SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH COUNCIL

VOLUME 28 . NUMBER 4 . DECEMBER 1974 605 THIRD AVENUE· NEW YORK, N.Y. 10016

fOREIGN AREA STUDIES AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH COUNCIL

FEW even of those professionally active at the time recall with clarity the condi.tions of foreign area studies and research in the United States during the years immedi­ately preceding and following World War II. This is perhaps not surprising in the sense that there was so little of significance to be recalled. With the exception of those teachers, scholars, and students concerned with the study of the Western European societies and cultures tradi­tionally of interest to Americans, there was virtually nothing. And, even where Western Europe was con-

• Both authors have long records of association with the Social Sci­ence Research Council. Mr. Ward, now Director of the Center for Re­search in International Studies, Stanford University, and a member of the Council's board of directors since 1965, received a predoctoral Area Research Training Fellowship of the Council in 1948, the first year in which the fellowships were offered. In 1952 he was a participant in the Interuniversity Summer Research Seminar on Comparative Politics, held under the Council's program. Since 1958 he has been deeply in­volved in Council activities. As a member of· the Committee on Com­parative Politics, 1958-72, he was an active participant and contributor to conferences and projects, notably as codirector with Dankwart A. Rustow of its seminar on political modernization of Japan and Turkey, September 1962, and senior editor of the resulting volume, Political Modernization in Japan and Turkey, Studies in Political Development 3, Princeton University Press, 1964; as senior author of the committee­sponsored manual, Studying Politics A broad: Field Research in the Developing Areas, Little, Brown and Company, 1964; and participant in the workshop on the modernization of political culture, July-August 1962. As a member of the Council's board of directors, Mr. Ward served as its chairman, 1969-71, and as a representative of the Council on the Conference Board of Associated Research Councils, 1969-72. He was also a member of the Committee on Problems and Policy, 1966-73. His other major contributions to the Countl's work have been as a member of the Joint Committee (cosponsored with the American Council of Learned Societies) on Japanese Studies since its appointment in 1967 and as its chairman, 1971-74. Particularly noteworthy is his direction of the American participants in the United States - Japan joint biblio­graphical project on the Allied Occupation of Japan; he organized and coordinated the efforts that resulted in the publication by the American Library Association in March 1974 of The Allied Occupation of Japan,

by Robert E. Ward and Bryce Wood •

cerned, our interests were highly selective. They focused primarily on Great Britain and secondly on France and Germany. With some exceptions in such fields as history, art, and belles lettres, there was very little systematic scholarly attention paid to Spain, Italy, the Scandinavian countries, or the smaller states of Western Europe, let alone Eastern Europe or the U.S.S.R. In an academic s<;nse, particularly from the standpoint of the social sci­ences, these continued to be white areas on the map, terrae incognitae, well into the 1950's.

1945-1952: An Annotated Bibliography of Western-Language Materials. Mr. Wart! was also a member of the Joint Committee on Asian Studies, 1958-61, and chairman of the Committee on Area and Language Pro­grams Review. 1968-72.

Mr. Wood's first association with the Council was as a predoctoral Field Fellow in 1936-37. He joined the Council staff in 1950 and served for 23 years. In the words of the tribute paid him by the Council's board of directors upon his retirement in September 1973 (Items, December 1973, page 52), "he has been closely and constantly associated with the work and accomplishments of many of our most distinguished and suc­cessful committees. Particularly notable among these were the Com­mittees on Political Behavior. on Comparative Politics, on Contempo­rary China, on Japanese Studies, and-continuously-the Committee on Latin American Studies." The other committees with which he worked were Civil-Military Relations Research. Comparative Study of Public Policy, Cross-Cultural Education, Exchanges with Asian Institutions. Foreign Area Fellowship Program (as deputy director for Latin American studies, 1970--73). Governmental and Legal Processes, Inter­national Cooperation among Social Scientists, International Organiza­tion, Korean Studies. National Security Policy Research. Near and Middle East, Political Theory and Legal Philosophy Fellowships. Slavic Studies Subcommittee on Grants, and World Area Research. Mr. Wood was a member of the Committee on International Exchange of Persons (of the Conference Board of Associated Research Councils). 1950-57. He is currently engaged in research. supported by a Grant-in­Aid from the American Council of Learned Societies, on the policy of the United States toward the Ecuador-Peru boundary dispute, 1940--74. and the politics of the parties to the dispute.

This article was written at the invitation of the President of the Council as part of the commemoration of its 50th anniversary year.

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As a consequence the postwar contrasts between the vastly expanded national and popular interests, involve­ments, and responsibilities of the United Stat~s on the one hand and the increasingly outdated professional con­cerns and competencies of our higher educational system on the other rapidly became more obvious and less toler­able to all who cared to look. Still nothing need have happened by way of constructive response on the aca­demic side. The conserving capacities of academic estab­lishments have been too frequently demonstrated to sub­stantiate so facile a belief. The fact that positive and enduring steps were taken require, therefore, some explanation.

There were, to begin with, certain predisposing changes in the national environment. While World War I may have sufficed to bring the United States mas­sively into the international arena for the first time, it did not really end our national, isolationism in the politi­cal, economic, or psychological senses. The interwar years were a time of tentative and highly selective ad­vances, often followed by compensatory withdrawals, and of episodically increased foreign contacts and in­volvements, but not of enduring or widespread commit­ment to a more internationalized pattern of collective life and action. It was only World War II that accom­plished that-at least for the period down to the present. It is particularly notable for our purposes that it did so in terms that were no longer exclusively Eurocentric but embraced as well the nations and cultures of what we term variously the non-West, the Third World, or the developing nations. Even within Europe the postwar focus differed. No longer were we continuously interested only in Britain, France, and Germany. The U.S.S.R., Eastern Europe, and ultimately the rest of Europe, as well, bulked far larger on our agenda of national con­cern and involvement. .

Still in an academic sense little or nothing of enduring value need have happened had there not been an ener­gizing and organizing medium at hand. This was the role of the Social Science Research Council acting in concert with the American Council of Learned Societies, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Rockefeller Foundation, and, later, with the Ford Foundation. What actually took place is little known, even in many of the scholarly circles most directly concerned. It constitutes a fascinating example of how in at least one instance academic innovation on a major national and interna­tional scale was launched and sustained.

The immediate stimulus lay in experiences associated with World War II. This had involved the United States in an unprecedented number and variety of interactions with societies that lay largely beyond our normal sphere of national concern or involvement. Japan, China, India,

M

Burma, the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and Algeria are appropriate examples. It did not make a great deal of difference whether the specific involvement was hostile or friendly. In either event it served to make painfully obvious our almost total unpreparedness as a nation to deal effectively with the problems consequent upon a sudden intensification of American contacts with these almost totally unfamiliar societies and cultures. Few Americans knew the languages involved; those who did were apt to lack the sorts of professional skills needed. That working modicum of familiarity with the relevant historical, political, economic, social, and psychological facts that we could as a government muster and utilize in our dealings with Britain, France, and Germany was almost entirely lacking for these more exotic areas. This deficit had to be made up-and this had to be done under the most urgent and demanding circumstances, those of modern and total warfare.

Since the problem was initially one of providing in­tensive and specialized training in unfamiliar languages and cultures, the government turned to the universities and to the research Councils for assistance. Existing aca­demic resources in these fields were pitifully thin but, under wartime conditions and with extensive federal support, specialized training programs were hastily im­provised, improved over time, and ultimately some rather impressive results were achieved. Furthermore, the graduates of these specialized training programs­many of whom were graduate students or young faculty members-were sent out in unprecedented numbers to live or work with the peoples and problems of the areas they had studied, thus creating a reservoir of potential professional interest and at least partially trained talent for postwar development. The Ethnogeographic Board was established in 1942 by the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Research Council, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Social Science Research Council for the purpose of aiding the Army, Navy, and other agencies in obtaining the information they needed on foreign regions throughout the war years. It arranged for the preparation of a history and appraisal of its work and experience for the guidance of future organization of the resources for increasing knowledge of foreign areas and cultures.

Thus even at the time there were observers of these phenomena concerned about their postwar implications and anxious that the momentum for constructive aca­demic change implicit wfthin them not be lost in the more relaxed circumstances that were certain to attend the ending of the war. In general they tended to share some or all of the following views:

1. Higher education in the United States was too nar­row in its geographic compass.

VOLUME 28, NUMBER 4

2. It must be broadened to include non-Western peoples and cultures.

3. More attention should be paid the U.S.S.R. and the nations of Eastern Europe.

4. The most fruitful way to study such academically "new" areas was by the so-called whole-cultural or interdisciplinary techniques (largely anthropologi­cal in antecedents) adumbrated in the wartime training programs.

