Sociology

This paper looks at some available members' methods for dealing with perceptual accounts that occasion non-acceptance on the part of account-recipients. Perceptual-account producers and recipients include former mental patients, mental welfare officers, `flying-saucer' witnesses and investigators of such sightings. The paper constitutes an ethnomethodological discussion of the management of communicative and cognitive order.

The paper is composed of three sections: (1) Addresses the debate between positivism and ethnomethodology; defeats positivism's claims of incorporation or tangentiality; and raises the issue of the revolutionary potential of ethnomethodology itself. (2) Analyzes some of the problems involved in identifying developments and revolutions within bodies of knowledge. (3) Compares conventional and alternative accounts of a particular action setting with which the authors have been specially concerned.

Two types of musical meaning are distinguished: purely musical meaning which can be grasped only by experiencing a piece of music as it unfolds through time, and extra-musical meaning which relates music to non-musical concepts such as emotions, ideas, etc. It is argued that neither types of meaning are intrinsic to a musical object but depend upon an individual's interpretation of that object. The way an object is interpreted is largely determined by the individual's musical culture. Following Schutz, musical culture is defined as the individual's collected musical experiences, socially derived and socially sanctioned, and the ways in which it determines the individual's understanding of music are discussed. The concept of musical culture is expanded, in particular to include the idea of value (one type of extra-musical meaning). Musical objects do not have the same value or worth for everyone: differences exist both across different societies and within the same society. This is to say that because groups have different musical cultures they will also have different musical tastes, reflected in their understanding of, and their approval or disapproval of, certain types of music. An example of the type of research that this approach to musical meaning can generate is given.

Critics of the convergence thesis have not seriously challenged the notion that occupational structure is technologically determined and a relatively invariable feature of industrialized societies. This paper discusses some of the conceptual problems raised by the account of the transformation of occupational structure to be found in the convergence literature. The issues are examined with reference to some distinctive features of the Soviet occupational structure which have resulted from policies pursued in accordance with ideological considerations and deliberate growth strategies. The evidence shows that the state of technology cannot be viewed as an autonomous variable and that policies which counteract or reinforce the workings of market forces are of crucial importance. Some of the implications of variations in occupational structure for patterns of social stratification are discussed; recent studies of stratification in state socialist countries have tended to by-pass these questions. The sociological causes of diversity in the occupational structure of advanced societies need to be further explored.

After a period of vigorous growth in the 1930S and 1940s, sociology as an academic discipline in China ceased to exist soon after the establishment of the People's Republic. During a brief period of free expression in 1957, some of the former sociologists sought a place for sociology within the framework of socialism. Their attempt failed as they tried to link the revival of sociology with the political vision of creating an effective opposition party of intellectuals.

Though professional and institutional sociology does not exist, other forms of social inquiry are carried out in contemporary China. The first area of research involves some former sociologists and anthropologists in the study of national minorities and emigrant Chinese communities. The second area includes social and historical studies of four institutions—the family, the factory, the village, and the communes-which have been conducted as part of a popular campaign to instil revolutionary consciousness among the masses. The third area consists of the survey research carried out mainly by party cadres to formulate, implement, and evaluate policies.

These forms of social inquiry are mainly shaped by the political pre-occupations in contemporary Chinese society, namely, the `contradictions' of `rightist conservatism and leftist adventurism', `democracy and centralism', and `redness and expertness'. The demise of professional sociology also testifies to the shaky institutional roots that the group of western-trained intellectuals had in modem China.