mature and grow old in our culture, one must study the chang­ing sequence of work prescriptions and opportunities, the choices and compulsions connected with them, and their consequences.

A joint focus on the middle years and on work may provide a fruitful approach to several research topics. One of these is the "midlife crisis." The statistical. clinical, and anecdotal evidence suggests that the special stresses of the middle years take their toll, as well as produce growth, and that work is significantly involved

2 For all practical purposes, the committee defines the middle years as the chronological age period from 40 to 60. While developmental events do not always parallel these years. the period captures most of the personality and work interactions of significance to the committee.

8 B. L. Neugarten and N. Datan, "The Middle Years," in Silvano Arieti, ed., American Handbook of Psychiatry., vol. I. Basic Books, 1972.

4 Again, one is faced with a definitional problem in the term "work." Whose definition is to be employed: the economists' (when one is paid for an activity), the sociologists' (when society caUs an activity "work'), or the psychologists' (when the person caUs it "work')? One line of inquiry, which the committee is pursuing, is the attempt to concep­tualize the concepts of "work" and "nonwork" in terms of underlying commonalities.

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in this process. There is, however, considerable dis­agreement about the characteristics of the midlife crisis, about its causes, and about how widespread an occur. rence it is. The crucial theoretical issue is the degree to which midlife changes in personality, stressful or not, lie within the maturational process of aging per se or are stimulated by specific, external environmental experiences.5

In addition to its potential relationship to "midlife crises," work deserves careful attention as a contributor to personal identity. especially during the midlife period. Such issues as the role of work in self-esteem; the differ­ential impact of work on identity for different social groups. cultures. and historical time periods; individual preferences for the allocation of time between work and leisure; and the consequences of voluntary career changes in the middle years fall within this research domain.

The picture becomes especially complex when changes in work, personality. and aging are considered over time and in relationship to economic, demographic. and/or technological changes in society. Many or perhaps all of the questions relating personality and work require a disentangling of chronological age effects from genera­tional or cohort effects, since each generation matures in a different demographic, economic, and technological environment. The trend towards prolonging education and ' delaying entry into the labor force, for example, may well be changing traditional career achievement trajectories by compressing the length of the work life. Such changes in work-non work cycles in the life span may affect the relationships among work, personality, and age.

The committee: its objectives and activities

With these kinds of issues and concepts in mind. the Committee on Work and Personality in the Middle Years was appointed in 1972.6 Much of the existing

6 For a recent critical review of theories of the "midlife crisis." see Orville G. Brim, Jr., "Theories of the Male Mid-life Crisis," Counseling Psychologist, 1976 (forthcoming).

6 The suggestion for forming the committee was made (by the present chairman) to Ralph W. Tyler. then acting president of the Council, in the summer of 1971. An initial planning conference took place in February 1972. and the committee was established by the Council's Committee on Problems and Policy in September of that year. The committee held two meetings (February and October 1973) to work out basic theoretical positions and modes of procedure, incorporating these in a description of proposed activities that served also as a proposal for funding. Beginning in the summer of 1974. the National Institute of Mental Health provided funds extending over a three-year period for activities of the committee. and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development has supported two study groups.

VOLUME 29, NUMBER 1I

work on the middle years is uncoordinated, with many theoretical and practical questions remaining to be ad­dressed. Efforts at organizing the field according to more general analytic frameworks, concepts, and propositions are clearly needed, as is an inventory of what is known. The committee recognizes that the development of this field must draw upon many areas of the social sciences, since fundamental questions about work productivity and career trajectories, the use of human resources, per­sonality change through the life span, and changes in age-specific role expectations are involved. Consequently, the committee is emphasizing an interdisciplinary ap­proach in the hope of generating theoretical questions about the midlife period that might provide new leads across disciplinary boundaries.

As a means of encouraging research on the middle years, the committee has developed four lines of attack: information exchange, committee meetings with guest participation, study groups or seminars on selected top­ics, and liaison with significant institutional programs.

Exchange of information. The committee's intention is to serve as a center for the exchange of information among the increasing numbers of social scientists work­ing in the area. Accordingly, it has been developing both American and international contacts with scholars pro­fessionally interested in the midlife period. In 1973, in­formation about the committee was sent to an initial list of 75 social scientists known to have such interests. As knowledge about the committee has spread and as the committee has learned more about who is active in the area, this list has grown to over 200 correspondents. Copies of the list as well as the committee's annual reports were distributed to these 200 correspondents in September 1974.

In addition to creating a list of scholars, the committee is rapidly compiling a bibliography of research memo­randa, working papers, and other unpublished as well as published manuscripts. The bibliography will be dis­tributed shortly and updated periodically. It is hoped that the present article will elicit letters and manuscripts relevant to the committee's activities and goals.7

Thematic committee meetings. Each of the committee's meetings has been organized around a specific theme and has included invited participants with research in­terests in the topic under consideration. These meetings serve as an informal forum for presenting new ideas,

T Requests for the list of correspondents, bibliographies, and/or an­nual reports should be sent to Ronald P. Abeles at the Council. Ma­terials for inclusion in the committee's bibliography or requests to be added to the mailing list should also be sent to Mr. Abeles.

SEPTEMBER 1975

reporting current research, and exchanging insights into shared intellectual problems. Over the past 18 months, five thematic meetings have been held by the committee, and a sixth is planned for October 1975.

The theme of the February 1974 meeting was the epidemiology of stress symptoms. The committee's guests were David C. Glass, University of Texas; Morton Kramer, National Institute of Mental Health; J.R. New­brough, George Peabody College; Harvey Picker, Co­lumbia University; and Richard Reddick, National Institute of Mental Health. Messrs. Kramer and Reddick gave a presentation on "Epidemiological Indices in the Middle Years," in which they discussed the psychiatric, medical, and social correlates of midlife casualties, par­ticularly with respect to depression. Data on midlife depression were specifically contrasted with adolescent and senescent depression. Presentations were also made by Mr. Glass on the "Behavioral Antecedents of Coro­nary Heart Disease" and by Mr. Newbrough on com­munity change, stress, and the quality of life.

The June 1974 meeting focused on the midlife crisis. Featured was the presentation by Daniel J. Levinson, Yale University, and his colleagues on their current study of the psychosocial development of American males. Discussions followed by John A. Clausen, Uni­versity of California, Berkeley; Charlotte Darrow, Yale University; David Gutman, University of Chicago; Beatrix Hamburg, Stanford University; Maria Levinson, New Haven, Connecticut; and David Pearl, National Institute of Mental Health.

Death and the concept of social time were the topics considered at the committee's October 1974 meeting. Bernice Neugarten, University of Chicago, discussed her past work on the concepts of being "on time" and "off time" in life-span development and her present work on the middle-aged. She noted the changing demographic composition of American society and outlined some of the psychological, sociological, and policy implications of these changes. John W. Riley, Jr., Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States, presented new data on the changing meaning of death to individuals and their perceptions of death with special reference to middle-aged persons. Other participants in the meet­ing were John Flanagan, American Institutes for Re­search; Beatrix Hamburg, Stanford University; Lee A. Lillard and Robert T. Michael, both of the National Bureau of Economic Research (Stanford).

The committee's February 1975 meeting, which was organized as a small conference on the interaction be­tween work and personality, heard from seven speakers. Alex Inkeles, Stanford University, discussed his research in six developing countries on changes in adult per-

51

sonality towards "modernity" as the result of participa­tion in factory work and in farm cooperatives. David W. Plath, University of Illinois, reported on life-course trends during the middle years in modern Japan and on changing patterns of self-awareness in middle age as shaped by changes in one's circle of intimate others. Melvin Kohn, National Institute of Mental Health, summarized his recent research on the effects of occu­pational experience on psychological functioning with particular attention to intellectual flexibility.