5. Since the traditional departmental units of a uni­versity were discipline oriented and presumptively hostile to interdisciplinary innovations, a new or­ganizational format would have to be devised for these new interdisciplinary programs, to wit-a foreign area program.

6. Finally, great emphasis should be placed on inten­sive instruction in the spoken and written forms of the languages of the particular foreign area being studied, preferably utilizing the techniques of lan­guage teaching developed in the wartime programs.

Prominent among the proponents of these views were strategically placed officials and staff of the Social Science Research Council, the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Research Council, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, and the Rockefeller Founda­tion. A loose but effective liaison and working arrange­ment soon emerged among them. The Social Science Research Council maintained a Committee on World Region-s during 1943, and the three Councils, a Joint ExplQratory Committee on World Area Research during 1945-46 to investigate the feasibility of an inter-Council program. Meanwhile the Social Science Research Coun­cil, convinced of the need for an appraisal of the situa­tion, in 1946 had engaged Robert B. Hall to make a comprehensive survey of area programs in universities. Both foundations, dealing directly with the universities concerned, had financed on a highly selective basis the establishment of new or the expansion of older area and language programs. In the first instance these related largely to Latin American, Russian, Japanese, or Chinese studies. Hall's survey of these programs led, while in process, to appointment by the SSRC of its own Com­mittee on World Area Research (1946-53). This com­mittee assisted in the completion of the survey, sponsored its publication 1 and the subsequent national conference on the study of world areas (for which the Carnegie Corporation provided funds),2 and recommended that

1 Robert B. Hall . Area Studies: With Special Reference to Their Implications for Research in the Social Sciellces, Social Science Research Council Pamphlet 3. May 1947.

2 Charles Wagley. Area Research and Tmining: A Conference Report on the Study of World Areas, Social Science Research Council Pamphlet 6. June 1948.

DECEMBER 1974

the Council offer an Area Research Training Fellowship Program. When the funds for this program were obtained from the Carnegie Corporation late in 1947, a separate Committee on Area Research Training Fellowships was appointed to administer it.

Much more than money is required to launch effec­tively and on a national scale new and controversial academic programs of this sort. There must also be a means of occasionally assembling from their several campuses the actual working leaders of the movement, of comparing and taking stock of the success or failure of specific types of innovations and organizational forms, of achieving visibility and wider recognition for the pro­grams' accomplishments, of recruiting and training new adherents to the area cause, and of assessing in national terms the progress and needs of the movement. All of these were met in practice largely by the Council's Com­mittees on World Area Research and Area Research Training Fellowships (1947-53). All of the early major reports on the status and development of area studies programs in the United States were products of the former committee.s An impressive proportion of those who subsequently became prominent as exponents of the area approach in either their teaching or research got their starts as Area Research Training Fellows under the program administered by the latter. It is not unfair to conclude that these committees served in the early days as the primary planning, coordinating, training, and evaluative agencies at the national level for the entire area and language movement in the United States.

What might be considered the first or early stage of foreign area studies programs in the United States runs from about 1946-47 to 1959-60, a period of some 13 years. During this time there were relatively few such programs, they were largely graduate in nature, they were concentrated at a small number of major univer­sities, they related primarily to East Asia or the U.S.S.R., and they were financed in part by local funds and in part by the two major foundations.'

Two events mark the termination of this early period: the passage of the National Defense Education Act in 1958 (and its activation the following year), marking the advent of interest in and large-scale support for area programs by the federal government; and the beginning

S In addition to the reports by Hall and Wagley. Julian H. Steward. Area Research: Theol)' alld Practice, Social Science Research Council Bulletin 63. 1950. and 'Vendell C. Bennett. Area Studies in American Universities, Social Science Research Council. 1951.

~ During this earlier period the Social Science Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies jointly sponsored the very active Committee on Slavic Studies. appointed in 1948 and terminated only in 1971. and also the Committee on Southern Asia. 1949-53. The Social Science Research Council maintained the Committee on the Near and Middle F..ast from 1951 ulltil 1959. when it became a joint com­mittee of the two Councils.

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of relatively massive support of a larger number of selected area programs by the Ford Foundation at about the same time.

Even before the end of this first phase, however, the area activities of the Social Science Research Council began to change and diversify. The Committees on World Area Research and Area Research Training Fel­lowships were terminated in 1953, while in 1954 the Council established for the first time a new and more specialized type of body, the Committee on Comparative Politics. Strictly speaking this was not an area committee at all. Its primary mandate involved the rejuvenation and restructuring of a major field within the discipline of political science, that of comparative government. In practice, however, it had a strong interest in the politics of the developing non-Western nations as a whole and in the subject of political modernization or political de­velopment. A good deal of its work was in this way area­related, though the basic context was comparative and generalizing in nature. The advent of the Committee on Comparative Politics marks the first systematic and or­ganized national attempt within the framework of a par­ticular discipline to build upon and go beyond programs relating to a specific geographical or culture area. It was a particularly successful venture that drew to a close only in 1972 when the committee was terminated and in part succee~ed by a new Committee on the Compara­tive Study of Public Policy, a body with an area base and interest in the developed societies of Western Europe, North America, and Japan and a primary interest in the performance characteristics of highly developed modern political systems. These comparatively and topically ori­ented committees are in a measure related to the earlier area-specific interests and activities of the Council, and may be regarded as at least in part a consequence of those interests.

The main stream of development in the Council's area activities after 1959-60, however, lay along more special­ized lines. The initial endeavor of establishing and maintaining a relatively small number of outstanding area programs mainly in the Soviet and East Asian fields had succeeded. The advent of new funding for univer­sity area centers in 1959-60 by the Ford Foundation and Title VI of the National Defense Education Act made it possible to recognize what was by then a very sizable na­tional demand and to establish a much larger and more diversified group of new area programs throughout the United States. The Social Science Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies acknowl­edged these changed circumstances by establishing in two cycles a total of 7 joint area committees.

In 1959-60 came the Joint Committees on African Studies, Contemporary China, Latin American Studies,

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and the Near and Middle East, all under the adminis­trative aegis of the Social Science Research Council. In the preceding year the Joint Committee on Asian Studies, for which the American Council of Learned Societies had administrative responsibility, had been appointed specifically to sponsor a new program of re­search grants to individual scholars. Somewhat later, in 1967, the Joint Committees on japanese Studies and on Korean Studies were added. All were financed basically through grants from the Ford Foundation, as was the continuing Joint Committee on Slavic Studies. All save the Committee on Asian Studies had quite expansive mandates that usually involved not only the administra­tion of programs of research grants, but also continuing assessments of the state of the field, the conduct of con­ferences and seminars, and the stimulation of new re­search or other activities of general and basic utility to the area field concerned. The 1960's thus brought a marked intensification of the area-oriented activities of the Social Science Research Council.

In addition to these basic area committees the Coun­cils also established a variety of other more specialized but area-related programs. Most notable among these was the Joint Committee on the Foreign Area Fellow­ship Program appointed in 1962 when the Ford Founda­tion transferred responsibility for the program it had offered since 1953 to the Councils. This transfer consoli­dated their activities with respect to predoctoral training fellowships of an area-specific sort for all parts of the world. Continuously financed by the Ford Foundation, this program shortly became the most prestigious and one of the most important sources of advanced language and area training in the United States. In 1973 the pro­gram was merged with other area research programs of the Councils in order to relate the dissertation research fellowships more closely to the other concerns of the area committees.

Somewhat similar in nature but with a more special­ized clientele is the International Research and Ex­changes Board established in 1968 as a joint agency ad­ministered by the American Council of Learned Societies. This Board conducts the official exchange programs be­tween the United States and 7 Eastern European states: Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, the U.S.S.R., and Yugoslavia. The programs provide both advanced training and research opportunities for faculty members and graduate students.

More specialized still are such committees as that on Scholarly Communication with the People's Republic of China appointed in 1966 .jointly by the National Academy of Sciences and the two Councils; the Joint Committee on Sino-American Cooperation in the Hu­manities and Social Sciences (1966-); and the Com-

VOLUME 28, NUMBER 4

mittee on Exchanges with Asian Institutions maintained by the Social Science Research Council from 1961 to 1972. The latter two committees have been concerned with research in and about China conducted in Taiwan. The first has played a leading role in the academic and cultural aspects of the negotiations that have been lead­ing toward the establishment of scholarly relations with the People's Republic of China.

