Louis Kriesberg Research Articles

Review of Mothers in Poverty: A Study of Fatherless Families.

Originally published in Contemporary Psychology: APA Review of Books, 1970, Vol 15(11), 700. Reviews the book, Mothers in Poverty: A Study of Fatherless Families by Louis Kriesberg (1970). This book is based upon data collected for a study of public housing and social mobility. It attempts to explain the way of life of poor people and to understand the culture of poverty, with detailed consideration of factors contributing to the intergenerational transmission of poverty. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved)

SOCIAL PROCESSES IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: A READER. Edited by Louis Kriesberg. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1968. 577 pp. $9.95

SOCIAL PROCESSES IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: A READER. Edited by Louis Kriesberg. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1968. 577 pp. $9.95

An Analysis of Some Determinants of Attitude toward Fluoridation

Four variables, education, income, age, and number of children are simultaneously related to attitude toward fluoridation. The relationship of education to attitude toward fluoridation is largely explained by the other three variables. Income, age, and number of children, however, each bear some independent relationship to fluoridation attitude. These three variables are used to construct an index of predisposition to fluoridation and it is hypothesized that knowledge of fluoridation represents an intervening variable between this index and attitude toward fluoridation. The index and knowledge of fluoridation, however, have independent relationships to fluoridation attitude. Consequently, knowledge of fluoridation is incorporated into the index. Finally, this index is shown to account for a considerable amount of the variation in attitude toward fluoridation. T he fact that the fluoridation of public water supplies has become a controversial issue in many communities has made it of considerable interest to social scientists. One major concern of social science research in this area has been the analysis of individual attitudes toward fluoridation. Attempts to attitudes toward fluoridation have shown a number of variables to be relevant. Certain background variables, in particular, education, income, age, and number of children have consistently been shown to relate to attitude toward fluoridation (higher income, higher education, lower age, and presence of children in the home being associated with a favorable attitude toward fluoridation).1 The interrelated effect of these variables on fluoridation attitude, however, has not as yet been examined. To the extent that these four variables each have a relationship independent of the other three, their combined relationship to attitude toward fluoridation should be additive. Since, however, education, income, and age are themselves interrelated, and since age and number of children would be related for married persons, it is possible that the relationship of one or more of these variables to attitude toward fluoridation is accounted for by the others. Thus two or three of the variables may explain attitude toward fluoridation as well as do all four in combination. This paper will, then, examine the additive effect of education, income, age, and number of children on attitude toward fluoridation by combining them into a * The data used in this study come from a National Opinion Research Center survey Attitudes and Practices in the Field of Dental Care under the direction of Louis Kriesberg and Beatrice Treiman. I would like to express my appreciation to the National Opinion Research Center for making this data available. I would further like to thank Myron J. Lefcowitz, formerly of the Social Studies Branch, Division of Dental Health, U.S. Public Health Service, for many valuable suggestions during the preparation of this paper. tSocial Science Analyst, Resources Analysis Branch, Division of Dental Health, Public Health Service, U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Washington, D.C. 1 The following two community surveys reported relationships for all four variables, education, income, age, and number of children with attitude toward fluoridation: Arnold Simmel, AHt Analysis of Opinion on Fliuoridation (New York State Department of Health, 1961), mimeo.; Bernard Mausner, Allan Leavitt, and Sidney Robbins, Some Determinants of Vote on Fluoridation, Universit of Massachusetts, undated, mimneo. Relationships of education, income, and age with attitude toward fluoridation are reported in George F. Taylor, Michael S. Munro, and H. Fuqua, Study in a California Community, Stanford University, 1956, typescript. In the following study of two communities, relationships for education, age, and number of children with attitude were found for one community but not for the second community: Ilse J. Volinn and Olin E. Hoffman, Fluoridation Voting Behavior in Two Washington Comnminvities (State of Washington, Department of Health, February, 1963), mimeo. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.198 on Thu, 29 Sep 2016 04:45:21 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Societal Coordination by the Educated Minority

The authors have performed field research on some of the problems of societal consensus posed by Louis Kriesberg in PROD III (September, 1959). They find that a high degree of consensus does not exist except on the most abstract principles concerning society and government, and this primarily among the highly educated. They suggest that apathy may be a functional adaptation of modern society to the absence of extended consensus, and that further research may indicate which groups among the educated minority are responsible for the coordination of society.