In addition, Roger Gould, Santa Monica, California, discussed the evolution of male and female personalities during the ages of 30 to 50 from a psychoanalytic per­spective and indicated how personality belief system!! interact with the external reality of the world of work. George H. Pollock, Institute for Psychoanalysis (Chi­cago), reported on several projects of the Institute and on his own clinical study of the mourning process. He focused in particular on the relationship of the mourn­ing process to creativity and to adaptations in the second half of life. Janet Z. Giele, Radcliffe Institute, discussed the apparent move away from dual, sex-typed occupa­tional and family social structures in industrial societies, as well as the formation of new work and family patterns for men and women. She emphasized that current re­search has focused mainly on males and such psychologi­cal characteristics as sense of personal efficacy and cog­nition to the neglect of more affective and affiliative behavior. Eugene S. Schneller, Duke University, sum­marized his research on second careers and career tra­jectories among "medical lawyers." He suggested that work was needed on a theory of commitment that ac­counts for both encumbency and change in occupations. Albert D. Biderman, Bureau of Social Science Research (Washington, D.C.); Raymond L. Hall, Dartmouth Col­lege; Robert Higgins, The Burden Foundation; Joyce Lazar, National Institute of Mental Health; Carol Ryff, Foundation for Child Development; and M. Brewster Smith, University of California, Santa Cruz, participated in these discussions along with the speakers and mem­bers of the committee.

At the June 1975 meeting, the committee and its guests discussed women in midlife. Michelle Rosaldo, Stanford University, raised several questions centering around cultural, historical, and gender differences in conceptualizing the life cycle and the self through the life cycJe. She also pointed to questions about different historical and cultural conceptualizations of work and careers. Hilda Kahne, Radcliffe Institute, considered current economic trends in American society and how changing occupational roles for women and men will be affected by these trends. She predicted that the

32

women's movement will probably have differential im­pact upon women in terms of their current location in the life cycle. Francine Blau, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, emphasized the need to consider both men and women in studying the midlife period as a means of testing the limits and generalizability of existing theories. In addition, she focused on the need for research on occupational segregation along sex lines. Myra Strober, Stanford University, discussed questions dealing with occupational choices and opportunities open to women in the middle years who are entering or reentering the job market.

On a different topic, Neil J. Smelser, University of California, Berkeley, outlined his developing interests in researching the middle years simultaneously from sociological and psychoanalytic perspectives. He pre­sented some exploratory ideas about differential social contours of the individual's life cycle and about institu­tional changes resulting from differences in the size and composition of successive cohorts. In addition to Mr. Smelser, other participants in the meeting were Susan M. Ervin-Tripp, Center for Advanced Study in the Be­havioral Sciences (Stanford); Laurie H. Ganschow, American Institutes for Research; and Beatrix Ham­burg, Stanford University.

The theme for the October 1975 meeting will be longitudinal, cross-cultural, and historical studies of the middle years. There will be discussions of methodo­logical problems in age cohort analyses of personality change over the life span, of the current state of social history research on human development, and of a cross­national comparison between middle age in the United States and in an African society.

Study groups and seminars. Opportunities for longer and more intense discussions of specific topics have been provided in study groups organized by committee mem­bers. These groups meet usually for two to three days and are not part of the committee's regular meetings. Matilda White Riley convened one such group con­cerned with the differences between middle-aged cohorts and their predecessors and successors with regard to size, historical background, educational level, cognitive per­formance, and similar characteristics.s The five-day meet-

8 The study group on "The Middle·Aged: Past, Present, and Future" was held at Bowdoin Col\ege, on July 21-26. 1974. Participating in the conference were Dale Dennefer, Rutgers University; Douglas Ew­bank. Bowdoin Col\ege; Mathew Greenwald, Institute of Life Insurance (New York); Beth Hess, County College of Morris. New Jersey; Marilyn Johnson. Rutgers University; David Kertzer, Bowdoin College; Ann Parelius, Rutgers University; John W. Riley, Jr., Equitable Life As­surance Society; Barbara Roth, Rutgers University; Harris Schrank, Equitable Life Assurance Society; Melinda Sma\). Bowdoin College; and Joan Waring, Fairleigh Dickinson University.

VOLUME 29, NUMBEIl !J

ing attempted to stimulate thinking and research on the impact of these differences on relationships within and between age strata and on disordered cohort flow. Several articles, papers, and research projects have re­sulted from this July 1974 meeting.

A small study group consisting of Mathew Greenwald (chairman), Institute of Life Insurance (New York); Rayman Bortner, Pennsylvania State University; and Gertrude Lewis, Rutgers University, reported on the availability of longitudinal panel surveys for secondary analysis in regard to aging. The study group met with program directors and staff at the University of Michi-

. gan's Institute for Social Research, reported on the content and condition of several data sets, and made recommendations for possible analyses of these data.

A third study group, under the direction of Victor R. Fuchs, Lee A. Lillard, and Robert T. Michael, all of the National Bureau of Economic Research (Stanford), met in June 1975 to discuss issues relevant to life cycle aspects of earnings and labor supply.9 Among the topics covered were (I) theoretical issues in life-cycle analysis, including models of earnings, labor supply, occupational and geographical mobility, and other aspects of male labor force behavior in the United States in the twenti­eth century, and (2) empirical issues in life-cycle analy­sis, including various techniques and models used in extracting life-cycle information from cross-sectional and longitudinal studies.

The focus of the fourth study group, also chaired by Mrs. Riley, which met in July 1975, was on the meaning of work and retirement among middle-aged women.10

The conference was designed to stimulate thinking, ex­change of ideas, and research on a little-studied and rela­tively new phenomenon for most women: retirement from the workplace. The objectives of the study group

9 The study group on "Life Cycle Aspects of Earnings and Labor Sup­ply" met at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). Stan­ford. California. on June 20-21. 1975. The participants were Victor R. Fuchs. Stanford University and NBER; William J. Haley. Michigan State University; Robert M. Hauser. University of Wisconsin; James J. Heckman. University of Chicago and NBER; Thomas Johnson. North Carolina State University; Robert L. Kahn. University of Michigan; John Ladinsky. University of Wisconsin; Lee A. Lillard. NBER; Robert T. Michael. Stanford University and NBER; Sherwin Rosen. University of Rochester; James P. Smith. RAND Corporation; Frank Stanford. University of Michigan; Yoram Weiss. The Hebrew University and NBER.

SEPTEMBER 1975

were to discuss some limited data now at hand, to consider redefinitions of "work," "leisure," and "retire­ment," and to explore the relevance of these issues to future research and to several projected and current large-scale longitudinal studies.

In the year ahead, the committee is initiating new study groups or seminars. Among the topics that will be considered are (I) definitional questions with respect to types of careers, career patterns, and the measurement of career trajectories; (2) individual differences in hor­monal changes in midlife males; (3) life roles, life cycle, and the "convoy of social support" during the middle years, where "convoy of social support" refers to those persons on whom an individual relies for support and those who rely upon him for support. These study groups and the preceding ones have been proposed and orga­nized by committee members. Future study groups will be under the leadership of other scholars outside of the committee.

Relationahipa with other inatitutiona. In various ways, the committee has established liaison with significant institutional projects concerned with the middle years. These include Columbia University'S midcareer educa­tion program; the work at the Bureau of Social Science Research sponsored by the U.S. Department of Labor on indicators of quality of employment; and the midcareer leadership and creativity training programs of the Cen­ter for Creative Leadership (Greensboro, North Caro­lina). Currently, the committee is designing a national conference of "consumers" of social science research on the middle years, in recognition of the rapidly growing concern with the midlife period in the fields of applied education and career counseling. 0

10 The study group on "The Meaning of Work. Leisure. and Retire­ment among Middle-Aged Women" was held at the Russell Sage Foundation. New York City. on July 9-10. 1975. Those participating were Ronald P. Abeles. Social Science Research Council; Paula Barron. Russell Sage Foundation; Kathleen Bond. Social Security Administra­tion; Elizabeth Douvan. University of Michigan; Kenneth Finnerud. Teachers' Insurance and Annuity Association; Anne Foner. Rutgers University; Mathew Greenwald. Institute of Life Insurance (New York); Beth Hess. County College of Morris. New Jersey; Michael Inbar. Russell Sage Foundation; Marilyn Johnson. Rutgers University; Gertrude Lewis. Rutgers University; Harris Schrank. Equitable Life Assurance Society; Karen Schwab. Social Security Administration; Stephen Sandell. Ohio State University; Graham Spanier. Pennsylvania State University; and Joan Waring. Russell Sage Foundation.

