Western Industrial Societies Research Articles

Research on Higher Education and Work in Europe

Any attempt to describe and analyse developments in the relationship between higher education and employment or work in Europe, as well as the related research, has to address a seeming contradiction. Whilst any overview will be discouraged by the diversity of European higher education and employment systems, by language barriers, and by problems relating to access to information, we observe such homogeneous patterns of emergence and change of paradigms, in both political debates and research into what are conceived to be the major issues in the relationship between higher education and work, that we might conclude either that there is little diversity between European countries or that the paradigms oversimplify. The similarity of notions developed through the following stages. At first, around 1960, many experts in industrial societies came to the conclusion that higher education must expand in order to stimulate economic growth and that efforts to reduce inequalities of educational opportunity would be instrumental both in providing the needs of the economy and in establishing a modern, democratic society. This optimistic view of the desirability of expanding higher education was somewhat modified in the debates in the late 1960s and the early 1970s about the need to restructure the system in response to the growing diversity of students and their talents, motives and job prospects. The optimism of the 1960s was finally replaced in the 1970s by a dramatic pessimism or criticism of the expansion which seemed to have led to 'overeducation' or 'overqualification'. Efforts to reduce inequality of educational opportunities seemed to have fuelled educational 'inflation' without having made success easier for the hitherto disadvantaged. During these three stages, a strikingly far-reaching commonality of views could be observed in most Western industrial societies about the major current problems, about the desirable model of higher education and its relationships to the employment system, and about the reforms needed. Shortages of personnel, responses to a diverse student body and problems due to overeducation were viewed in similar fashion in societies that differed by a ratio of more than 3:1 in their enrolments of the corresponding age groups or in the number of college-trained persons in their labour force (see OECD, 1981, 1984). The basic questions which are well summed up in the value-laden terms overeducation and overqualification remained the most important focus of political debates and of research, even when a shift of mood took place during the late 1970s and the 1980s. In Europe we no longer see such a single dominant issue. The qualitative links between the content of education and learning, the impact of unemployment and the reduction of overall work time on the relationship between higher education and employment, the challenge of new technologies, and adjustments in the relationship 223

Conclusion

The essays collected in this book reflect the complexity and differentiation of GDR society today. Contrary to a widespread image of state-socialist societies as nonpluralist and monolithic, they indicate that the GDR is a highly complex, advanced industrial society sharing some of the problems that trouble Western industrial societies. Differentiation as well as the accompanying partial auton omy of different social groups and institutions are real features of this society even if the consequences of differentiation are also contained by a strong state and a nonpluralistic party system under the leadership of the communist party, the SED. The growing differentiation of GDR society is the result of far-reaching economic and social change. The changes in the social structure are dramatically apparent when one compares the present situation with the initial phase of trans forming society according to the Marxist-Leninist goal culture in the late forties and fifties. The bourgeois intelligentsia has been converted by changed recruiting and training mechanisms into a socialist intelligentsia.1 Parts of the traditional middle class have disappeared, while a growing number of public servants are employed in health, education, state and social services. At the same time, the new educated strata represent an increasing diversity of concerns and interests. In agriculture, peasants have become cooperative farmers or workers in a state controlled agricultural system. The working class as a whole emerges as a highly differentiated social stratum, in which training and qualification, income, and position within the work process give rise to changing interest configurations and new values, attitudes, and behavior.

The “Three Worlds” of Human Services

AbstractThe “three worlds” referred to in this article are the three environments in which human services are delivered: the public, private non‐profit, and private for‐profit sectors. This article analyses the situation of human services in the USA, while suggesting that the arrival of privatization in other western industrial societies makes it relevant there too.After defining each of the three environments, an attempt is made to generalize about broad differences in management behaviour that tend to result from the different kinds of pressures inherent in each of the three worlds. Relationships between the three worlds are discussed, with special reference to the field of alcoholism treatment services.