Another type of area-specific agency was represented by the Committee on Social Science in Italy (1965-73), jointly sponsored with the Adriano Olivetti Foundation. This committee was concerned with the improvement of the quality of advanced social science training in Italian universities. It w.as binational in membership and primarily operated three postgraduate training in­stitutes-in economics, sociology, and po~itical science, located respectively at Ancona, Milan, and Turin. The American share of the financing for these operations came from the Ford Foundation, the Italian share from the Olivetti Foundation and the National Research Council of Italy. The committee was dissolved when adequate Italian resources had been mobilized, and has been succeeded by a national committee in Italy.

A somewhat similar but much more general endeavor to improve the quality of research an~ training abroad has been carried on by the Committee on Transnational Social Psychology (1964-74), largely through multi­national conferences in Western and Eastern Europe and in Latin America.

Mention should be made also of the comprehensive review of foreign area studies in American academic in-stitutions, which the Council undertook in 1968 at the request of the U.S. Office of Education. The study was directed by Richard D. Lambert of the University of Pennsylvania, who had the assistance of an advisory committee appointed by the Council. His massive and definitive Language and Area Studies Review was pub­lished in 1973 by the American Academy of Political and Social Science as its Monograph 17.

During the 25 years from the end of W orId War II to 1970, therefore, the Social Science Research Council established, predominantly in collaboration with the American Council of Learned Societies, nearly a score of area-specific or area-related programs, most of which still exist. A few of the committes appointed to admin­ister such programs have fulfilled their mandates and been discharged. The functions of some of these former committees, especially those related to administration of programs of research grants, have been taken over by newer programs such as those offered under the auspices of the Joint Committees on Eastern Europe (1971-), South Asian Studies (1972-), and Soviet Studies (1971-). The possibility of inaugurating new joint committees

DECEMBER 1974

with generai mandates for the development of area re­search and training on Western Europe, South Asia, and Southeast Asia is under consideration.

As one reviews the history of these postwar years it becomes apparent that, insofar as there has been overall planning, coordination, or evaluation on a national scale for the field of foreign area studies, it has been supplied in large part by the committees and staff of the Social Science Research Council. No claim to exclusivity is in­volved. Other agencies have also been active and influ­ential along these lines, to cite a few: the major founda­tions already named, particularly the Ford Foundation, whose officers have demonstrated both leadership and generosity in the field of foreign area training and research; the American Council of Learned Societies; the U.S. Office of Education's Institute of International Studies; the several national associations of area special­ists; and-in specific cases-the area scholars on a given campus together with their local administrators. But, while freely conceding this diversity of influence and paternity, the role of the Social Science Research Coun­cil has been unique and fundamental in a number of critical ways.

The basic ideas and organizing concepts that led to the postwar establishment of foreign area studies pro­grams derive from the Committee on World Area Re­search working with a few sympathetic and supportive foundation officers. The early surveys of the problems and progress of such programs that contributed a great deal to the shaping of developmental and organizational patterns and policies at the critical initial stages were entirely the product of that committee. In important measure it was the success of these early area ventures that undergirded, justified, and provided the models for the dramatic expansion of university area centers financed by the Ford Foundation and the U.S. Office of Education in the early 1960's. Since then it has been largely the joint area committees of the Councils that have performed a variety of functions essential to the continued health and vitality of the collective area en­deavor. Because these functions have come to be taken more or less for granted, they merit more attention and emphasis.

Ultimately scholarly ventures of national scale and significance succeed or fail not only in terms of the in­trinsic merits and persuasiveness of their organizing con­cepts but also in terms of the degree of durable academic acceptance and support that they generate. It is axio­matic in the profession that such durable acceptance and support can only be based on a substantial measure of meaningful participation by working scholars in what­ever venture may be concerned. Herein lies the true genius of the Social Science Research Council. Together

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with the American Council of Learned Societies, it has provided the most effective and continuing means of enlisting and focusing in a disciplined and systematic way the talents, ideas, and energies of scholars working on problems of great professional importance in the area field. It combines the advantages of transcending the individual campuses and disciplines; of long and close identification with the interests of scholars and scholar­ship; and of a skilled and dedicated professional staff which lends support and continuity to the undertakings of its committees. It represents the interests and views of scholarship to foundation and governmental agencies, and has an enviable reputation for identifying and deal­ing effectively with many problems that have confronted the social sciences during the last 50 years. These are unique attributes, not found in equal measure or qual­ity in any of the other agencies of collective action gen­erated by the academic community, the government, or the foundations. Their merits and efficacy in practice are nowhere better illustrated than in the case of area studies programs.

Not only was the Council responsible in major degree for the initial establishment and subsequent expansion of such programs, but it has continued to monitor and influence their further development. Within the context , of the social. sciences, it has long been obvious that area­specific knowledge by itself is not enough. This is not to gainsay the essentiality or the importance of such data. It is an unfortunate fact that a large proportion of the raw data available to social scientists 'is American in provenance. As a consequence, both the methodologies and the theories of contemporary social science have to an unrealistic and perhaps critically unsound degree

been built on bases that are predominantly or ex­clusively derived from American practice and experi­ence. Thus while we recognize in principle the im­portance of culture as a determinant of social attitudes, values, and behavior, in practice we have too often pro­ceeded along lines that may prove to be disastrously culture-bound.

From a social science viewpoint, the initial value and essentiality of area studies and of the Council's role in their development derives from this limitation of Ameri­can experience. Area studies are calculated to restore a measure of cultural equilibrium to an otherwise American-biased endeavor, to supply basic data from a rich variety of cultural contexts, and to add thereto orderly descriptions, analyses, and interpretations of eco­nomic, political, and social systems other than our own.

By themselves these are valid and valuable contribu­tions, but they are not in the long run sufficient. A further effort must be made to transcend the limits of particular cultures and to formulate and synthesize these

. expanded and enriched data in cross-cultural and com­parative terms. This is the probable next step in the area undertaking and, also, a point of juncture with the professional interests and activities of the more Ameri­can-oriented members of the social science community.

The Council has long been aware of these circum­stances and of the opportunities and problems implicit in them: It is concerned with determining its own future role and contribution to the further development of the social science aspects of area studies programs. It seems probable that its influence, seminal and critical in the origins and past development of area studies, will con­tinue to be of major importance.

CONFERENCE ON SOCIAL EXPERIMENTATION

THE COUNCIL'S Committee on Experimentation as a Method for Planning and Evaluating Social Interven­tion held a conference on' this subject at the Dartmouth College Minary Conference Center in Holderness, New Hampshire, on August 18-21, 1974. The purpose of the conference was to acquaint federal government agency officials with possible applications of experimental methods in planning and evaluating social programs and, hence, in the development of social policies.

• The author is Professor of Behavioral Sciences at the University of Pennsylv.ania. He has served as chairman of the Council'S Com­mittee on Experimentation as a Method ror Planning and Evaluating Social Intervention. which sponsored the conference on which he reports here, since its appointment in 1971. The other members of the

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by Henry W. Riecken·

As a result of intensive exploration of this topic, the committee had reached the conclusion that it should nurture a wider awareness of the potentialities as well as the problems of social experimentation. It had ob­served that in the last few years major social experiments had been completed in the fields of welfare, education, criminal court procedure, and police training; and others were under way or planned in health insurance, housing allowances, educational vouchers, and the de-

committee are Donald T. Campbell, Northwestern University; Nathan Caplan, University of Michigan; Thomas K. Glennan, Jr., National Research Council; John W. Pratt, Harvard University; Albert Rees, Princeton University; \Valter Williams, University of WaShington; staff. Robert F. Boruch. Northwestern University.

VOLUME 28. NUMBER 4

livery of health care. It was clear to the committee that a potentially significant advance in the methodology of social research and development had been taking place, and that an important new tool is becoming available for use by social policy planners and in program devel­opments. Yet, although there is a widening interest in 1iocial experimentation, many policy makers are quite unfamiliar with the technique, unsure of the condi­tions in which experimentation is the preferred means of getting information about policy options or program alternatives,' and unacquainted with either the advan­tages or the limitations of experimentation. The major aim of the conference, accordingly, was to begin to overcome these deficiencies.

The conference also served to direct the attention of the federal agency representatives to the monograph prepared by the committee, which was then in press and now has been published by the Academic Press.1

This monograph is addressed to an audience of poten­tial sponsO!S or conductors of social experiments, rang­ing in expertise from legislative and governmental ad­ministrative officers to experienced social scientists, but with the assumption of little prior knowledge of or experience with experimentation on their part. Broadly speaking, the monograph addresses the needs of persons responsible for a variety of technical, managerial, admin­istrative, and policy-making tasks who may want some guidance as to whether an experimental approach to questions of social policy is justified; and, if so, as to what problems they will encounter and what steps they might take to minimize them. It provides a basis for focusing a discussion on how social experimentation might turn into a national policy for sociaI' research and develop­ment. Portions of the monograph in page proof were sent to all the conference participants!! in July to help orient them to the committee's assessment of the impor­tance of social experiments, the significance of several

1 Social ExpeTimentation edited by Henry W. Riecken and Robert F. Boruch, with chapters written also by the other members of the Committee on Experimentation as a Method for Planning and Evaluating Social Intervention, November 1974. See the listing 011 pages 67-68 infra.