NEW PERSPECTIVES FOR THE STUDY OF WESTERN EUROPE

by Suzanne D. Berger, Gerald D. Feldman, Gudmund Heroes, Joseph LaPalombara, Philippe C. Schmitter, and Allan A. Silver"

THE PRINCIPAL AIM of the new Joint Committee on Western Europe is to stimulate long-term, systematic reflection and research both on the origins and evolution of contemporary European societies and on the theories that illuminate their experiences.

In focusing on Western Europe we are conscious of looking into a mirror that reflects back many of the features of the American national experience and of the contemporary preoccupations of American scholars. We are also aware of the centrality of the European example for much of the developing world. But if a reach to­ward wider generalizations and comparisons is to be fruitful, it must proceed from a coherent intellectual effort to understand the differences and similarities of experience among European societies. In Western Eu­rope, despite the divergences in social, economic, and political institutions, the constraints of shared histories and common problems have limited and structured the range of variations in ways that make possible the broad conceptual tasks that we are proposing for the new committee.

European intellectual traditions

The fact that European intellectual traditions remain essential to the world's understanding of itself is a funda­mental rationale for the appointment of a Joint Commit­tee on Western Europe. Until very recently the theories and concepts that social scientists and humanists every­where used to understand their own societies and cul­tures were drawn from the historical experience of Europe, largely intended for the use of Europeans, and drafted in the main by Europeans-Marx, Durkheim, Weber, and Freud, the giants among them. This com­mon intellectual heritage is the product of Europe's early economic development, its subsequent political and cultural hegemony, and its cultivation of rational­scientific inquiry. As societies outside Europe have tried to apply these concepts to their own experience, they have been modified, elaborated, and sometimes rejected.

34

Dissatisfaction with the models provided by European intellectual traditions, moreover, has not been confined to those studying other parts of the world. Many Ameri­can scholars interested in Western Europe, who in the 1950s and 1960s had predicted that accelerated techno­logical innovation, sustained economic growth, social mobility, and regional cooperation would produce a "postproblematic" social and political order, saw their theories refuted.

However, despite serious difficulties in using .ideas derived from European traditions for understanding contemporary societies, Western or not, the social sci­ences and humanities remain tied to these ideas by the logic of their own internal development. Even in what is rejected, the shape of the European models is still visible. The systematic pursuit of knowledge about Western European cultures, societies, economies, and politics will continue to be vital for advance in the social sciences and the humanities.

The sense of crisis

A second basic rationale for stimulating scholarship on Western Europe at this time is the pervasive sense of crisis felt both by scholars and citizens about their present condition. The mood of urgency dominating the mid-1970s impels us to reexamine the structures and directions of Western industrial society. As one Euro­pean sociologist put it for his discipline, we need to confront both a crisis in sociology and a sociology of crisis.

The causes of the malaise are clear: the old maps of state, society, and economy no longer work, and Western industrial societies feel themselves embarked without guideposts or compasses on journeys whose way stations and destinations are no longer familiar. The problem is a double one. The terrain has changed; and the maps, which had only a very rough and perhaps spurious fit with the old state of affairs, have not been redrawn to take account of the new landscape of the contempo­rary industrial world.

• The authors are the initial members of an emergent Joint Com· mittee on Western Europe of the Social Science Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies. The committee is cur­rently in the process of formation. Suzanne D. Berger (chairman) is professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Tech­nology; Gerald D. Feldman, professor of history, University of Cali· fornia, Berkeley; Gudmund Hernes, professor of sociology, University of Bergen; Joseph LaPalombara, Arnold Wolfers professor of political science, Yale University; Philippe C. Schmitter, associate professor of political science, University of Chicago: Allan A. Silver, associate professor of sociology, Columbia University. Other European and American scholars are being invited to join the full committee. This article is adapted from a working paper proposing a focus for the committee's activities.

VOLUME 29, NUMBER. S

No single event explains the great transformation of the terrain on which European states find themselves in the 1970s. However massive the consequences of the energy crisis, the failure of economic policy and the sense of the increasing impotence of the state for dealing with the major problems of the 1970s cannot be attrib­uted to an energy shortage. Even before the rise in the prices of food and oil, "stag~ation" had already under­mined the assumptions linking particular theories of the economy to particular state interventions and policies. Even earlier, the social explosions of the late 1960s and their perpetuation in latent states of unrest had weak­ened a body of political theory and social practice that took for granted the end of ideological challenge in affluent societies.

Spectacular changes in the terms on which industrial nations procure raw materials, stagflation, the "May­Junes" and the "hot autumns" would not have had their powerful impact were they not related to deeper, more long-term shifts in the structures of Western industrial societies. Broadly speaking, the critical shifts appear in three areas.

Strain8 in the in8titution8 of governance. A major area of transformation is in the relationship between society and its institutions of governance. These relations are manifesting evidence of strain and inadaptation in all advanced industrial societies. One sign of institutional crisis is a skepticism about the effectiveness of central governmental institutions expressed in the retreat from central planning observable throughout Europe. In Eu­rope, as well as the United States, we note a growing disillusionment with institutions, such as schools and government-run social services, once considered vital to all schemes for social reform and proposals to replace them with essentially market instruments, such as vouch­ers for "free" schools and a negative income tax.

Growing recognition of the inadequacy of govern­mental institutions in Western industrial societies is also evidenced in the mounting attack on centralization. From both Left and Right there are proposals for decen­tralization, "deconcentration," regions, and local mu­nicipal consolidation. But the reforms that have been implemented in Italy, France, and Britain meet only a small part of the problem.

Political parties and intere8t grOUp8. A second area of fundamental transformation involves representative in­stitutions like political parties and interest groups. It is perhaps true that parties and a wide variety of voluntary associations never functioned as representative structures in the ways that American pluralist theories suggested. But however effective these institutions may once have

SEPTEMBER 1975

been as instruments for channeling and disciplining mass behavior, it is clear that their capabilities have today declined. The vitality of these organizations has been sapped in part by bureaucratization and in part by the failure of leadership, administration, organizations, and voluntary associations to cope with social change.

Increasingly, wildcat movements outside the "normal" channels of union and party are reemerging as one of the dominant forms of social protest. Not only in Italy, with a long tradition of basically conflictual industrial relations, but also in West Germany, with a postwar experience of collaborative relations between workers and industrialists, new and radical wildcat movements at the plant-floor level are in many factories challenging the dominant modes of union operation. The rebellions of small shopkeepers and of small farmers in several European countries also evidence weakened control by the large national interest groups to which they belong. To some extent, the declining efficacy of representative organizations can be traced to the fact that their clients and their adversaries have changed in ways that put them beyond reach. In the case of European unions, for exam­ple, the old incentives, forms of control, and sanctions work less and less well as more of their clients become foreign laborers with temporary links to the society in which they work and as more of their targets become multinational corporations.

Explanation of the weakening of the old representa­tional organizations would also have to focus on the ways in which new institutions have usurped some of their functions. In France, for example, it would be impossible to account for the rising levels of protest by marginal economic groups and backward regions with­out realizing that the shift from a parliamentary to a presidential regime promoted new forms of collabora­tion between certain interest groups and the bureaucracy. These new forms reduced the role of the parties and of other interest groups. It should not be surprising that groups suddenly excluded from the bargaining, nego­tiation, pressure, and representation system should then become major sources of unrest.

Values and beliefs. The third area in which the assump­tions and structures of Western industrial societies have been shifting involves values and beliefs. Modern citi­zens live in two differentiated worlds: one in which efficient, task-oriented performances are expected of them; and one in which they seek the fulfillment of emotional needs. and social gratifications. The disjunc­tion in modern society between the sphere of the per­sonal, the voluntary, and the affective, on one hand, and the impersonal, efficient, and remote, on the other,

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helps set the stage for the seemingly boundless cultural and emotional expectations generated by modern so­ciety.