Wholes and Fragments: Reflections on the Economy of Affection, Capitalism, and the Human Cost of Development

The ideas underlying life in kin-based societies differ fundamentally from those underlying life in Western socie- ties. The key differences involve wholeness and scale. Kin-based societies provide a life of wholeness and connectedness - people produce what they consume, live and deal with risk and hardship within a reinforcing system of mutual aid, and have a common set of values, life chances, and life expectations - an economy of affection. The scale is small, local. Western industrial capitalist society provides simultaneously opportunities, risks, rewards, uncertainties and ambiguities. It celebrates individualism. In capitalist economies the features of kin-based societies become fragmented or destroyed. Individuals become interconnected and interdependent in impersonal, non-familial ways. The scale of the system increases greatly, becoming finally global in extent. The underlying causes trace to: 1) the division and social relations of labor, 2) the narrowing of the calculus of kinship, 3) the seg- mentation of consciousness, 4) the universalization/standardiza- tion of time, space, measure, value and money, 5) the individua- tion of resources, and 6) the compartmentalization of the institu- tions of production through the limited liability corporation. People in less-developed countries who remain uncaptured by Western industrial capitalism are attracted by but fearful of it. In embracing a Western model they must weigh what they will lose against what they may gain. Alternate paths to development which retain, or regain, non-exploitative kin-based features re- main elusive but are worth seeking.

Social Policies in Western Industrial Societies.

Social Policies in Western Industrial Societies.

WIDOWHOOD AND MORTALITY IN AN ARMENIAN CHURCH PARISH IN LEBANON1

A nonconcurrent cohort study was conducted in Lebanon by using the parish records of an Armenian Apostolic Orthodox church. Included in the study were 1,529 married couples. The observation period extended from 1949-1980 with follow-up information available on 90% of the subjects based on a review of burial registers, parish census records, and neighborhood inquiries. Identified during the observation period were 152 widowers and 623 widows. Three analytic procedures were used to compare the mortality of widowed to married subjects: person-years, matched-pair, and life table analyses. The results showed an increased risk of mortality for widowed compared with married subjects, although this excess in risk was not overall statistically significant. Most important was the result that among widowers as opposed to widows the higher risk of mortality acted at approximately ages 66-75 years. The suggested hypotheses to explain this finding include changes in the network size as well as social support systems which act in a particular way in this culture for men at the age of retirement. The results of this initial study of a specific community in a Middle Eastern society parallel findings in studies of Western industrial societies; they also tend to give additional evidence for the association of increased risk when widowhood is accompanied by increased stress caused by other life changes such as retirement.

Heart disease and the cultural construction of time: The type A behaviour pattern as a western culture-bound syndrome

For over 20 years, the image of the coronary-prone ‘type A’ individual, ambitious, competitive, hostile, and time-obsessed has been a familiar feature of cardiology literature, and of popular discourse on health. A closer examination of the moral content of this model, suggests that it is based on a binary classification of social values type A (bad) and type B (good). But the type A individual is also a figure of moral ambiguity, embodying many of the inherent contradictions of Western industrial society. In particular, his anti-social behaviour is rewarded in money, or status by that same society. The paper proposes a model of symbolic inversion, whereby these social contradictions are resolved for both victim, and society by his development of coronary heart disease. The type A behaviour pattern can be regarded as a ‘culture-bound syndrome’, particularly of middle-aged, middle-class men, and one which condenses key concerns and behavioural norms of the society. As a diagnostic category, it can only be understood in the social context of the industrialized world and against the background of the unique social and symbolic characteristics of Western time.