2 The conference was attended by Gregory J. Ahart, U.S. General Accounting Office; Robert F. Boruch, Northwestern University; Donald T. Campbell, Northwestern University; Nathan Caplan, University of Michigan; Russell Drew, National Science Foundation; John W. Evans, U.S. Office of Education; Charles G. Field, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development; Harrison Fox, Office of Senator Bill Brock; Howard H. Hines, National Science Foundation; Robinson Hollister, Urban Opinion Surveys Division, Mathematica; Michael Mahoney, Social Security Administration; Steward McElyea, U.s. General Ac· counting Office; Arthur S. Melmed, National Institute of Education; Larry L. Orr, U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare; John Palmer, U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare; Ernest F. Powers, National Science Foundation; Albert Rees, Princeton University; Henry W. Riecken, University of Pennsylvania.

DECEMBER 1974

major experiments already carried out, and the condi­tions in which experimentation might be feasible and advisable.

The program of t~e conference called for three morn­ing sessions and two evening ones spread over the three­day period, with ample time for discussion in plenary sessions as well as opportunity for smaller group meet­ings in the afternoon to explore special interests. Each of the morning sessions began with the presentation of a specially commissioned paper on a significant aspect of social experimentation; the authors were social scien­tists who were not members of the committee. Following these presentations, the chairmen guided discussion and debate, which was often lively, between the authors and the other participants. These discussions, which ran as long as two and one-half hours, were tape recorded for later condensation and summarization. No papers were prepared for the evening sessions. The topics to which they were addressed were selected deliberately to stimu­late imaginative contributions from all the participants. The chairmen of the evening sessions brought a topic into focus through a brief oral statement and then en­couraged a free and sometimes free-associative disc,ussion which ranged widely and was often animated.

The first morning session, chaired by Henry W. Riecken, began with a presentation by John W. Evans, Assistant Commissioner for the Office of Planning, Bud­geting, and Evaluation, U.S. Office of Education, on "Motivation for Experimentation." He considered the circumstances in which an agency 'might wish to experi­ment, such as legislative mandates, executive orders, or judicial decisions; as well as the kinds of rewards or payoffs of experiments, such as better understanding of the alternatives in intervening in order to improve program management, generating public interest in and support for an intervention program, collecting data about an intervention program for the purpose of defending it against criticism, testing reactions to a variety of intervention proposals, and systematically broadening or expanding the coverage of a program. 1n addition, he reflected on some of the social and politi­cal circumstances that might inhibit or block social ex­perimentation, including intolerance of the delay that experiments entail before social action is taken, protec­tiveness toward "favorite" programs by politicians, and increasing resistance to the burden of data collection on the part of potential subjects in experimentation. He emphasized that the major' reason for experimenting­namely, that policy makers do not have the knowledge or techniques to ameliorate or even to address the heart of important social problems-is a very difficult one for policy makers to accept. They are likely not only to be overconfident and "sold" on a particular solution in

59

advance of any evidence, but to be resistant to experi­mentation on the grounds of delay and cost.

Under the chairmanship of Albert Rees, the second morning session was given over to discussion of the "Role of Experimentation in Policy Decision Making," which was reviewed in a paper presented by Robinson' Hollister, Director of Research in the Urban Opinion Surveys Division of Mathematica. The 'focus of this session w.as on how controlled experimentation fits into policy decision making and relates to other major evalu­ation and decision-making strategies, such as systems analysis, strategic program planning, the use of social indicators, model building, and other analytic tech­niques that rely on the statistical manipulation of large bodies of data. Noting that the committee's monograph had adequately identified the merits of experimentation, Mr. Hollister emphasized concrete problems and the limitations of experimentation in order to discourage too abstract discussion. He commented on experimenta­tion in idealized as well as practical settings. In the course of his review, he stressed the importance of data processing as the bottleneck in the quantitative analysis of decision making and concluded with some suggestions for extending experimental methods.

The third morning session and concluding meeting of the conference, chaired by Robert F. Boruch, dealt with "Organizations and Institutions for Social Experi­mentation." The basis of the discussion was a paper prepared by Charles G. Field, Research Manager of the Experimental Housing Allowance Program, Depart­ment of Housing and Urban Development, and Larry L. Orr, Director of the Office of Income Security Policy I Research, Planning and Evaluation Section, Depart­ment of Health, Education, and Welfare. Their paper amplified the discussion of institutional auspices con­tained in the committee's monograph, adding two groups they thought had been slighted in the committee's treatment, namely, federal and state agencies and the community in which the experiment is conducted. They examined the task demands, technical and human re­quirements, and performance standards for the several institutions involved in social experimentation. They devoted special attention to the role of the public spon­soring agency and the constraints and responsibilities

60

imposed on it by other institutional considerations, drawing extensively on their personal experience with the Department's Housing Allowance and Health Insur­ance experiments.

At the first of two evening sessions chaired by com­mittee members, Donald T. Campbell led the discussion of "Identification of Alternative Treatments." He con­sidered the sources of innovative social interventions and the route by which they move from their origins to the kind of public exposure and official attention that allows them to be shaped into experimental interven­tions for purposes of social policy development. The participants were asked whether more attention should be paid to the method by which social interventions are shaped, and whether more attention to the whole process might improve the level of creative thinking and widen the number of intervention options open to the experi­ment-minded policy maker.

The second evening session, chaired by Nathan Cap­lan, was devoted to discussion of "Experimental Testing Prior to Politicization." The opening statement pointed out that experience suggests that social experiments can proceed most smoothly and yield most useful informa­tion for policy formation if they are undertaken before political lines are drawn around legislative proposals for and against a particular program. If so, this implies the desirability of predicting national priorities and needs before their appearance on the political agenda, and the policy maker should be interested in examining alternative interventions and in stimulating creative solutions to social problems before issues become politi­cized. The validity of this proposition was debated by the participants, who also examined possible means of encouraging the growth of the capacity to predict na­tional priorities and needs in advance of politicization.

Support for the conference was provided by the Sci­ence and Technology Policy Office of the National Science Foundation, which plans to disseminate the re­port on the proceedings rather widely among interested government agencies. The report, which is being pre­pared, will consist of the three commissioned papers and summaries of the discussions that took place at all five sessions, together with appropriate introductory material.

VOLUME 28, NUMBER 4

COMPARATIVE RESEARCH ON ETHNICITY: A CONFERENCE REPORT

THE DISCIPLINARY AND AREA specialists who met in Sep­tember 1973 to discuss interarea and comparative social research 1 agTeed that ethnicity is a research topic of central interest which has still unfulfilled potential for development into systematic and unified theory. In or­der to explore the question further, the President of the Social Science Research Council called together a second gT0up of scholars to consider in detail the comparative and cross-cultural research possibilities of ethnicity. Meeting in New York, April 19-20, 1974, the gToup 2

discussed the current state of theory and methodology in research on ethnicity and the opportunities for facili­tating cross-cultural research.

Robert E. LeVine pointed out in "Ethnicity in Com­parative Social Research," a memorandum prepared for the conference, that "ethnicity is a world-wide fact of life." On the practical level, one cannot help but be aware of the millions of lives lost in civil wars between ethnic gToups. There is an urgent need to understand these destructive processes and the conditions and choices which .might instead promote negotiation and harmonious cooperation. But one should not ignore the positive ~ide: ethnicity provides an identification that gives meaning to life for a large proportion' of the earth's people.

On the theoretical level, ethnicity involves basic pro­cesses of gT0up formation and change, loyalty, cohesion, boundaries, and individual and collective identities. For the task at hand, moreover, the basis for new research has been prepared in prior research and in theoretical ~yntheses that are importantly interregional, interdisci­plinary, and cross-cultural.

Interregional comparisons particularly can enhance the study of ethnicity. First of all, they are probably necessary to construct adequate general concepts and

• The author is Professor of Sociology at Yale University. He served as chairman of the conference on which he reports here and partici­pated in its planning.