In an earlier period, what the "good life" chiefly re­quired was sufficient income and insurance at crisis points (illness, accident, old age) to avoid the condition of poverty, which could attack anyone. Now, however, the "good life" requires more. It demands the mainte­nance of a reasonably predictable socioeconomic order in which the "equity" represented by material or psychic investments in personal life, above all in family and children, will not be diluted or threatened. The concept of having a stake in the system now takes on newly­extended forms, both in numerical and qualitative terms.

The forms of culture, psychological organization, po­litical mobilization, and participation that are most likely to develop in such a context are unclear; more­over, the development of these patterns is quite uneven throughout the Western world, inviting and indeed re­quiring comparative analysis. Although we are still far from understanding all of the consequences of these shifts, one of them may be an erosion of precisely those forms pf compliant behavior on which industrial systems with complex types of administration and regulations in­creasingly depend.

The diffusion of new values is extremely uneven, and this may explain the intensity of current cultural clashes. In France, for example, family life has apparently been democratized far more rapidly than have the values that orient the behavior and expectations of teachers, and perhaps for this reason, the lycee has become one of the new arenas of political conflict. In a certain sense, the acceptance of divorce in Italy and of contraception and abortion in many other European societies marks the final triumph of old doctrines of individual rights; but, at the same time, under the combined pressures of environmental and resource problems, many are coming to believe that individual choices have to be more con­strained than before for collective survival.

Cutting across these shifts in mass attitudes lie other axes along which values and behavior are being reori­ented. The typical values of younger and older genera­tions, of different social classes, of ideological groupings, of ethnic groups are all in a state of flux, the impact of which has been unevenly experienced and absorbed by social and political institutions. This flux is also present among the elites who lead organizations, who manage major enterprises in the public and private sectors, and who are responsible for making the basic economic and political allocations in society.

As a consequence of these changes, the "equilibrium

36

state" of Western European socletles appears to have become one of permanent instability. The contradiction in terms this expresses may testify better to the poverty of the theories with which we have been operating than to the qualitative increase in the conflictual aspects of the real world, for what we once saw as stability un­doubtedly contained far more important tensions and contradictions than our theories recognized. Indeed, our theories neglected to account for the high degree of conflict behavior that can occur in industrial society without destroying the "system" itself.

A need for new departures

The first response of the social sciences to the prob­lems generated by the transformations described above was research on the formulation and implementation of public policy. This was in part due to the political climate in the university and in the United States as a whole in the late 1960s; in part, it was encouraged by the emphasis placed by both public and private sources of funds on research designed to illuminate specific social problems and to suggest concrete solutions for them. Perhaps the most positive outcome of this policy-oriented research, with its emphasis on the "common problems of industrial societies," has been a new recognition of the relevance of European experience for the understanding and solution of American domestic problems.

The limitations of the policy-oriented approach have, however, become increasingly apparent. Even policy studies presuppose some framework of analysis for in­dustrial societies and build on some fundamental as­sumptions about how these societies operate. Narrowing the focus of research can in no way substitute for the development of concepts, theories, and models; and, in the absence of this theoretical effort, the multiplication of policy studies seems to have produced less than the sum of their parts.

To understand the intellectual difficulties in which we find ourselves, one must remember the origins of the theories wi th which American social scientists have been working. Until World War II, most of the Ameri­cans working on Western Europe were either historians or political scientists, and the work of both groups con­sisted largely of configurative studies of individual coun­tries. After the war there was a major revision of the concepts and theories with which social scientists ap­proached Europe. The principal sources of the new notions were the study of American society and politics and the theories of development and modernization worked out in the 1950s and 1960s to explain the evolu­tion of the developing countries.

VOLUME 29, NUMBER !I

Importing models drawn from the study of the United States and of developing societies into research on West­ern Europe has produced innovative and valuable schol­arship, but there have also been heavy costs. One of the major ones has been the neglect of history and of his­torians in the development of social research. A second major negative consequence has been a tendency to overlook contributions of scholars trained in Europe. Since the new models and the methodologies associated with them were not drawn from European experience, the scholarship of Europeans was seen as significant only when it started from American premises and utilized American methods. Indeed, in postwar research on in-

. dustrial societies, Western European experience itself was discounted in the general belief that all modern industrial societies were traveling along a route which the United States had already traversed and that the most important thing to know about a European state was how close or how far it was from the American model. The "Americanization of Europe" has not only been a theme in popular culture; it has been a deeply held assumption of social scientists as well. The crisis of understanding in which we find ourselves today sug­gests that we may have exhausted the utility of the sources of our postwar scholarship on Europe and need a new beginning.

There are powerful reasons to believe that this is an opportune time for such an endeavor, for we have at hand both the demand for collaborative intellectual ef­fort and the personnel to carry it out. In both Western Europe and the U.S., scholars are already working along

lines of inquiry suggested by the conceptual problems described above. In part this represents the emergence of a new generation of scholars less bound by traditional disciplinary constraints and more open to comparative research. In pan it reflects a shift of interest within the social sciences. In political science, for example, tradi­tional conceptions of the state with impermeable boun­daries have become less tenable with the growing im­portance of multinational corporations and of capital and labor flows. It is now increasingly difficult to make the classic, sharp distinction between a state's internal activities and events in its international environment. This is reflected in a growing interest in "political economy," which is seen as a perspective that integrates political and economic theories.

Precisely because of the ferment already underway, we need to develop forms of collaboration that will pro­mote joint systematic efforts to reexamine the theories that inform our studies of 'Western Europe and, more broadly, of industrial societies. A focal point is needed for the many small and often isolated new ventures in this direction both in Europe and America. An institu­tional mechanism needs to be created to stimulate in­tellectual development by promoting international in­teraction among scholars, including a confrontation of the concepts, theories, and even styles of research on which they proceed. The point of departure for such a mecha.nism would be a systematic exploration of the state of our understanding of Western European socie­ties to identify areas of weakness and areas of opportu­nity in which our knowledge should be extended. 0

ENVIRONMENTAL AND SPATIAL COGNITION IN AFRICAN SOCIETIES

THIS IS A REPORT on a small conference on environmen­tal and spatial cognition in African societies w.hich was sponsored by the Joint Committee on African Studies. Participants in the conference included geographers, anthropologists, and one architect, all of whom had carried out field research in various African societies.1

In their papers, participants were asked to address

• The authors are professors of urban planning, Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of California, Los Angeles.

1 The conference was sponsored by the Joint Committee on African Studies of the Social Science Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies. It was held at the Moton Conference Center, Capahosic, Virginia on May 8-11, 1974. The conference was organized by Professor Soja, a member of the joint committee; Pro-

SEPTEMBER. 1975

by David Stea and Edward Soja -

themselves to the exploration of ways in which indi­viduals and groups in African societies think about physical and symbolic space, and the ways in which such thinking influences behavior in a number of contexts. The conference was not intended to span the full range of cognition and cognitive analysis; rather, its purpose

fessor Stea acted as discussant. Participants. in addition to Stea and Soja, were Sara Berry, Indiana University; B. J . Dudley, University of Ibadan; James Fernandez, Dar tmouth College; Jean HerskoviLS, State University of New York, Purchase; Gregory Knight , Pennsylvania State University; Alice Morton, Rutgers University; Julius Oguntoy­inbo, University of Ibadan; l .abelle Prussin , University of Michigan; W illiam Shack, Uni\'ersity of Cali forn ia, Berkeley; Marilyn Silberfein, Temple University; John Sommer. Dar tmouth College; Mary Tucey, California State College, :Xorth ridge; Rodney White, McMaster College; Aristide Zolberg, University of Chicago; staff, Rowland L. Mitchell, Jr.

37

was to concentrate on the imagery attached to patterns of spatial organization and on the content of the physical environment to which these patterns relate.

Specifically, the conference was organized around four research topics: (I) the influence of cosmology and world­view on the organization and exploitation of space; (2) African concepts of boundaries, territoriality, and land tenure; (3) perception of the natural environment, in­cluding folk traditions about ecology, and attitudes toward natural resources and natural hazards; and (4) urbanization and cognitive imagery in contemporary Africa.