Quality of Working Life and Community Development: Some Reflections on the Jamestown Experience

Widespread diffusion of quality of working life (Q WL) innovations among organizations has long been aproblem. This article discusses the author's hypothesis that such diffusion is accelerated when Q WL is linked to a wider process of community change, and how this hypothesis was tested through his work with the area-wide labor-management committee of Jamestown, New York, which acted as a mechanism for such a linkage. The degree of diffusion of QWL innovations varied with the type of project undertaken, but-although individual projects tended to be short-lived the committee's existence helped establish a continuous Q WL trend. The author assesses the emergence of a new community work culture based on labor-management cooperation as a main factor in the growth of Jamestown 's Q WLprojects, and notes the promise ofsuch a new culture, despite limitations, for thefuture of Western industrial societies.

Age differences in sensory and cognitive function in elderly Nepalese.

This paper describes age differences in sensory and cognitive function in a cross-sectional sample of 117 Nepalese men aged 50 to 88 years living in a traditional agrarian society. The prevalence of impairment of vision, hearing, vibration sensitivity, and cognitive function is progressively higher in successively older age categories in this society as it is in Western industrial societies. This has practical consequences for everyday life. Men with vision impairment are less likely to retain the esteemed social role of head of an extended household. Men with visual and hearing impairment leave their household compounds less frequently, have less frequent social contacts outside their households, and remain inactive a greater proportion of the time. In this technologically simple society without modern medical remedies, vision and hearing impairments are associated with social roles and daily activity patterns that foster economic and political dependence and social isolation.

Neocorporatism and Incomes Policy in Western Europe and North America

Pathbreaking analyses of neocorporatism in western advanced industrial societies have, paradoxically enough, been accompanied by profound skepticism regarding viability and generalizability of neocorporatist policymaking. Rather than stressing stability of phenomenon they analyze, as they have on occasion been accused of doing, leading scholars of corporatism have generally emphasized specific requisites on which neocorporatist bargains rest and strength of disintegrating forces they face.' This is not, perhaps, surprising. Neocorporatist policymaking presupposes consensus rather than conflict among major groupings in society. It is, essentially, an approach to problem-solving' that demands cooperation between state and functional interest groups, especially those representing capital and labor, in formulation and implementation of public policies. Such cooperation, particularly with regard to central issues of economic policy, is likely to rest on restrictive conditions regarding both political interrelationships and representational structure of major groups and social classes. As a goal, strategy, or ideal of government, we are likely to find much evidence of neocorporatism; as an institutionalized practice, neocorporatism is a relatively unusual phenomenon. In this vein, Gerhard Lehmbruch has noted that explicit corporatist arrangements are prone to overload and concludes his authoritative overview of liberal corporatism with remark that, since its capacity for consensus-building is limited, it would be unrealistic to consider corporatism as a realistic alternative to representative government and party system.2 In several articles, Leo Panitch has explored underlying causes and implications of the manifest instability of corporatist arrangements in liberal democracies by late sixties and early 1970s, while Philippe Schmitter has noted difficulties involved in change towards neocorporatist interest group/state relations and has stressed that established, societally ccorporatist systems are also facing new tensions which they, too, seem incapable of resolving.3 The problems of institutionalization and continuity are especially severe in core field of neocorporatist policymaking, consensual incomes policy, consisting of negotiated cooperation of government, unions, and employers to coordinate and constrain wage increases (and, in some cases, prices and profits) in context of a comprehensive macroeconomic program. In first place, this form of policymaking must surmount varying degrees of class animosity directed against any form of institutionalized wage restraint, whether bargained or not. Industrial relations combine divisive issues of authority, economic reward, and distribu

Paradigms for Societal Transition

Three world views or paradigms-Industrial (I), De-Industrial (D), and Symbiotic (S) -are compared in their expression in 12 selected key institutions of Advanced Western Industrial Societies at four levels: at the macro level, the nation state, the market economy, the pattern of Advanced country-Lesser developed country relations, the Welfare State and representative political democracy; at the meso or intermediate level, the private corporation and the metropolitan city; at the micro level, the nuclear family and the autonomous individual; at the socio-cultural level, classical science, the pattern of technological choice, and continuous formative education. The "whole-brained"processes associated with Paradigm S are adjusted to be increasingly more suitable for our present and future turbulent society and provide the basis for a paradigm for societal transition.