1 See lIems, December 1973, pages 48-49. 2 The participants were Wendell Bell, Yale University; Roy S.

Bryce-Laporte, Smithsonian Institution; George A. DeVos, University of California, Berkeley; Cynthia Enloe, Clark University; John J. Gumperz, Unh'ersity of California, Berkeley; Leo Kuper, University of California, Los Angeles; Wallace E. Lambert, McGill University; Robert A. LeVine, University of Chicago; Andrei Simic, University of Southern California; Richard C. Snyder, Ohio State University; Constance R. Sutton, ~ew York University; John M. ThompsOn, Indiana University; Gordon B. Turner, American Council of Learned Societies; Beatrice B. Whiting, Harvard University; Social Science Research Council staff: Gordon M. Adams, David Jenness, Rowland L. Mitchell, Jr., Michael Potashnik, Eleanor Bernert Sheldon, and David L. Sills.

DECEMBER 1974

by Wendell Bell '*

prOpOSitIOns. Examination of a wide-preferably the full-range of behavior with respect to any phenomenon facilitates attaining both generality and simplicity. Sec­ond, although ethnicity itself is a general concept and world-wide phenomenon, its manifestations are varied. These variations offer challenging puzzles for the theo­retician who aspires to a unified view of ethnicity. Third, ethnicity is a form of human organization that competes under varying conditions with other forms of large-scale organization, chiefly the nation-state. Studies of the same ethnic gT0up in different societal settings are needed to test the explanatory power of different theo­ries where certain conditional variables are to some extent controlled. Fourth, concepts of race and ethnicity have become internationalized. They have become part of major global struggles against political and economic domination . They are involved in supranational net­works of communication and influence, such as the Caribbean-African-Black American triangle, that carry ideas of ethnic or racial destiny, oppression, struggle, and identity transcending the boundaries of any existing nation-state. Today, neither ethnicity nor race can be fully understood within the boundaries of a single society.

DEFINITION OF ETHNICITY

The conference discussions did not lead to a precise definition of ethnicity. As a working definition, how­ever, three criteria were generally accepted. It was pro­posed that ethnicity (1) involves a past-oriented gT0up identification emphasizing origins; (2) includes some conception of cultural and social distinctiveness; and (3) relates to a component unit in a br.oader system of social relations. Further distinctions, of course, might be introduced, such as those between the structures and symbols of ethnicity.

A major difficulty is distinguishing ethnicity from other determinants of gT0up formation, such as kinship, locality gToups, religion, and social class. Thus, one might add three further criteria: (4) ethnic gToups are larger than kin or locality gToups and transcend face-to­face interaction; (5) ethnic categories have different meanings both in different societal settings and for different individuals; and (6) ethnic categories are emblematic, having names with meaning both for mem­bers and for analysts.

Note that ethnicity is not defined, nor was it solely discussed, as a social problem: It has desirable as well

61

as undesirable features, posItive as well as negative functions. Ethnicity, moreover, has a quantitative in addition to a qualitative aspect, and it can vary in de­gree of intensity between different groups and situa­tions_ Finally, gaps in the definitional criteria must be acknow ledged. The study of the boundaries of ethnicity is a significant part of the study of ethnicity itself.

And I suggest three modes of study: developmental, dis­tributional, allocational.

These levels and modes together define a typology of ethnic studies. The nine types so generated with ex­amples of each are given in the figure below.

The various disciplines obviously are differentially tied to the several levels and modes. Psychologists and cultural anthropologists work more on the subjective level; sociologists, structural anthropologists, and po­litical scientists on the organizational; and economists and demographers on the aggregational. Historians share the developmental mode with some members of each of the other disciplines. Economists and sociolo­gists may emphasize the distributional mode, and politi­cal scientists the allocationaL

RESEARCH TOPICS

The participants in the conference suggested a num­ber of research topics or questions that they believe would advance knowledge and the development of theory. An attempt to reduce them to a few categories is foolhardy, since such categories are bound to be in­adequate even in representing the conference discus­sion, much less the broad subject of ethnicity. Yet I ven- ' ture to say that the proposed topics represent three levels of analysis: aggregation ai, organizational, subjective.

The single most important type of research suggested at the conference was research on topics or questions combining several different levels or modes (thus differ­ent disciplines). This stress on interdisciplinary topics

A TYPOLOGY OF TOPICS FOR RESEARCH ON ETHNICITY

MODE OF STUDY

Developmental

Distri butional

Allocational

62

Aggregational Type I

Growth trends in new and old eth­nic populations

Trends in ethnic succession in urban neighborhoods

Relations of patterns of multi-eth­nicity to lever of economic develop­ment

Type IV Comparisons of ethnic groups by

such social variables as occupation. education. income. age. marital status. family size. quality of housing

Type VII Effect of governmental policies on

patterns of migration and treatment accorded immigrants

Intentions of ethnic associations and governments to change the distribution of social variables (see Type IV)

LEVEL OF ANALYSIS

Organizational Type II

Effect of colonialism and indepen­dence on ethnicity

Type V Effect of institutions and organiza­

tions on distribution of power. prop­erty. prestige. and privilege among ethnic groups

Participation in ethnic associations Participation in major societal insti­

tutions

Type VIII Functions of such institutions as the

police. churches. schools. the military. and trade unions as vehicles of ethnic communication. occupational place­ment. and collective decision making

Functions of ethnicity in mobilizing previously unmobilized sections of the population

Effectiveness of different organiza­tional forms in reconciliation and con­flict resolution

Forms and consequences of govern­mental responses to ethnic demands

Subjective Type III

Impact of duration of stay on con­tinuity or change in ethnic identity of immigrants

Influence of migration on the ethnic consciousness of nonmigrants

Requirements of "passing" as a member of an ethnic group

Universal versus setting-specific per­sonality attributes of ethnic groups

Determinants. content. and conse­quences of ethnic identity and ethnic consciousness

Origin and development" of ethnic identity among children

Type VI Visibility of different ethnic groups

to different subgroups in the society Determinants of loyalty to different

ethnic groups Role of ethnic symbolism in com­

munication Perceptions of distributive justice

Type IX Manipulation and utilization of eth­

nic identities by the state Political. economic. and social func­

tions of stressing ethnic identity Conditions in which individuals

stress one ethnic identity rather than another

VOLUME 28. NUMBER 4

suggests that theory and research on ethnicity are at the point where fairly sophisticated questions linking two or more levels or modes are almost. required.

For example, it was suggested tnat the interrelations between the structural and subjective aspects of ethnici­ty, between the objective conditions and specific forms of ethnic consciotlsness, be studied. One participant pointed out that although the connections between ethnic or racial identity and colonial status have been noted by a number of scholars, the influence of a colonial past on the status and treatment of immigrants, the reactions of different immigrant groups to this ex­perience, and the general problems confronting colon­ized groups with respect to defining their cultural heri­tage and identity are only beginning to receive tile attention they deserve. Also involving interconnections between levels is the interesting research problem of whether a person 's sense of ethnic attachment and his or her involvement in ethnic institutions are the reflection of core personality traits or merely expressions of socially valued behavior.

Other questions crisscrossing levels and modes are: How is collective action elicited on the basis of transcen­dental symbolic systems for groups or aggregates of differing size? And how do different symbolic systems with different bases of group formation compete? Ac­cording to one participant, answers to these questions would facilitate the construction of a typology of ideo­logical systems (of which ethnicity would be one) dis­tinguished not only by content and function, but also by scope of social mobilization and level of abstraction.

There was strong conviction that considerable bene­fits would result from studying ethnicity comparatively along with alternative bases of group formation and belongingness, such as kinship, social class, and nation­ality. There are a number of intriguing puzzles and theoretically interesting developments in the relations between ethnicity and social class. To what extent, for example, do expressions of ethnicity differ by social class, as recent linguistic work has shown? Consider, for example, subordinate white ethnics in the United States, who share a common background in the largely peasant, economically motivated immigration at the turn of the century from southern and eastern Europe; are predominantly blue-collar workers; and are, for the most part, Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox. There is strong indication that internal ethnic differentiation within this population is diminishing in spite of recent political activity and cultural revivalism. In fact, there appears to be a process by which separate ethnic iden­tities are coalescing into a single class manifestation with supra-edinic overtones.

If one had to reduce all the proposed studies to two

DECEMBER 1974

types, a reasonable categorization would be: (1) studies dealing with ethnicity as structures or systems of inter­action and (2) studies dealing with ethnicity as symbol systems or clusters of meaning. Many of the most inter­esting problems in research on ethnicity, at least to the conference participants, involve the interrelation­ships between these two types.

METHODS AND DESIGN

A number of possible next steps proposed during the discussion dealt with methods and design in a general way. Among the suggested procedures were:

(1) To exploit the current opportunities to conduct evaluation research on public or institutional responses to ethnic pressures.

(2) To include in the comparative framework for studying ethnicity nonindustrial and industrializing as well as industrial societies; where possible, socialist and nonsocialist countries; and both old and new states that have known colonial dependency in various fqrms.

