The Implications of Economic Planning for Sociology

Wt THEN the basic structure of a cultural system is generally accepted, its social sciences tend to focus on the analysis of how the given cultural system works, i.e., on the discovery of its processes and laws, on minor remedial changes in details of this going system, on the charting of trends. And such a situation, playing down concern with large statements of alternatives in goal, structure, or manner of operation of the culture, encourages scientific advances in such things as quantification, methodology, classification, and restatement of refined aspects of the culture's own philosophy. But when the basic structure of a cultural system is thrown into question, then what was before the concern of only occasional marginal dissenters may become a necessary main concern of the social sciences. The question I am raising is whether the clash of institutions that shakes the ground under our feet today is just a temporary tremor that will leave our way to resume its course essentialy unchanged after the war, or whether the present is in fact an abrupt, enforced transition from the familiar American institutional system to a new and fundamentally different one. Is it a transition demanding of us social scientists a basic overhauling of our apparatus of problems, including many of the basic assumptions that underlie them? Social science, as society's organ for thinking ahead, cannot afford just to wait and see. We human beings, including social scientists, differ in our interest in and ability to sense change-in-process. As you members of the American Sociological Society look at George Lundberg and me reading papers before you, you probably identify us as persons who place ourselves rather far apart

Economics · Sociology · Economic Theory and Institutions

• The Disproportionate Emphasis on Description in Social Problem Texts

  Abbott P Herman•Social Problems•1954

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