Social Mobility in Great Britain and the United States

Numerous discussions and some previous research have suggested that the United States and Great Britain should differ in their patterns of social mobility, with Great Britain exhibiting more intergenerational continuity of social position. Some have questioned this view, however, and have offered a different hypothesis. As offered by Featherman, Jones, and Hauser, the counterhypothesis is that differences among Western industrial societies are due to historical patterns of change that affect marginal distributions but that the patterns of fluidity in these societies are the same, once marginal distribution differences are taken into account. The present analysis, using data from the Occupational Change in a Generation Survey II and the Oxford Social Mobility Study, indicates that there is considerably more overall intergenerational and career mobility in the United States but that the major differences between the two societies are due to shifts in the distributions of kinds of occupations. Analysis of the patterns of fluidity, once the differences in marginal distributions are taken into account, shows very minor differences between the two societies. The common mobility regimes found in the two societies involve considerable intergenerational and career continuity of position and little long distance mobility. They also involve class effects in that there are strong links within farming and professional occupations, and entrepreneurial occupations are more strongly linked to each other than with nonentrepreneurial ones. The analysis thus provides support for Featherman, Jones, and Hauser's hypothesis. Most discussions of the British and American social mobility systems suggest that there are (or should be) significant differences between the two. Lipset's (1963) analysis of value orientations makes the point that

The Apollonian Investment of Modern Humanist Education: The Examples of Matthew Arnold, Irving Babbitt, and I. A. Richards (Part Two)

art I of this essay (Cultural Critique, No. 1) attempted, by way of a destructive analysis of the educational discourses of three exemplary humanists Matthew Arnold, Irving Babbitt, and I.A. Richards to show that the history of modern humanistic education has been characterized by a recurrent effort to recuperate a logocentric pedagogy in the face of historical ruptures that disclosed the affiliation of humanism with an essentially reactionary bourgeois ideology and its complicity with the repressive capitalistic power structures that have dominated the life of Western industrial societies, especially that of America, in modern times. The first part, it should be emphasized, was not intended simply to focus on past instances of this affiliation and complicity with power. It was intended, rather, to establish the continuity between the will to power informing the history of modern educational discourse and practice and the massive current institutionally sponsored effort to restore the traditional liberal arts curriculum in the University after its disruption by the protest movement by students, blacks, and women of the Vietnam War decade. I am referring specifically to the project inaugurated with the adoption by the Harvard University faculty of the Core Curriculum in 1978 and culminating in the pro-

Gramsci and peasant subalternity in India

Such key Gramscian concepts as hegemony and passive revolution, hitherto discussed mainly in relation to Western industrial societies, also have a direct relevance to the study of peasant societies. Critically applied, Gramsci's ideas give fresh emphasis to the central importance and dialectical nature of elite‐subaltern relations in rural India in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His stress upon the negative and derivative aspects of peasant culture and ideology needs, however, to be qualified by an awareness of the strengths and relative autonomy of subaltern politics within the overall structure of elite domination.

Forum

Olympism is more than just an ideology or organizational concept of international sport, also more than the economic interests connected with it. In it a social pattern materializes which forms everyday life above and beyond sport - the everyday culture of the western (and east European) industrial society. However, it fails to reckon with extra-European peoples. If today a new anticolonial movement emerges in the name of "cultural identity", what does that mean for sport? In four areas of physical culture, so it seems, alternatives are developing: national cultural games, the open air movement, expressional activities and meditative exercises.

Social Approaches to Sport.

Essays about sports by sociologists, organized around the theme of social organization and differentiation, Sports are viewed as they reinforce the structure of Western industrial society. Other topics include the role of sports throughout the life cycle.