These are four very complex topics, and it is difficult both to obtain relevant data concerning them and to demonstrate cause-and·effect relationships between the natural environment or attitudes on the one hand, and the use of space and the design of buildings on the other. The participants were aware of the tentative nature of their findings; to avoid repetition, however, statements expressing this lack of certainty are not reported here.

Interrelated research areas

The four areas of research were seen as interrelated, each having a bearing on the need to identify and con­sider African attitudes, values, and goals with respect to rural land-use planning, resources exploitation, resettle­ment, and the design of urban centers. This need to understand and, to some extent, to predict the reactions of rural and urban Africans to environmental changes is becoming increasingly recognized among planners, although it is still too often the case that these kinds of factors are taken into consideration toward the end of the design and implementation process rather than at the beginning.

Papers by James Fernandez and Labelle Prussin most directly addressed the concern with cosmology. Compar­ing the Fang of western Equatorial Africa and the Zulu of Natal, South Africa, Fernandez proposed a dichotomy between centripetal and centrifugal sacred rituals and spaces. Tracing the basis for this dichotomy in the rituals and values of the two peoples, as well as in their physical environments, Fernandez suggested that there is a crucial difference in the directionality expressed in the ceremonies of the two groups.

The Fang, living in a carpentered world of rectangu­lar buildings within a dense equatorial forest, organize their rituals in terms of a "distributed and controlled centrifugality," which expresses the positive value they give to "a kind of tranquil evenhandedness," which in turn may be related both to the highly egalitarian and fissionary character of their social structure and to re-

38

sponses invoked by the "exuberantly encroaching and claustrophobic forest." The Zulu, who inhabit a treeless subtropical savannah, locate their residences in circles stressing inwardness and centrality. In their centripetal rituals, they emphasize the ingathering and concentra­tion of mystical and vital forces toward a "vital center." Fernandez postulates that this trend toward centrality, which is also reflected in Zulu social forms and in Zulu philosophy, might usefully be related to the character­istics of the open physical environment in which they find themselves.

Prussin's concern was more with the ritual decoration of the architectural facades of sacred and mundane structures. In her exposition of these decorative types, she considered three determinants of architectural form in the inland Niger delta of Mali: the architectural ex­pression of universal centrality through the repeated use of a symbolic pillar, tying the present with the past, and the men of today with their ancestors; the role of Islam in reorienting cognitive space so that cardinal points are united with the center; and the way in which the French colonial government expressed its awareness of African symbols and attitudes in its architectural programs.

In discussing these three determinants, Prussin showed many illustrations of vernacular and modern architec­ture from the area, explicating the images of the world that informed their creation. She stressed the point that it is often women who are responsible for the decora­tion. and sometimes the construction, of buildings, and discussed the tenets of tradition and religion which they expressed in their designs. thereby constructing cognitive space.

The papers of Gregory Knight and John Sommer dealt primarily with the issues of land use, territoriality, and boundaries, as well as with indigenous conceptions of ecology. Knight's paper, "Ethnoscience: A Cognitive Approach to African Agriculture," reported the findings of research done among African farmers concerning the categories in terms of which they organize their physical and work environments. By using a variety of elicitation techniques, Knight was able to establish the categories to which a whole vocabulary of farming belongs, as well as determine the kinds of cognitive maps of their en­vironment that these farmers share and that enable them to exploit it successfully. A major point of the paper was that, while the categories used by these farmers to organize their conception of the external world are alien to Westerners, they do in fact enable them to exploit that environment successfully as agriculturalists. And this appears to be the case even though these cog­nitive categories and maps are characterized by the inter-

VOLUME 29, NUMBEll 3

section of religious and "scientific" knowledge. John Sommer approached the issues of boundaries

and territoriality in a markedly different way. His pres­entation was primarily concerned with the spatial repre­sentation of relations of power across a number of African societies. He argued that, in order to make ana­lytically useful statements about cognitive maps and other images in terms of which Africans organize social behavior at various structural levels, the dimension of power must be taken carefully into account. Put most simply, this would mean, for example, that it is impor­tant to know how a group perceives ownership of the physical environment before making generalizations about the group's ability to move over the landscape. In many instances the issue of actual and mystical owner­ship of spaces is closely related to intra- and inter-group political relations.

Just as Knight's paper dealt with problems of both ecological perception and boundaries, the papers by Rodney White and by Julius Oguntoyinbo and Paul Richards dealt with perceptions of the natural environ­ment and of natural hazards and with attitudes toward migration and urbanization.

White was primarily interested in the attitudes ex­pressed by African migrants to physical and social space as these condition migration patterns, both spontaneous and planned. Crucial to these attitudes is the perception on the part of potential migrants of the opportunities represented by alternative locations. Such perceptions are conditioned by a number of factors, including cos­mology, the flow of accurate and inaccurate information about resource availability and job possibilities, and the conception of the present location which the potential migrant has. White stressed the importance of these attitudes for urban and rural planning, as well as for coping with large-scale migrations which are not planned, but are rather responses to a variety of social and environmental factors, including natural hazards.

Oguntoyinbo and Richards explored the attitudes of N igeTian farmers to a particular natural hazard, the recent Sahelian drought. They hoped to answer such questions as when do farmers decide that environmental changes are sufficiently drastic to be causes for migra­tion; when are such hazards attributed to natural, and when to mystical, causes; what kinds of traditional mechanisms do communities of farmers have for coping with these hazards, and how might these best be ex­ploited in the case of the drought. Here again, the underiying view is that no project designed to cope with changes brought about by hazards and disasters is likely to be successful if it is not sensitive to the attitudes and values of those it is designed to help.

SEPTEMBER 1975

The same may be said of resettlement projects which are not responses to drastic environment change, but which rather seek to prevent such changes before they occur. Marilyn Silberfein dealt with the problems of planned resettlement of this kind in her paper about the Kiwere resettlement scheme in Tanzania. The paper described ways in which traditional attitudes about the organization of personal, residential, and agricultural space tend to subvert the goals of the planners and managers of this multi-ethnic tobacco farming coopera­tive. An interesting polarization has developed between the Hehe, local traditional agriculturalists who partici­pate in the scheme, and volunteers from other ethnic groups who chose to live in the scheme's planned villages as an alternative to urban migration.

Traditional adaptations

Over time, the Hehe proved more able to adjust to the exigencies of living in a modern, planned, and apparently rigidly designed cooperative village by side­stepping most of the regulations and pursuing a more traditional life style. They continue to interact more with their kin and former neighbors in the surrounding area than they do with their co-villagers of other ethnic groups. They continue to cultivate their own fields out­side the settlement, in addition to their work on coopera­tively-run tobacco fields. They build houses in the tra­ditional style, scorning the regulations for modern house types and the modern materials provided for building them. They also manage, eventually, to oust from im­portant positions most of the non-Hehe in the scheme, substituting local Hehe volunteers from surrounding communities. In these and other ways, they are able to

. create adaptive and novel adjustments to planned change which are in some instances in direct abrogation of the rules and intent of this modern, planned settlement project. Silberfein argues convincingly that this range of novel responses is largely conditioned by adherence to traditional cognitive categories and to traditional atti­tudes concerning the proper distribution of buildings, farms, and persons on the land.

Mary Tucey, describing an urban subarea of central Accra, Ghana, discussed an even more clearly tradition­alist adaptation to changing urban circumstances in a carefully constructed study of conceptions of neighbor­hood shared by Ga residents of Accra. These Ga in­formants were the descendants of individuals who had first come to live in Accra in the 17th century, when the growing town was divided into quarters which were quite clearly bounded. While these boundaries have vanished over time, Tucey found that contemporary Ga residents still conceptualize their neighborhoods in

39

terms of this historical perspective. In addition, the dimensions of kinship and social acquaintance are im­portant for conceptions of neighborhood. Informants identify neighborhoods as quite small and as bounded by streets, since the streets have remained the same while buildings and other landmarks have changed over time. They define these neighborhoods also in terms of kin­ship ties with other local residents, and in terms of ties with nonkin who are close acquaintances.