(3) To include data for the United States in a com­parative framework.

(4) To encourage minority group social $cientists to study their own ethnic groups and to study dominant groups as ethnic groups, thus combating bias and bal­ancing perspectives.

(5) To take advantage of the special conditions of­fered by bicultural and bilingual groups for research on ethnicity. The struggle to balance ethnic allegiances by people with more than one ethnic tie may reveal the phenomenon of ethnicity in its various dimensions more explicitly than in the uni-ethnic situation.

(6) Finally, to study ethnicity longitudinally as well as interregionally and cross-culturally. This is a big task, but the conceptual equipment may be available. Use of the diachronic approach with respect to different stages of the life cycle of individuals has already been suggested by research questions dealing with the de­velopment of ethnic beliefs, attitudes, and identities. The process by which people become ethnics, of course, not only involves learning what they "are" but neces­sarily also learning what others "are." When ethnicity emerges in an individual, how it develops and changes through time, how it functions for the individual at different stages of his or her development, and how it disappears, if it does, are questions that focus attention on developmental sequences.

Beyond the personal history of the individual, there is the difficult social history of whole ethnic groups and of the societal settings within which they exist. The processual and evolutionary aspects of ethnicity, the contrasting phenomena of ethnic fission and fusion,

63

and the very emergence and disappearance of ethnicity itself call for a time dimension in the design of research and the collection of data.

One way of proceeding would be to combine the two approaches and to look at ethnic history in terms of successive generations. each having its characteristic developmental pattern and social experience that can modify or ~tabilize the ethnic cultural ideology it in­herits and transmits. Undertaken in this way. the study of ethnic identity within a group or nation represents a promising arena of interdisciplinary inquiry that could be pursued systematically across groups and nations. Such a history might provide a model for incorporating dynamic. longitudinal approaches into the comparative study of ethnicity.

There is. finally; the question of where ethnicity fits into the causal scheme of things. Clearly. the idea of ethnicity constitutes a complex set of variables. Often. they are independent variables. Ethnic identity. for ex­ample. cannot safely be ignored when studying varia­tions in many core phenomena. such as social. values. occupational mobility. consumer preferences. voting be­havior. sense of self-worth. drinking patterns. mate selec­tion. or social conflict. Yet ethnicity is also the result of other phenomena. such as family background. expe­rience. and group pressure. As such. it is a dependent variable. One can also think of some aspects of ethnicity as intervening variables. and certainly others exist 10

rather complex systems of reciprocal causation.

COSTS AND BENEFITS

There are. of course. costs or risks in encouraging comparative research on ethnicity. As LeVine pointed out in his memorandum:

. . . ethnicity is often a sensitive topic of public discourse and raises vital issues in the relation between social science and public policy. Any effort at international collaboration in research on ethnicity would have to deal with this problem, which varies from one nation to another but is nowhere absent. The case for eth­nicity research is p,art of the general case for confronting problems in a realistic way rather than suppressing awareness of them, but such a confrontation-and the use of social science information in the process-always meets with resistance and .is officially un­acceptable in some places.

An ideological and. to some extent. legitimate ob­jection to the study of ethnicity is that it may enhance the visibility of ethnic and racial factors and thus hinder the functioning of the society. Where ethnicity is a major basis for political parties. power struggles. deli­cate balances. or inequalities of status and consumption. the highlighting of ethnic differences may increase rigidity. consciousness. and conflict along ethnic lines.

64

There is also the problem of who does research on ethnicity and who are the ethnics to be studied. In the formerly colonial areas. the researchers are often Euro­peans and Americans and in some sense they represent the previous colonial powers. In industrially advanced societies there is a similar problem. in that studies of subordinate groups are usually carried out by scholars who are not members of the groups they are studying. One does not have to subscribe to the view that "to study one you must be one" to know that there is a significant risk of bias here. whether it is chauvinistic. compensatory, patronizing, or whatever. Even without bias. there is ample room for misunderstanding the motives of researchers. for differential access to infor­mation. and for the use of results to manipulate ethnic groups. Clearly. some balance is necessary; some kind of collaborative research or quid pro quo is essential. Yet in the last analysis the risk of bias, misunderstanding. and exploitation. though in sharp relief in ethnic studies and potentially explosive. exists to some extent in all social research. Effort to avoid it is always necessary.

Finally, there are the opportunity costs: other im­portant topics might be neglected if ethnicity became the focus of a broad program of interarea research. Yet I see little danger of this after reading ~he research suggestions of the conference participants. I am struck by the similarity between the concepts used in the sug­gested research on ethnicity and the three other major subjects of research that were identified at the Septem­ber 1973 meeting: stratification; socialization; and po­litical. economic. and social development (see the fig­ure). If my impression is correct. ethnicity may yield unforeseen benefits as a concept linking different theo­ries and concepts in several social sciences, linking the concerns of specialists ~n different geographical areas. and linking area studies and the disciplines .

Some other benefits have already been mentioned. Ethnicity is of interest to virtually all the social sciences. It is a ubiquitous social force. about which further knowledge would be useful in the world of practical affairs. Moreover. its study .appears to be at a stage where it would be significantly advanced by a program of cross-cultural interarea research. Most of the method­ological equipment needed to carry forward the com­parative study of ethnicity exists today. and there is already a considerable consensus about the theoretically interesting and significant questions to orient research in the immediate future.

The costs and risks of undertaking research on eth­nicity cannot be easily dismissed. Nevertheless. the con­ference participants believe that if one proceeds with caution. sensitivity. and consideration. the potential benefits clearly outweigh the costs.

VOLUME 28. NUMBER 4

COMMITTEE BRIEfS BIOLOGICAL BASES OF SOCIAL BEHAVIOR

David C. Glass (chairman). Paul T. Baker. Peter B. Dews, Daniel X. Freedman, Gardner Lindzey. Gerald E. Mc­Clearn. Stanley Schachter. Richard F. Thompson; staff, David Jenness

"Energy Flow in Human Communities." the edited pro­ceedings of a workshop held in New York. January 30-February 1. 1974. is now available to interested persons from the Human Adaptability Coordinating Office. U.S. International Biological Program. 513 Social Science Build­ing. Pennsylvania State University. University Park. Penn­sylvania 16802. The report is some 130 pages in length and is available without charge.

The workshop was sponsored jointly by the Human Adaptability Coordinating Office of the IBP and the Com­mittee on Biological Bases of Social Behavior. and was made possible by grants to both sponsors from the National Sci­ence Foundation. The workshop focused generally on the implications of energy flow studies for the fields of ecology. human biology. and the social sciences. The program was organized by Messrs. Baker and Jenness.

SOCIOLINGUISTICS

Allen D. Grimshaw (cochairman). Dell Hymes (cochair­man). Charles A. Ferguson. Charles J. Fillmore, Eduardo Herml.ndez-Ch .• Rolf Kjolseth. Gillian Sankoff. Joel Sherzer. Roger W. Shuy; staff, David Jenness

During the year 1974-75 the committee is sponsoring a series of Working Papers in Sociolinguistics. General editors for the series are Mr. Sherzer of the committee and Richard Bauman of the University of Texas at Austin. The papers are being prepared at and distributed by the Southwest Educational Development Laboratory. Austin. with which Messrs. Sherzer and Bauman are also associated. Support for the series has been provided to the Council by the Grant Foundation.

The series continues. in somewhat different form. an in­formal series of working papers organized first at the Uni­versity of Pennsylvania and subsequently at that University and the University of Texas at Austin. The new series is intended to give rapid circulation of papers in sociolin­guistics to a wide but appropriately selected audience. Such papers include unpublished manuscripts. working drafts of papers in preparation. and materials that do not lend themselves .to formal publication but that nevertheless de­serve dissemination. Selection of working papers for inclu­sion in the ~eries is the joint responsibility of the editors and members of the committee.

Working papers in the series will be distributed in sets several times each year. Scholars in the field of sociolin­guistics. including advanced graduate students. may ask to be included in the mailing list for the series. Requests

DECEMBER 1974

should be addressed either directly to the editors at the Southwest Educational Development Laboratory. 211 East Seventh Street. Austin. Texas 78701. or to the Social Science Research Council, Committee on Sociolinguistics. All papers are distributed without charge.

On September 6-8. 1974 the committee sponsored a con­ference on Language Input and Acquisition: Modification of Speech Addressed to Young Children. The conference was held at the House of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Boston. and was made possible by support provided to the Council by the Grant Foundation. The conference involved over 30 participants. from Australia. Canada. England. the Netherlands. Sweden. and Kenya. as well as the United States.

