NONTHEMATIC / Vol. 28, No. 3 (Fall 1961)
- Social Research An Int'l Quarterly
- Oct 1, 1961
- 3 min read
Updated: Mar 29, 2023
Over the years of Bolshevik rule, the Russian people have found many ways of adjusting and adapting their thinking and behavior to new and often sudden conditions and requirements. It may yet be that, in order to survive, they can find even more subtle means by which to make the fiction of a communist utopia appear real--at least real enough to satisfy their party leaders.
The coal industry is important to the economies of the Common Market countries for security and social reasons as well as for economic reasons. While the security problem is less relevant now than it was a few years ago--because of the increased diversification of the supply sources of energy--it is still a consideration.
My thesis is that the structure and dynamics of British social and political life are to be understood in terms of the traditional society out of which modern Britain emerged, and the particular manner in which the transition to modernity developed. More specifically, it is argued that a crucial key to understanding British social and political life is the fact that Britain entered upon modernity as a Gemeinschaft, to use a term coined by Tonnies, that is, a collectivity whose members are bound together by affective ties to the collectivity itself, and to each other as members of the collectivity.
Although observers do not all agree as to its magnitude, most of them concur that the United States economy and the world's economies in general have experienced various shades of inflation since World War II. Much has been written in recent years on its causes and control. Few believe that any one cause has been dominant, or that any one method of control would be effective. By and large, however, in economic literature and in testimony before Congressional committees, the proponents of the principal views on the causes and control of inflation fall into two major groups: the "demand-pullers" and the 'cost-pushers,' the first emphasizing the "pull" of monetary and fiscal factors, the second emphasizing the 'push' of industrial and union "market power."
Political science has always resorted to metaphors, to the device of proceeding from the known to the unknown. Those who criticize the use of "models" need to understand that they too must use them. Accordingly, much of the conflict over the use of models is spurious. The choice is not between models and no models, but between a critical consciousness of their use and an uncritical acceptance. An open and "hygienic" use of models may or may not aid using developing empirically sound political theory, but it would enable us to run far less risk than we take with the hidden, implicit, and rigidified metaphors that one frequently finds in the textbooks of political science.
Comment on Hans Neisser's piece, "Economic Imperialism Reconsidered," in Social Research, vol 27 (Spring 1960).
Discussion of literature including: The Squeeze: Cities Without Space by Edward Higbee; Family Growth in Metropolitan America, by Charles F. Westoff, Robert G. Potter, Jr., Philip C. Sagi, Elliot G. Mishler; Guiding Metropolitan Growth, by the Committee for Economic Development; The Changing Economic Function of the Central City, by Raymond Vernon; Metropolis Against Itself, Robert C. Wood.
Review of book by Gerhard Lenski. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday. 1961. xvi & 381 pp.
Review of book edited by Georges Gurvitch. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. 1960. 466 pp.
Review of book by Wolfgang F. Stolper. Cambridge: Harvard University press. 1960. xxv & 478 pp.
Review of book by Gerhard Bry. National Bureau of Economic Research, No. 68, General Series. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1960. 486 pp.
Review of Book by Jonathan V. Levin. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1960. 347 pp.
Review of book by K. Venkatagiri Gowda. Allahabad, India: Chaitanya. 1961. 269 pp.
Review of book by Nils Andren. Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell. 1961. 252 pp
Review of book by Milton Kovner. Washington, DC: Public Affairs Press. 1961. 130 pp.
Review of book by Lorna Hahn. Washington, DC: Public Affairs Press. 1960. xii & 264 pp.