Interestingly, the availability of goods and services within the area defined as a neighborhood by informants -a factor regarded as crucial to identification with a lo­cale by urban planners-seems largely irrelevant. Rather, informants stressed the availability of friends and rela­tives, the presence of landmarks of historical meaning, and the tradition of residence in the area as more salient for their cognitive models of neighborhoods.

It is difficult, in summarizing the contents of papers such as these, to convey the degree of analytical clarity

that was achieved at the conference. The color slides, diagrams, and schematic representations that were cen­tral to a number of the presentations made explicit at that time what has only been asserted here.

While these papers, and the discussions which fol­lowed their presentation, covered a wide range of peo­ples and of topics, they were united by the emphasis which was placed on the ways in which Africans in various situations conceptualize social, physical, and symbolic space. This emphasis on the process, categories, and behavioral relevance of cognition is becoming in­creasingly characteristic of both geography and anthro­pology, as well as of other social science disciplines. By applying this approach to contemporary African data of various kinds, the participants in this conference were able to modify their own thinking about the approach itself, as well as to share their insights about the think­ing of Africans as it influences individual and group behavior. 0

COMMITTEE BRIEFS

Social Indicators *

Research Proposals Are Invited In Phase Two 01 Survey Archives Project

WITH PUBLICATION of its index to repeated survey questions, the project for developing social indicators from archived data has completed its first phase. Coordinated and moni­tored by the SSRC Center for Social Indicators, with funds from the Russell Sage Foundation, the project is designed to promote social indicators research through dissemination of survey trend data at the Roper Public Opinion Research Center in Williamstown, Massachusetts. The published in­dex covers repeated questions in over 4,000 U. S. national surveys between 1936 and October 1973 that are archived at the Roper Center. Title of the index is Survey Data for Trend Analysis: An Index 10 Repeated Questions in U. S. National SunJeys Held by the Roper Public Opinion Re­search Center.

In its second phase the survey archives project is sponsor­ing a small research applications program. In order to test the usefulness of the index, the project will underwri·te data acquisition costs for a number of secondary analyses pro-

• Otis Dudley Duncan (chairman), Philip E. Converse, James A. Davis, Stephen E. Fienberg. Leo A. Goodman, Mancur Olson, Natalie Rogoff Rams¢y, Albert J. Reiss, Jr., Arthur L. Stinch­combe, Wolfgang Zapf, Harriet Zuckerman; staff, Robert Parke, director, Center for Coordination of Research on Social Indi­cators; Lawrence R. Carter; Roberta B. Miller; David Seidman; Roxann A. Van Dusen; Nancy L. Carmichael, librarian.

40

posing to make use of time series data for studies of social change. Investigators who are interested in retrieving spe­cific data itemized in the index are invited to submit pro­posals. The deadline for applications is November 1, 1975, with awards to be announced in January. (Researchers who wish to apply may contact Roxann A. Van Dusen, SSRC Center for Social Indicators, 1755 Massachusetts Avenue, N. W., Washington, D. C. 20036.)

Three projects have already been selected under the re­search applications program:

Religious Indicators. Jackson W. Carroll and David A. Roozen, both of the Hartford Seminary Foundation, are currently developing religious statistics on the national level for the period 1944 to 1969, as descriptive indicators of the state of religion in society. They are using data from the American Institute of Public Opinion (AIPO), the Gallup research organization, as well as data from the General Social Survey of the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) to develop indicators of trends in religious identi­fication, participation, and beliefs, as well as perceptions of the changing influence of religion.

Public Opinion and Taxes. Susan B. Hansen, assistant professor of political science at the University of Illinois, is studying changes over time in citizen support for taxes. Using AIPO data from 1948 to 1973, she will test explana­tory models for absolute levels of support for taxes and changes over time in perceived fairness of tax levels.

Environmental Concern. Kathryn U. Finch, a graduate teaching assistant in the Department of Sociology at the University of New Mexico, is studying concern and public

VOLUME 29, NUMBER 5

support for pro-environmental measures during the period 1969-1974. She is working with data from a survey con­ducted by the National Wildlife Federation, from a Roper Organization, Inc. (Commercial) survey, and from NORC's General Social Survey.

In the project's third and culminating phase, the Center expects to convene a workshop to review and assess the results of the undertaking. Planned for late 1976, the work­shop will include the principal investigators of the research projects selected in phase two as well as resource people experienced in the use of archived survey data.

Japanese Studies * (Joint with the American Council of Leamed Societies)

Meeting 01 Soviet and U. S. Scholars

THE JOINT COMMITTEE on Japanese Studies sponsored an all-day meeting at the Council on April 28, bringing together American and Soviet Japanologists to discuss scholarly topics of mutual interest. Two scholars from the Academy of Sciences o( the U.S.S.R. participated. They were V. A. Vlasov, an economist at the Academy's Institute of Oriental Studies, and D. A. Petrov, a political scientist at the Insti­tute of World Economy and International Relations of the Academy. The other Japan specialists who attended included Gerald L. Curtis, political scientist at Columbia University;

• Gerald L. Curtis (chairman), Karen W. Brazell, Robert E. . Cole, Scott C. Flanagan, Kinhide Mushakoji, Tetsuo Najita.

Hugh T. Patrick, Yoshiaki Shimizu, Robert J. Smith, Kozo Yamamura; staff, David L. Sills, Susan J. Pharr.

Hugh T. Patrick, economist at Yale University; John W. Hall, historian at Yale; James W. Morley, political scientist at Columbia; Young Kim, political scientist at t George Washington University; and Noda Kazuo, economist at Rikkyo University, Tokyo, who is now on leave at Harvard University. The meeting was chaired by Mr. Morley and Mr. Hall.

Following the disciplinary interests of the Soviet guests, the meeting focused on the Japanese economy and on japan's relations in the postwar period with the Soviet Union, the United States, and the People's Republic of China. The morning session began with a presentation by Mr. Vlasov on the state of Japanese studies in the Soviet Union. He reviewed the literature on Japan produced by Soviet writers, analyzing major themes and interpretations identified as significant. A general discussion of postwar economic change in Japan followed the presentation. In the afternoon, Mr. Petrov described the organization of Japa­nese studies within the Academy of Sciences in the Soviet Union. Mr. Morley then led a discussion of the policy­making process in Japan and of japan's relations with other major countries. In considering the latter topic, the discus­sion focused on the specific question of why Japan had made the decision to normalize relations with the People's Republic of China.

Throughout the session, the primary intent was for both the Soviets and the Americans to gain a better understand­ing of work on Japan currently being conducted in the two countries, and to help scholars identify assumptions that underlie various approaches to the study of Japan in the U.S. and in the U.S.S.R.

COUNCIL STAFF: APPOINTMENTS Alvia Yvonne Branch joined the staff of the Council on

September 15, 1975; her primary assignment is to assist in the creation of a new program in developmental psychology. Ms. Branch received a B.A. in psychology from Lake Forest College in 1969 and a Ph.D. in social psychology from Harvard University in 1974. During the 1974-75 academic year, she was an assistant professor of psychology at Welles­ley College. With G. A. Fine and J. M. Jones, she is the author of "Laughter, Smiling and Rating Scales: An Analy­sis of Responses to Tape-Recorded Humor," Proceedings, American Psychological Association, August 1973.

Lawrence R. Carter, an assistant professor of sociology and associate head, Department of Sociology, University of Oregon, joined the staff of the Council on September 15. His assignment will be at the Council's Center for Coordina­tion of Research on Social Indicators in Washington, D.C. Mr. Carter received a B.S. in chemistry from Howard Uni­versity in 1958 and a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Oregon in 1973. His major research interests are in urbanization and migration.

SEPTEMBER 1975

Roberta B. Miller, an historian, joined the staff of the Council on September 3; she is also assigned to the Center for Coordination of Research on Social Indicators. Ms. Miller received a B.A. in 1964 and a Ph.D. in 1973 from the University of Minnesota. She has taught courses in quantita­tive methods in history at the University of Minnesota, Oberlin College, and Hiram College; her most recent posi­tion was with an urban rebuilding project at the AlA Re­search Corporation, Washington, D.C. Her major interests are in women's history and in urban history; she is the co­author of Archival and Manuscript Resources for the Study of Women's History, 1972.