The papers and research reports presented exemplified three different approaches: experimental studies of modifi­cations in the speech addressed to young children. charac­terizations of baby talk registers in various languages. and cross-cultural interaction studies of language socialization. Overviews of these three approaches were presented. respec­tively. by Catherine Snow. University of Amsterdam; Mr. Ferguson; and Ben Blount. University of Texas at Austin­the organizers of the conference. Of the other presentations. eight reported on English. and one each on Dutch. Latvian. Berber. Kipsigis. and American sign language. Three dis­cussants-Susan Ervin-Tripp. University of California. Berkeley; Henrietta Cedergren. University of Quebec; and Mr. Grimshaw-commented critically in response to the papers. and introduced linguistic and sociolinguistic per­spectives not emphasized by the other participants.

In several respects the conference was different from other psycholinguistic conferences: Most of the participants were women (many mothers). Field anthropologists and experi­mental psychologists talked about the same data around the same table. Everyone recognized the existence of syste­matic modification of adult speech in addressing infants. Many participants were convinced of the importance of interactional patterns and discourse rules in language de­velopment.

The data presented helped to clarify the limits of uni­versal vs. cultural and individual phenomena in the adapta­tion of speech to children. but the participants recognized the problem of determining the relationship between such "tailored input" and the actual language development of the child. Recent research still sheds little light on the re­lationshi p. and the conference discussed the inadequacy of frequency data alone. given the possibility of threshold or triggering phenomena. Speakers at the conference strug­gled. also. with the problem of understanding the nature of registers and interactional patterns-what they are. how they are acquired. and their relation to language develop­ment in general. Finally. the relation of input research to the analysis of linguistic variability and notions of simplifi­cation was seen as a challenging area for exploration.

65

PERSONNEL COUNCIL .ST AFF

Dorothy Soderlund retired from the Council staff in September after serving thirteen years with the Foreign Area Fellowship Program. Word of her death on December II, 1974 was received as this issue of Items was in press.

Born in Seattle, where she attended a business. college, Dorothy Soderlund joined the U.S. Department of State in 1937 and served until 1943 in the press office in Washington. She was assigned to posts in Algeria, Italy, and Germany until 1946. Her next position was in Colombia with the World Bank and then with the government of Colombia on an economic development project.

In 1951 Miss Soderlund joined the Fund for the Advance­ment of Education, then a subsidiary organization of the Ford Foundation, where she became a specialist in fellow­ship administration. She served with the Foreign Area Fellowship Program at the Ford Foundation until it trans­ferred administration of the Program to the joint auspices of the Council and the American Council of Learned Societies in 1962. During these years she served as deputy director of the Foreign Area Fellowship Program, which led her to establish close associations with many fellows; generations of ACLS and SSRC fellows considered her their special friend and consultant at the rrogram. She edited three editions of the Directory of Foreign Area Fellows; the most recent edition was published in 1973.

Dorothy Soderlund's avocation was landscape gardening, which she pursued with professional skill and dedication. She had a certificate in landscape design from the New York Botanical Garden and one in English landscape 'design from Worcester College, Oxford. In retirement she lived at her home in Remsenberg, Long Island. Contributions · in her memory may be made to the New York Botanical Garden Scholarshi pFund.

Susan J. Pharr joined the staff of the Council on October 21, 1974, primarily to work with the Joint Committee on Japanese Studies and the Dissertation Fellowship Selection Committee for the Asia Program. Immediately prior· to joining the Council, she was a Fellow at the East Asian Institute, Columbia University, where she completed her doctoral dissertation in the Department of Political Science. The title of her dissertation is "Sex and Politics: Women in Political and Social Movement~ in Japan." At Columbia University she was the recipient of a number of fellowships and awards, including the Woodrow Wilson Fellowship and a Ford Foundation Women Studies Fellowship, A Phi Betta Kappa graduate of Emory University, she has served as consultant to the Ford Foundation Task Force on Women, 1972-74; as an editorial associate at Encyclo­pedia Britannica, Tokyo, 1971; and as a Visiting Foreign Research Scholar, Sophia University, Tokyo, 1971-72. Miss Pharr's field work for her doctoral dissertation was carried out in Japan during 1970-72. In addition to her competence

66

in the Japan field, Miss Pharr is also a West Africa specialist, with research experience in Senegal and the Gambia. Her languages include Hausa and French as well as Japanese. She is the author of "The Japanese Woman: Evolving Views of Life and Role" in Lewis Austin, ed., Japan in the 1980's (Yale University Press, 1975); and "The Status of Women in Japan: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives" in Janet Giele and Audrey Smock, eds., Women Around the W01'ld, to be .published in 1975.

LATIN AMERICA AND CARIBBEAN AREA PROGRAM: AWARDS FOR PREDOCTORAL

RESEARCH TRAINING In addition to the Fellowships for Dissertation Research

and other awards under the Latin America and Caribbean area program reported in the September issue of Items, the following awards were made during 1974:

COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH TRAINING FELLOWSHIPS

These fellowshi ps enable a professor or research associ­ate and 3-4 students from a Latin American or Caribbean university or research institution and a visiting North American professor and an equal number of graduate stu­dents to undertake jointly, in Latin America or the Carib­bean area, a 3-month (July-September) research project of special interest to the senior scholars. Three projects were conducted in 1974:

Project I: Analysis of Public Policies and Their Impacts, with Special Reference to Postwar Argentina; Codirectors: Guillermo O'Donnell, University of Michigan, Oscar Osz­lak, Torcuato Di Tella Institute, Philippe C. Schmitter, University of Chicago; research site: Torcuato Di Tella Institute

Latin American participants Juan Orlando Buitrago D'Illeman, candidate for the li­

centiate in political science, University of the Andes Lila Felicitas Milutin, lawyer, licentiate in political science,

Salvador University Roberto Miro Quesada, licentiate in sociology, University of

San Marcos Miguel Leon Prado Oyarzun, licentiate in law, University

of Chile

North American participants Phyllis Coombes, graduate student in political science, Uni­

versitv of Chicago Joan Lipton, graduate student in political science, Uni­

versitv of Texas at Austin Benjamin Most, graduate student in political science, In­

diana University George Oclander, graduate student in political science, Yale

University

Project II: Political Mobilization and the Extension of the Chilean Electorate; Codirectors: Patricio E. Chaparro, Cath­olic University of Chile; Arturo Valenzuela, Duke Univer­sity; research site: Catholic University of Chile

Latin American pm'ticipants Carlos Bascuiian. historian, Institute of History and Na­

tional Congress Library, Chile

VOLUME 28. NUMBER. 4

Fernando Bustamente, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Uni-versity of Chile

Jorge Heine, lawyer, University of Chile

North American participants John Giditz, graduate student in political science, Uni­

versity of North Carolina Daniel Levy, graduate student in political science, Uni­

versity of North Carolina ' Timothy McDaniel, graduate student in sociology, Uni­

versity of North Carolina Stuart Thomas, graduate student in political science, Co-

lumbia University

Project 111: Political Parties and the 1974 Colombian Elec­tions; Codirectors: Fernando Cepeda Ulloa, University of the Andes; Gary Hoskin, State University of New York at · Buffalo; research site: University of the Andes, Bogota

Latin American participants Maria Christina de Caro, licentiate in political science, Uni­

versi ty of the Andes Angela G6mez de Martinez, licentiate in political science,

University of the Andes Monica Lanzetta de Pardo, candidate for the licentiate in

political science, University of the Andes

North American participants Gast6n Fernandez, graduate student in political science,

University of Wisconsin Linda Franz, graduate student in political science, Uni-

versity of Illinois . Timothy O'Dea Gauhan; graduate student in political sci­

ence, Rice University David Waring, graduate student in sociology, State Uni-

versity of New York at Stony Brook

INTER-AMERICAN RESEARCH TRAINING SEMINAR

On Feminine Perspectives in Social Science Research in Latin America, June 24 - Augus.t 17, 1974, at CIDAL, Cuernavaca, Mexico; Directors: Aurelia G. Sanchez Mor­ales, CIDAL; Elsa M. Chanev, Fordham University; Helen I. Safa, Livingston College, Rutgers University Frances T. Aaron, graduate student in anthropology, Rut­

gers University

Maria Lourdes Baeza, Buenos Aires Maria Amelia Meirelles Botta, graduate student in social

science, Universi.ty of Sao Paulo Carmen D. Deere, gradua-te student in agricultural econom­

ics, University of California, Berkeley Susan J. Farrington, graduate student in political science,

