Sociology Of Occupations Research Articles

On the Use and Abuse of Social Science by Practitioners

Professor Dexter asserts that practitioners must learn to overcome the tendency to make only those observations and draw only those con clusions that can be pressed into simplistic and fashionable theoretical frames. He shows that the sociology of occupations is a perspective that is especially useful to practitioners, though largely ignored, and he urges that practitioners take up an interest in the now unfashionable but relevant area of political philosophy. Lewis A. Dexter, presently of the University of Maryland faculty, is co-author with R. Bauer and I. Pool of American Business and Public Policy which won the Woodrow Wilson Prize in 1963 for the best book in Political Science.

MAN, WORK, AND SOCIETY: A READER IN THE SOCIOLOGY OF OCCUPATIONS. Edited by Sigmond Nosow and William H. Form. New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1962. 612 pp. $8.50

MAN, WORK, AND SOCIETY: A READER IN THE SOCIOLOGY OF OCCUPATIONS. Edited by Sigmond Nosow and William H. Form. New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1962. 612 pp. $8.50

Man, Work, Society: A Reader in the Sociology of Occupations.

Man, Work, Society: A Reader in the Sociology of Occupations.

Pathology: A Study of Social Movements within a Profession

disciplines the necessity of coping with rapidly changing conditions in their work life, changes which are dramatic even within one generation. A middleaged pathologist interviewed for this study reflected the sentiments of his peers when he remarked of the present shape of the specialty, I wouldn't know it anymore. We can expect that specialization and rapid change will increasingly characterize professions, insofar as they are based upon an expanding body of scientific knowledge and the sources of change from a more complex social organization of professional endeavor multiply. Yet, so far the sociology of occupations and professions has not been systematically concerned with processes of specialization and change in occupations. A previous paper presented the beginnings of a process or approach to the study of professions.' Its aim was to develop a theoretical framework which would focus more pointedly upon diversity and change in occupations, and provide some initial formulations of the main processes involved. The present study attempts to specify further the social processes involved in the development of professional groups. Briefly, the model with which we began posits the existence of a number of emergent groups within a profession. There are many identities, many values, and many interests to be found within the same profession, which tend to become patterned and shared. Coalitions develop and organize, both in opposition to older entrenched groups and for the furtherance of their own interests. We called these coalitions segments. We suggested, further, that segments tend to take on the character of social movements. They develop distinctive identities, a sense of the past, and goals for the future; they organize activities and tactics which will secure an insti-

The Librarian: From Occupation to Profession?

AN INDUSTRIAL society has an open class stratification system; it offers some an opportunity to rise, but it offers no guarantee against downward social mobility. Compared to other types of societies, this one demands a wider variety of higher level skills and thus generates much pressure against the forces that in all societies tend to keep the individual in his original caste or class. Much of the resulting mobility is based on a radical change which has taken place in the occupational structure of modern industrial societies, one which neither Marx nor orthodox economists anticipated, an expansion of the demand for professional and technical skills of a high order.' Thus not only are individuals competing with one another in their efforts to rise in the class system, but occupations, too, are engaged in the same competition and may move up or down in power, prestige, or income. Both systems may be viewed as zerosum games. The income which one individual receives cannot be claimed by another. If an occupation rises in income level or in prestige ranking, necessarily others will lose. That many have described our job structure as diamondshaped a bulge in the middle ranges of occupations-rather than pyramidal does not change these relationships. An expanding economy may yield more real income for nearly all occupations; but at any given time there is only so much income to be distributed, each occupation has a higher or lower average income than others, and those which have risen have done so at the expense of others. With reference to other class attributes such as power and prestige, the dynamics are perhaps more complex, but essentially similar. In an industrial society far more jobs and people are to be found in the middle ranges of prestige than would be found in the same ranges in peasant societies. However, each occupation that rises does so at the expense of others which it surpasses, and when many occupations are rising, their net gain is low relative to one another. Librarians are among those occupational groups that are seeking the advantages of professional status. Not only do the professionals form a larger part of the labor force than they did half a century ago-from 859 per 100,000in 1870 to4,353per 100,OOOin 19612 -but far more of the labor force is engaged in white-collar and technical occupations that strive by various means

Occupational Determinateness: A Problem and Hypotheses in Role Theory

T HE sociologist has only to attempt to answer the more penetrating questions of his brighter sophomores to realize that his professional fraternity lacks consensus on the conceptualization of role. If he has assigned two or more readings on the concept, his students may well have found two or more definitions of it. And if he should make so bold as to teach a course which emphasizes research, he is really courting trouble when the floor is thrown open for a discussion of the utility of such a concept in a science of interaction. Inner-directed and other-directed have become almost popular jargon, but they seem to be more closely related to personality and value taxonomy than to interaction analysis.' Parsons says that he conceives the specific-diffuse dichotomy as a system goal concept rather than a classification of status-pair We have, then, the division of statuses and roles into ascribed and achieved, a usage considerably more honored in time and in textbook than in research application. While these are meaningful and useful terms for the description of some institutional behaviors and for the comparison of diverse cultures, they offer us little in the analysis of many social systems: industry, politics, and voluntary associations, for example. Yet, to many of us, is one of the basic analytic constructs, if not the core concept, in sociology and social psychology. Some taxonomy of roles, however simple, would seem desirable. We have been driven by our research to construct a classification based upon the degree of flexibility in the role expectations. The terms were derived for use in a project dealing with occupational roles and will be presented here as they apply to this research. While this dichotomy is subject to the usual difficulties which attend ideal type constructs, it is to be hoped that, as empirical work refines it, the classification may be found more generally useful in the analysis of interaction in other spheres. Sociologists need a theory of occupations. We have a theory of industrial organization by Weber out of Roethlisberger and Dickson, and most recently refined by Gouldner.3 We have a start toward a theory of industrial administration, thanks largely to Barnard, Whyte, and the applied anthropologists.4 Our knowledge of occupations, however, is almost entirely limited to descriptive materials presented without any attempt at theoretic systematization. The bulk of our data on occupations consists of facts which we possess because they were gathered peripherally in research with some theoretical orientation other than that of a sociology of occupations. Studies of the general social structure of industry, for example, through their descriptions of formal and informal organization, have led to an analysis of the stratification of occupations in work plants.5 Community stratification studies