Community Within a Community: The Professions

HIS paper is concerned with a little explored area of social theory: the structural strains and supports between a contained and the larger society of which it is a part and on which it is dependent. Presumably, the body of theory used for analyzing a must be translated, qualified, or changed when that exists within a larger society. Examples of such communities are fraternal orders such as the Masons, secret or extreme political parties, ethic islands whether rural or urban, organized political or economic interest groups, or a specific profession such as medicine.' From a broad inquiry into such structural relations between the contained and the larger one, it may later be possible to derive important hypotheses about the forces that maintain both of them. studied is the professional community, which is different in important respects from the other examples.2 Only two sets of links have been chosen for exploration: (1) socialization and social control, and (2) client choice or evaluation of the professional. Characteristic of each of the established professions, and a goal of each aspiring occupation, is the community of profession. Each profession is a without physical locus and, like other communities with heavy in-migration, one whose founding fathers are linked only rarely by blood with the present generation. It may nevertheless be called a by virtue of these characteristics: (1) Its members are bound by a sense of identity. (2) Once in it, few leave, so that it is a terminal or continuing status for the most part.3 (3) Its members share values in common. (4) Its role definitions vis-a-vis both members and non-members are agreed upon and are the same for all members. (5) Within the areas of communal action there is a common language, which is understood only partially by outsiders. (6) Community has power over its members. ( 7) Its limits are reasonably clear, though they are not physical and geographical, but social. (8) Though it does not produce the next generation biologically, it does so socially through its control over the selection of professional trainees, and through its training processes it sends these recruits through an adult socialization process. Of course, professions vary in the degree to which they are communities, and it is not novel to view them as such.4 * Paper read at the annual meeting of the Eastern Sociological March, 1956. Morris Zelditch has given various helpful comments to the author. 1 See, for example, Georg Simmel, The Secret and the Secret Society, in Sociology of Georg Simmel, translated by Kurt Wolff, Glencoe: Free Press, 1950, pp. 307-379; William F. Whyte, Street Corner Chicago: University of Chicago, 1943; Louis Kriesberg, National Security and Conduct in the Steel Gray Market, Social Forces, 34 (March, 1956), pp. 268-277, and Customer versus Colleague Ties Among Retail Furriers, Journal of Retailing, 29-30 (Winter, 1954-5), pp. 173-176; Executive Life, ed. Fortune, Garden City: Doubleday, 1956; Allan W. Eister, The Oxford Group Movement, Sociology and Social Research, 34 (November, 1949); David Riesman, Some Informal Notes on American Churches and Sects, Confluence, 4 (July, 1955), pp. 127-159; Paula Brown, Bureaucracy in a Government Laboratory, Institute of Industrial Relations Reprint No. 36, Los Angeles: University of California, 1954; etc. 2 Other areas are analyzed in William J. Goode, Robert K. Merton, and Mary Jean Huntington, Professions in Modern New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1957 (in press). 3 But see the qualifications stated by Albert J. Reiss, Occupational Mobility of Professional Workers, American Sociological Review, 20 (December, 1955), pp. 693-700. 4 See the extended discussion of Discipline, p. 394 ff. in A. M. Carr-Saunders and P. A. Wilson, Professions, Oxford: Clarendon, 1933; Morris L. Cogan, Toward a Definition of Harvard Educational Review, 23 (Winter, 1953), p. 35; Roscoe Pound, Lawyer from Antiquity to Modern Times, St. Paul: West, 1953, pp. 4-10; Abraham Flexner, Is Social Work a Profession? School and 1 (1915), pp. 901-911; Louis D. Brandeis, Business-A Profession, Boston: Small,

National Security and Conduct in the Steel Gray Market

Journal Article National Security and Conduct in the Steel Gray Market Get access Louis Kriesberg Louis Kriesberg Columbia University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Social Forces, Volume 34, Issue 3, March 1956, Pages 268–277, https://doi.org/10.2307/2574051 Published: 01 March 1956