Patricia R. Pessar joined the staff of the Council on September 3; she is assigned as staff to the Joint Committee on Latin American Studies. A 1971 graduate of Barnard College, where she majored in anthropology, Ms. Pessar expects to receive a Ph.D. in anthropology from the Uni­versity of Chicago in 1975. Her field work was carried out in Brazil, and her dissertation is on a Northeast Brazil millenarian movement.

41

I· POSTDOCTORAL GRANTS

GRANTS FOR SOUTH ASIAN STUDIES

The Joint Committee on South Asian Studies, cospon­sored with the American Council of Learned Societies (which administers its program)-Ainslee T. Embree (chairman), Charles J. Adams, Edwin D. Driver, Rosane Rocher, Susanne H. Rudolph, John W. Thomas, and Helen E. Ull­rich-at its meeting on February 22, 1975 awarded grants to the following individuals:

Peter J. Bertocci, assistant professor of anthropology, Oak­land University, for research .on social organization and rural development in Bangladesh

James B. Brow, assistant professor of anthropology, Swarth­more College, for research in Sri Lanka on the economic organization of a Veddah village

Stephen F. Dale, assistant professor of history, Ohio State University, for research on the Muslim community of Kerala in the 16th and 17th centuries

Dennis 'G. Dalton, associate professor of political science, Barnard College, for research on Gandhi's experience in South Africa, 1905-1914

Joseph W. Elder, professor of sociology and South Asian studies, University of Wisconsin, for research on the changing social structure of rural India

Barbara W. Flynn, Ph.D. in South Asian history, Albany, New York, for research on local-level political organiza­tion in North India in the 1920s

Ruth S. Freed, associate professor of sociology and anthro­pology, Seton Hall University. for research on the effects of urbanization in a village in North India

Robert C. Hunt, associate professor of anthropology, Bran­deis University. for research on development and social structure in Sri Lanka, 1850-1960

Eugene F. Irschick, associate professor of history, Univer­sity of California at Berkeley, for research on the widen­ing political base in Congress and other voluntary orga­nizations of South India, 1930-1940

Clifford R. Jones. assistant professor of South Asian art. Univer~itv of Pennsylvania, for research on the tradi­tional Newar sculptor-craftsmen of Nepal

Rex L. Jones, assistant professor of anthropology. State Uni­versitv of New York at Stony Brook, for research in Nepal on the economic independence of Limbu women .

Robert N. Kearney, protessor of political sCience. Syracuse University, for research on youth and generational cleav­ages in the politics of Sri Lanka

Martin Landau, professor of political science, University of California, Berkeley, for research in Nepal on bureau­cratic pOlitics and development strategies

Brian J. Murton, associate professor of geography, Univer­sity of Hawaii, for research in Tamilnadu. India on popu­lation growth and agricultural intensification, 1800-1900

Karl H. Potter, pr.ofessor of philosophy and associate direc­tor, South Asia Program, University of Washington, for research on an encyclopedia of Indian philosophies

Johan G. Reinhard, assistant scientist, Department of An-thropology, University of Wisconsin, for research in Nepal on the Raji tribe

42

Leo E. Rose, editor, Asian Survey, and lecturer in political science. University of California, Berkeley, for research in Nepal on bureaucratic politics and development strategies

Shane Ryland, associate professor of history, Washington State University, for research in South India on public health care and mortality, 1901-1941

Harold F. Schiffman, associate professor of Asian languages, University of Washington, for research on incipient bilingualism among Sri Lanka's Indian Moors

Bam Dev Sharda, assistant professor of sociology, Univer­sity of Utah, for research on the changing social structure of rural India

GRANTS FOR EAST EUROPEAN STUDIES The Joint Committee on Eastern Europe, cosponsored

with the American Council of Learned Societies (which ad­ministers its program)-Eugene A. Hammel (chairman), Bogdan D. Denitch, Paul L. Horecky, Andrzej Korbonski, Thomas F. Magner, Paul Marer, Peter F. Sugar, and Thomas G. Winner-at its meeting on March 14-15, 1975 awarded grants for research to the following individuals:

Thomas B. Birnberg, associate professor of economics. Yale University, for research on income distribution and eco­nomic growth in Yugoslavia

John E. Bodnar, associate historian, Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, for research on the second generation Slavic-American

Walter D. Connor, assistant professor of sociology. Univer­sity of Michigan, for research on socialism, work, and equality

Mary P. Coote, assistant professor of Slavic languages, Uni­versity of California, Berkeley, for research on women's narrative songs in the Serbo-Croatian oral tradition

Connie M. Friesen, assistant professor of political science, University of Massachusetts, for research on the politics of technology transfer in Eastern Europe

Andreas M. Kazamias, professor of comparative education and the history of education, University of ''\Tisconsin, for research on the conflict of traditionalism and modernism in Greek education, 1875-1925, and its relation to nation building

Barbara W. Maggs, associate of the Russian and East Eu­ropean Center, University of Illinois, for research on the literature of the Enlightenment in 18th century Serbia and Croatia

Svetozar Pejovich, professor of economics, Ohio University, for research on the effects of profit sharing on the pro­ductivity of labor, employment, and labor mobility in Yugoslavia, 1960-1974

Michael B. Petrovich, professor of history, University of Wisconsin, for research on a cultural history of the South Slavs

Thomas L. Saksmyster, assistant professor of history, Uni­versity of Cincinnati, for research on a political biography of Miklos Horthy

George M. Williams, Jr., assistant professor of linguistics, State University of New York, Buffalo, for research on East German theories of the relation between the social use of language and linguistic structure

Irene P. Winner, research fellow at Brown University and visiting lecturer in anthro~logy at Tufts University, for research on Slovene ethmcity in urban United States: villagers in Cleveland

VOLUME 29, NUMBER 5

NEW PUBLICATIONS

China's Modern Economy in Historical Perspective, edited by Dwight H. Perkins. Papers of a conference held by the Subcommittee on Research on the Chinese Economy, Joint Committee on Contemporary China, June 18-21, 1973. Stanford: Stanford University Press, April 1975. 358 pages, $13.85.

Why did it take China more than a century after its defeat in the first Opium War to begin acquiring the fruits of mod­ern technology systematically? To what extent did the rapid economic developments after 1949 depend on features unique to China and to Chinese history as well as on the socialist reorganization of society? These are the major ques­tions examined in this collection of papers which challenges many previously accepted generalizations 'about the nature and extent of advances in China's economy during the twentieth century.

The contributors to the volume are Kang Chao, Univer­sity of Wisconsin; Robert F. Dernberger, University of Michigan; l'vlark Elvin, St. Antony's College, Oxford Uni­versity; John C. H. Fei, Yale University; Ramon H. Myers, University of Miami; Dwight H. Perkins, Harvard Univer­sity; Thomas G. Rawski, University of Toronto; Carl Riskin, Queens College, City University of New York; and Peter Schran, University of Illinois.

French Economic Growth, by J.-J. Carre, P. Dubois, and E. Malinvaud. Translated from the French by John O. Hat­field. Report on a study sponsored by the former Com­mittee on Economic Growth. Stanford: Stanford Univer­sity Press, June 1975. 640 pages. $22.50.

This is a major attempt to understand and analyze the tremendous growth of the French economy since the Second World War. Part One examines the effect of the physical factors of production-the labor force, productivity, invest­ment, capital, the industrial structure-and evaluates the contribution of each of these factors to the growth rate of production. Part Two examines the nonphysical factors: aggregate demand, investment and savings, the role of fi­nance, inflation and short-term economic regulation, for­eign trade, the price system, and economic planning. In conclusion, the authors draw together their analyses of indi­vidual factors into an overall picture of France's economic growth since the Second World War.

A Guide to Yugoslav Libraries and A,'chives, edited by Paul L. Horecky. A publication of the Joint Committee on Eastern Europe, Columbus, Ohio: American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, March 1975. 128 pages. Paper, $3.50.