The Housemaid - An Occupational Role in Crisis

This artide is an incidental product of a survey of the impact of labour-legislation upon the working conditions of housemaids in Oslo.1) It is intended as a contribution to the sociology of occupations. Its main thesis is this: The occupational relationship and the role expectations between a family and its domestic servants were patterned throughout a long tradition in a society with a preponderance of Gemeinschaft-characteristics. In Sir Henry Maine's terms, it was for a very long time a status-relationship and not one based upon contract. The Gesellschaft-characteristics that today dominate in most other occupations of industrial society have not left the same marks on this time-honoured relationship. But neither do present conditions permit a continuation of a relationship on a genuine Gemeinschaft-basis. While the role of the housemaid is wavering between these two occupational models, its incumbents are escaping from the field as statistics show beyond any doubt. Attempts to restore the balance in the relationship through legislation has not been very successful in reversing this trend. The significance of our problem is twofold. It is based upon the assumption that the employer and employee are not free to arrange their relationship in any way they want. There is certainly room for great variation, and the personalities of the parties have a determining influence on the success and satisfaction in the relationship, probably more so than in most occupational relationships. But the arrangements made have repercussions and premises that go way beyond the factors controlled by the housemaid and her employer. They are both caught in the web of role-expectations that are traditionally given or imposed by present economic and

Trends in Occupational Sociology in the United States: A Survey of Postwar Research

Trends in Occupational Sociology in the United States: A Survey of Postwar Research

The Profession of Marriage Counseling as Viewed by Members of Four Allied Professions: A Study in the Sociology of Occupations

in the other activities. The irritations, the energy drains, the conflicts between social expectations and professional realities, the vast amount of accumulating knowledge on marriage and individual dynamics and institutional pressures directly relating to marriage counselingall these needs are complicated enough for the marriage counselor without the addition of relatively unrelated demands from other professions. I am willing to grant that there are now some unusually gifted part-time marriage counselors in the field who have demonstrated their capabilities in handling two or more professions. But our knowledge of the individual and society and marital interactions is snowballing, and even the clinical geniuses of the future will probably greatly curtail their effectiveness by a failure to channel their talents.

The Occupational Status of Nurses

T HE PRESENT essay is a contribution to the relatively new, and increasingly important, field of the sociology of occupations. It seeks to analyze the occupational role of the nurse, with special reference to the psychological implications and professional consequences of the definition of the nurse's role in our society. In principle, the period of nursing history to which our analysis pertains ranges from the establishment of Florence Nightingale's training school in i86o to the present. We are aware of the fact that a new period in nursing history, marked by the increasingly greater role played in nursing education by collegiate schools of nursing, is said to have come into being in the 1930's. We feel, however, that the contemporary period is more advantageously viewed as the declining phase of the earlier epoch, rather than as the genuine dawn of a new era, because of the survival of many of the ideologies of the i860-I930 period of nursing. Thus, for the same reasons which induced J. Huizinga' to view the XV Century in Burgundy as the decline of the middle ages, rather than as the onset of modern times, and caused H. Pirenne2 to affirm that the ethos of Rome was not entirely replaced by the mediaeval ethos until Charlemagne's time, we feel that the contemporary period in nursing history

Informal Social Organization in the Army

Previous articleNext article No AccessInformal Social Organization in the ArmyPDFPDF PLUSAbstract Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreAbstractThe informal social organization of the enlisted men actually controls many army activities theoretically governed by the formal army organization. The informal social organization arises in the intensive interaction of army life. Customs which may contradict or reinforce formal army regulations are developed in the informal group to control many of the details of army life. The officially defined roles of the army leader are redefined by his allegiances within the status system of the informal group which he is expected to command officially.DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by American Journal of Sociology Volume 51, Number 5Mar., 1946Human Behavior in Military Society Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/219844 Views: 6Total views on this site Citations: 1Citations are reported from Crossref PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Charles Vaught, David L. Smith Incorporation and Mechanical Solidarity in an Underground Coal Mine, Sociology of Work and Occupations 7, no.22 (Aug 2016): 159–187.https://doi.org/10.1177/073088848000700202

Bibliography

Previous article No AccessBibliographyPDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by American Journal of Sociology Volume 42, Number 4Jan., 1937 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/217539 Citations: 1Citations are reported from Crossref PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:John Van Maanen, Ralph Katz Police Perceptions of their Work Environment, Sociology of Work and Occupations 6, no.11 (Aug 2016): 31–58.https://doi.org/10.1177/009392857961002