Social Policy and Sociology

Social Policy and Sociology explores the relationship between social policy and sociology and covers topics such as social inequities and individual stress in the family cycle. America's youth and their problems are also given attention, along with the relationship between graduate training and federal funding.

Comprised of 24 chapters, this book begins with an assessment of the proper relationship between sociology and public policy, and whether sociologists should become actively engaged in social engineering. Methods of training graduate students for doing policy research are also discussed. Subsequent chapters explore community planning and poverty; policy implications of race relations; formal models as a guide to social policy; and the interrelationships between governmental policy, social structure, and public values. Social problems such as alcoholism and drug addiction are also considered, together with the changing relationship between government support and graduate training. Finally, the what and why of policy research in sociology are examined, and possible changes in graduate training and professional practice in sociology are evaluated.

This monograph will be of interest to sociologists as well as social and public policymakers.

Contenu

List of Contributors
Preface
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Part I Assessment of Policy Research
Section A Social Inequities and Their Effects
Policy Shibboleths and the Reality-Testing of Research: Are the Poor Always with Us When We Make Sociology?
Ideological Filters and Bureaucratic Responses in Interpreting Research: Community Planning and Poverty
Race Relations: Some Policy Implications, Proximate and Remote, of a Negative Finding
Policy Change and Grassroots Inertia: The Case of Metropolitan Services
Formal Models as a Guide to Social Policy: Issues in Population Dynamics
Commentaries
John E. Brandl
G. Franklin Edwards
Elton F. Jackson
Maurice Jackson
William T. Liu
Robert McCinnis
Sheldon Stryker
Section B Individual Stress in the Family Cycle
Sociological Critics versus Institutional Elites in the Politics of Research Application: Examples from Medical Care
The Intermingling of Governmental Policy, Social Structure, and Public Values: The Case of the Changing Family
Reconceptualizing Social Problems in Light of Scholarly Advances: Problem Drinking and Alcoholism
Policy Enthusiasms for Untested Theories and the Role of Quantitative Evidence: Labeling and Mental Illness
Applying General Variables to Specific Problems: Aging and the Life Cycle
Commentaries
Charles E. Bowerman
Joseph Elder
Walter R. Cove
August B. Hollingshead
Marvin B. Sussman
Guy E. Swanson
Robert N. Wilson
Section C American Youth and Their Problems
The Natural History of an Applied Theory: Differential Opportunity and "Mobilization for Youth"
Inappropriate Theories and Inadequate Methods as Policy Plagues: Self-Reported Delinquency and the Law
Problems of Research in Response to "National Emergencies": Drugs and Addiction
On the Remarkable Absence of Nonacademic Implications in Academic Research: An Example from Ethnic Studies
Sociological Understanding versus Policy Design and Intervention: The Adolescent Crisis
Commentaries
Wendell Bell
Charles E. Bidwell
Herbert L. Costner
Troy Duster
David R. Heise
Laura Nader
Albert Pepitone
Hanan C. Selvin
Part II Graduate Training and Federal Funding
Report on a Survey of Graduate Training
Remarks on the Changing Relationship between Government Support and Graduate Training
Research Training from the Perspective of Government Funding
Putting Sociologists to Work
Epilogue
Appendix
Carmel Conference Participants
Carmel Conference Program
Name Index