University of New Mexico Patricia M. Garrett, graduate student in sociology, Uni­

versity of Wisconsin Jean Marie Gilruth, graduate student in anthropology,

Ibero-American University Mary Goldsmi·th, graduate student in anthropology, Uni­

versity of Connecticut Elsa Gomez Gomez, Central Regional Population Corpora­

tion, Bogota Anna K. Bennett Howells, graduate student in anthropol­

ogy, University of Arizona Helena Solberg Ladd, Rio de Janeiro Cynthia Jeffress Little, graduate student in history, Temple

University Maria Milagros L6pez-Garriga, graduate student in social

psychology, City University of New York Blanca Fernandez Montenegro, graduate student in social

science, Catholic University of Peru Maria Teresa Moraes, graduate student in communication,

American University Barbara Norwood, fellow, Radcliffe Institute Program for

Independent Study Carmen Ramos, graduate student in history, State Uni­

versity of New York at Stony Brook Marsha E. Renwanz, graduate student in anthropology,

Stanford University Alicia Reyes, graduate student in politics, Princeton Uni­

versi.ty Nelly E. Santos, Assistant Profes<or of Romance Languages,

Baruch College, City University of New York Marianne Camp Schmink, graduate student in anthropolo­

gy, University of Texas at Austin Guillermina Arauco Soria, Department for the Promotion

of Women, CODEX, La Paz, Bolivia Marta Tienda, graduate student in sociologv, University of . Texas at Austin

Mercedes Lvnn de Uriarte, graduate student in American studies, Yale University

NEW PUBLICATIONS Social Science Research Council: The Fil'st Fifty Yem's,

by Elbridge Sibley. Organizational history; bibliographies; lists of members, officers, staff, and committees. New York: Social Science Research Council, September 1974. 150 pages. $3.00 prepaid. Orders should be addressed to Social Science Research Council, Publications, 605 Third Ave­nue, New York, N.Y. 10016.

Social Indicators, 1973: A Review Symposium, edited by Roxann A. Van Dusen. Product of the symposium held by the Center for Coordination of Research on Social Indicators, February 21-23, 1974. 95 pages. $3.00 prepaid. Orders should be addressed to SI '73 Review Symposium, Social Science Research Council, 605 Third Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016.

The Chinese City between Two Worlds, edited by Mark Elvin and G. William Skinner. Product of the conference on urban society and political development of modern China, cosponsored by the former Subcommittees on Research on Chinese Society and on Chinese Govern-

DECEMBER 1974

ment and Politics, Joint Committee on Contemporary China, December 28, 1968 - January 4, 1969. Stanford: Stanford University Press, November 1974. 471 pages. $18.75.

Latin America and the United States: The Changing Politi­cal Realities, edited by Julio Cotler and Richard R. Fagen. Product of a conference held by the Joint Commit­tee on Latin American Studies, November 30 - December 3, 1972. Stanford: Stanford University Press, July 1974. 42R pages. Cloth, 517.50; paper, S~.95.

Religion and Ritual in Chinese Society, edited by Arthur P. Wolf. Papers of a conference held by the former Sub­committee on Research on Chinese Society, Joint Com­mittee on Contemporary China, October li-15, 1971. Stanford: Stanford University Press, December 1974. 390 pages. $15.00.

Social Experimentation, edited by Henry W. Riecken and 'Robert F. Boruch, with chapters written by Donald T. Campbell, Nathan Caplan, Thomas K. Glennan, Jr., John

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W. Pratt, Albert Rees, and Walter Williams. Product of the Committee on Experimen~ation as a Method for Planning and Evaluating Social Intervention. New York: Academic Press, November 1974. 357 pages. $15.95.

Soviet Works on Korea, 1945-197Q, by George Ginsburgs. Prepared for the Joint Committee on Korean Studies. Los Angeles: University of Southern California Press, 1973 [1974]. 180 pages. Cloth, $9.50; paper, $6.50.

Urban and Social Economics in Market and Planned Econ­omies: Vol. I, Policy, Planning, and Development; Vol. 2, Housing, Income, and Environment, edited by Alan A. Brown, Joseph A. Licari, and Egon Neuberger. Product of a conference sponsored by the former Joint Committee on Slavic and East European Studies, November 2-4, 1972. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1974. Vol. I, 476 pages, $22.50; Vol. 2, 368 pages, $20.00.

ANNOUNCEMENT SUMMER TRAINING INSTITUTE FOR SOCIAL SCIENTISTS ON THE GENETICS

OF DEVELOPMENTAL PROCESSES, INSTITUTE FOR BEHAVIORAL GENETICS,

BOULDER, JUNE 16-AUGUST I, 1975

This seven-week summer institute will be conducted under the auspices of the Council's Committee on Biological Bases of Social Behavior, with support provided to the Council by the National Institute of Mental Health.

The purpose of the institute is to provide a conceptual framework of genetics for young scholars whose primary interest is in the developmental processes of behavior. Social scientists from psychology or anthropology are presump­tively appropriate candidates for the institute, but those from other disciplines concerned with human development are also invited to apply, especially those with an appro­priate behavioral background and at least some knowledge of biological science.

Instruction will be offered at the advanced graduate and the postdoctoral levels. Applicants should have completed a minimum of one year of graduate instruction prior to the beginning of the institute. All participants are required to attend the entire seven-week program. Applicants must be citizens of the United States or must have filed a Declara­tion of Intent to become a citizen. About 20 students can be accepted. ~

Stipends will -be available in the amount of $630 for predoctoral trainees and $770 for postdoctoral trainees. Travel expenses will be covered up ·to the equivalent of round-trip economy-class jet airline fare. Allowances for dependents cannot be provided.

The program of the institute is designed to provide students with an appreciation of the different types of genetic knowledge that have relevance to behavior in gen­eral, and with a frame of reference for conceptualizing problems of behavior development specifically. It should also provide an appropriate background for those who may

wish to continue study in the area, with the aim of acquir­ing a level of skills adequate for p~rticipating in original research on the ~enetics of behavioral development.

The course WIll consist of lectures, laboratory exercises, and demonstrations. Special emphasis will be placed . throughout on opportunities for individual discussion with staff members and other students. The curriculum will in­clude discussions of the principal concepts of major areas of genetics: transmission genetics, cytogenetics, quantitative genetics, and developmental genetics. Topics to be discussed will include quantitative models of epigenesis and develop­mental canalization, research on the operon model of gene action and its relevance to developmental processes, chromo­some puffing and hormonal control in development, chrom­osomal anomalies, gene linkage, pharmacogenetics, genetic counseling, mental retardation, perception, personality, and cognitive abilities.

The director of the institute will be Gerald E. McClearn, Professor of Psychology, University of Colorado, and Direc­tor of the Institute for Behavioral Genetics. Robert Plomin, Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Colorado, will be the institute coordinator. Other members of the teaching staff will be drawn from the faculties of the University of Tennessee, University of Texas, State Univer­sity of New York, University of Minnesota, and other uni­versities. There will be guest lecturers for special topics.

Application forms and further informatIon may be ob-tained from: .

Dr. Gerald E. McClearn Institute for Behavioral Genetics University of Colorado Boulder, Colorado 80302

Completed applications and supporting documents must be received by February 28, 1975. They will be reviewed by the Committee on Biological Bases of Social Behavior. Notification of awards will be made about March 21, 1975.

SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH COUNCIL

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

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

Directors, 1974: WILUAM J. BAUMOL, ALLAN G. BOGUE. LAWRENCE A. CREMIN. LEON EISENBERG. LEON D. EpSTEIN. SUSAN M. ERVIN-TIUPP. RICHARD

F. FENNO. JR •• LEO A. GOODMAN. EDWARD E. JONES. LAWRENCE R. KLEIN, GARDNER LINDZEY. LEON LIPSON. CORA BAGLEY MARRE1T. HERBERT

MCCLOSKY. SALLY FALK MOORE. JAMES N. MORGAN, MURRAY G. MURPHEY. ALFONSO ORTIZ. JOHN W. PRATT, ALICE S. ROSSI. WILLIAM H. SEWELL.

ELEANOR BERNERT SHELDON. ELLlOTT P. SKINNER, M. BREWSTER SMITH. JANET T. SPENCE. EDWARD J. TAAFFE. KARL E. TAEUBER. JOHN M. THOMPSON.

ROBERT E, WARD, CHARLES V. WILLIE

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

GATES. LOUIS WOLF GOODMAN, ELEANOR C. ISBELL, PATRICK G. MADDOX. ROWLAND L. MITCHELL. JR •• ALICE L. MORTON. ROBERT PARKE. SUSAN J.

PHARR. MICHAEL POTASHNIK, ROXANN A. VAN DUSEN, NICHOLAS ZILL; NORMAN MANN. Business Manager; CATHERINE V. RONNAN. Financial Secre­tary; NANCY CARMICHAEL. Librarian

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