Controversy in German Management: The Harzburg Model Experience

German management researchers have challenged the Harzburg Model of “leadership in a co-worker relationship” on both ideological and behavioral grounds. German critics propose a humanistic form of participative leadership as an alternative, but many German managers still seek a model that retains greater management control. American managers and researchers may be encouraged to collaborate with German management theorists in developing leadership models that contribute to high worker satisfaction and productivity within the value framework of Western industrial societies.

From folk/sacred to ‘popular culture’ syncretism in Nigeria's Ubakala dance-plays

Abstract Although popular culture remains an ill-defined, heterogeneous concept, sociological criteria generally include direct and spontaneous appeal to a mass audience in literate, industrialized, urbanized, class-divided, mass-media societies. These characteristics distinguish popular from “elite” and “folk” cultures, since expressive forms in all these categories may serve to define and mediate reality and to reflecc group values1. The roots of the popular culture concept are Western2, however, and when applied to Africa, these distinctions blur. A new definition is needed that will, along other things, reflect the role of popular culture in shaping the course of social life. Participant observation, film, interview, and historical research on Nigeria's Ubakala danceplays3 challenge the dichotomy between Western industrial societies and third world “folk” societies in addition to the notion that art forms merely reflect values. Since no African society has remained untouched by capitalist penetration and cultural as well as political colonization, we would do better to speak of multidimensional modes of syncretistic response4 than in terms of arbitrary categories. Ubakala dance-plays define and reflect indigenous values, but their evolution in the context of colonial culture places them in the same expressive and conceptual universe as working-class and elite cultural forms in industrial societies. This analysis calls attention to the need for students of popular culture to consider its potential for more general social transformation.

Ethnic Jokes, Moral Values and Social Boundaries

The universal popularity of ethnic jokes and in particular those about supposedly 'stupid' or 'crafty' ethnic minorities is to be explained in terms of the general characteristics of industrial societies rather than the particular circumstances of each separate society. The ethnic jokes of western industrial societies in both peacetime and wartime reflect the competing moral values, uncertain social boundaries and impersonal power structures of these societies. The corresponding eastern European jokes are in some respects similar but as one might expect highly politicized and reflect the deeper social and political divisions that characterize the socialist industrial countries. Ethnic jokes delineate the social, geographical and moral boundaries of a nation or ethnic group. By making fun of peripheral and ambiguous groups they reduce ambiguity and clarify boundaries or at least make ambiguity appear less threatening. Ethnic jokes occur in opposed pairs such as those mocking 'st-upid' and 'crafty', or 'cowardly' and 'militaristic' groups respectively and express the problems and anxieties caused by the conflicting norms and values inevitably found in large societies dominated by anomic impersonal institutions such as the market place and bureaucracy.

The Limits of Professionalism

Some of you may have noticed a full-page ad in last week's New York Times Book Review, which announced that 1981 is the year you will discover the freedom of 'limits'. The ad was promoting a new book by Maxine Schnall, entitled Limits — A Search for New Values, and although I haven't had the chance to read it yet, I have no doubt that Ms Schnall has hit upon an issue that will occupy us increasingly in the years to come. Events and processes with which we are all at least superficially familiar have, in the past few years, compelled Western industrial and capitalist societies to reconsider the status of their own limits, and to revise the previously prevailing view of them as borders to be extended, or as externa] boundaries serving merely to establish the integrity of the areas they demarcate. The Limits of Growth', stands as just the most conspicuous symptom of this revision in our thinking about limits, in which we have come to conceive of them not as neutral and stable entities, but rather as-active, volatile and constraining factors that can no longer be taken for granted, factors which menace as much as they protect, or contain. This recent resurgence of the question of limits — entailing as it does a fundamental restructuring of power-relations on a world-wide scale — has, I think, been most conspicuous in North America, and above all in the United States, where for as long as most people care to remember limits have been conceived as provisional states in a process of continuous expansion, much like record performances in sports, which are there only to be exceeded at the next best occasion. If the motto of twentieth century America has been 'the sky's the limit', more and more Americans have come to discover that their sky is as close and as