The editor of this first volume to present basic data on the major library and archival collections in Yugoslavia is

SEPTEMBER 1975

from committee activities and Council projects

chief of the Slavic and Central European Division, Library of Congress. The volume was compiled by Slobodan Jovan­ovic, formerly assistant director of the N arodna Library in Belgrade, and Matko Rojnic, director of the National and University Library in Zagreb. The translator and associate editor is Elizabeth Beyerly.

Race Differences in Intelligence, by John C. Loehlin, Gard­ner Lindzey, and J. N. Spuhler. Prepared under the aus­pices of the Committee on the Biological Bases of Social Behavior. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman Company, March 1975. 392 pages. Cloth, $12.00; paper, $5.95.

Race Differences in Intelligence is a factual, objective re-view of the existing evidence bearing on a currently con­troversial topic: the relative contribution of genes and environment to racial and ethnic differences in intelligence­test performance in the United States. The book also dis­cusses the social and scientific implications of the evidence.

In preparing the book, the authors-Loehlin, a psychol­ogist at the University of Texas, Austin; Lindzey, a psychol­ogist and director of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford; and Spuhler, a physical an­thropologist at the University of New Mexico-consulted research workers from a broad range of scientific disciplines, representatives of minority groups, and persons familiar with the process of making public-policy decisions based on scientific data.

Women in Chinese Society, edited by Margery Wolf and Roxane Witke. Papers of a conference sponsored by the Joint Committee on Contemporary China, June 11-15, 1973. Stanford: Stanford University Press, June 1975. 325 pages. $12.50.

This multidisciplinary collection represents the first schol­arly attempt to provide a baseline for understanding the massive changes in Chinese women's lives in our time.

The topics are: seventeenth-century attitudes toward women Qoanna F. Handlin, University of Rochester), the female revolutionary leader Ch'iu Chin (Mary Backus Rankin), an "anti-marriage" movement in rural Kwangtung (Marjorie Topley, University of Hong Kong), female sui­cide in Taiwan before 1945 (Margery Wolf), the variety in women's life courses (Arthur P. Wolf, Stanford University), influential women writers of the 1920s and 1930s (Yi-tsi Feuerwerker, University of Michigan), the early years of Mao's present wife, Chiang Ch'ing (Roxane Witke, Harvard University), women and ritual pollution (Emily M. Ahern, The Johns Hopkins University), women and social change in Hong Kong (Elizabeth L. Johnson, University of British Columbia), the effect on rural women of the advent of the People's Republic (Delia Davin, York University, England).

43

APPLICATION DEADLINES FOR COUNCIL FELLOWSHIPS AND GRANTS

Applications are now being accepted for fellowships and grants offered by the Council for the academic year 1976-1977. Awards will be made for both dissertation research and work at the postdoctoral level under several different programs. Those fellowships and grants that are confined to foreign area research are offered under programs spon­sored jointly by the Council and the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS).

Final dates for filing applications (listed below) vary by program. Prospective candidates are urged to initiate cor­respondence well in advance of the deadlines. A brochure describing the fellowships and grants offered is available on request from the Social Science Research Council, Fellow­ships and Grants, 605 Third Avenue, New York, N. Y. 10016.

Fellowships and grants of the SSRC for training and re­search in the social sciences include:

POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCH TRAINING FELLOWSHIPS. Dead­line for applications: December 15, 1975 GRANTS TO MINORITY SCHOLARS FOR RESEARCH ON RACISM AND OTHER SOCIAL FACTORS IN MENTAL HEALTH. Deadline for Applications: October 20, 1975 POSTDOCTORAL FELLOWSHIPS IN CRIMINAL JUSTICE STA­TISTICS. Deadline for applications: January 31, 1976

International Doctoral Research Fellowships are awards for dissertation research in the social sciences and the humani­ties to be carried out in AFRICA, ASIA, LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN, THE NEAR AND MIDDLE EAST, or WESTERN EUROPE. Sponsored jointly by the SSRC and the ACLS; administered by the Council. Application deadline: No­vember 3, 1975.

Postdoctoral Grants for Research on Foreign Areas in the social sciences and the humanities are sponsored jointly by the SSRC and the ACLS. 1. Administered by the Council are programs for AFRICA, CONTEMPORARY AND REPUBLICAN CHINA, ECONOMY OF CHINA, JAPAN, KOREA, KOREAN COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH GRANTS, LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN, LATIN AMERICAN COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH GRANTS, THE NEAR AND MIDDLE EAST, SOUTH ASIA, SOUTHEAST ASIA. Applica­tion deadline for all programs: December 1, 1975. 2. Application deadlines for grants programs adminis· teredby the ACLS are as follows: CHINESE STUDIES, De-

cember 1, 1975; RESEARCH ON EAST EUROPE, December 31, 1975; TRAVEL TO EAST EUROPE, February 15, 1976; STUDY OF EAST EUROPEAN LANGUAGES, February 1, 1976; RE­SEARCH ON THE SOVIET UNION, December 1, 1975.

CHINESE STUDIES PROGRAM A new program of advanced training for scholars spe­

cializing in Chinese studies has been inaugurated. The program is under the direction of the Joint Committee on Contemporary China, which is sponsored by the Council and the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), and the ACLS Committee' on Studies of Chinese Civiliza­tion. The program will provide support for workshops and seminars to be held at major university centers in the United States; postdoctoral internships for advanced train­ing at such centers; and postdoctoral fellowships for lan­guage and other training in East Asia. These grants are designed above all to ' be training experiences, providing younger scholars currently active in the field with an op­portunity to upgrade present teaching and research skills and to acquire new ones.

The workshops and seminars are expected to give scholars who are working on related problems opportunities to derive mutual benefit from their research efforts. Short-term summer workshops, summer-long workshops, and advanced training seminars lasting for a semester or an academic year will be eligible for support.

The program has been funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and will be administered by the ACLS. In­quiries about the workshops and seminars should be ad­dressed to Miss Charlotte Bowman, Vice President, Ameri­can Council of Learned Societies, 345 East 46th Street, New York, N.Y. -10017. Information about grants to indi­vidual scholars under the new program will be found on page 26 of the SSRC's fellowships and grants brochure, which is available on request. December I, 1975 is the dead­line for all applications for 1976-77 awards.

SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH COUNCIL

605 THIRD AVENUE, NEW YORK, N.Y. 10016

Incorpcwated in the State of Illinois, December 27, 1924, for the purpose of advancing research in the social sciences

Directcws, 1975: WILLIAM J. BAUMOL, BRIAN J. L. BERRY, ALLAN G. BOGUE, LAWRENCE A. CREMIN, LEON EISENBERG, LEON D. EpS'rEIN, RICHARD

F. FENNO, JR., EDWARD E. JONES, HAROLD H. KELLEY, LAWRENCE R. KLEIN, WILLIAM H. KRUSKAL, CHARLES E. LINDBLOM, GARDNER LINDZEY, LEON

LIPSON, CORA BAGLEY MARRETT, HERBERT MCCLOSKY, SALLY FALK MOORE, MURRAY G. MURPHEY, GUY H. ORCUTT, JOHN W. PRATT, ALICE S.

ROSSI, PEGGY R. SANDAY, ELEANOR BERNERT SHELDON, ELLIOTT P. SKINNER, JANET T. SPENCE, KARL E. TAEUBER, JOHN M. THOMPSON, ROBERT E.

WARD, CHARLES V. WILI.IE, HARRIET ZUCKERMAN

Officers and Staff: ELEANOR BERNERT SHELDON, President; DAVID JENNESS, DAVID L. SILLS, Executive Associates; RONALD P. ABELES, ALVIA Y. BRANCH,

LAWRENCE R. CARTER, JUDITH FIELD, ROBERT A. GATES, LOUIS WOLF GOODMAN, PATRICK G. MADDOX, ROBERTA B. MILLER, ROWLAND L. MITCHELI., JR.,

ROBERT PARKE, PATRICIA R. PESSAR, SUSAN J. PHARR, DAVID SEIDMAN, DA\' ID L. SZANTON, ROXANN A. VAN DUSEN; MARTHA W. FORMAN, Acting Assistant Treasurer; CATHERINE V. RONNAN, Financial Secretary; NANCY L. CARMICHAEL, Librarian

44