CLASS, CITIZENSHIP, AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT

by T. H. Marshall ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

One of the rarer joys Professor Marshall's collection reveals is a sociologist who can still string sentences together suggesting sense, strength and grace, and not (like Mills) befuddling firecrackers or (like Sorokin) do deep knee bends in mystic ialectics. These essays- which, incidentally, introduce the engaging Englishman to these shores- are concerned with the causal processes and conflicts inherent in citizenship and class structures, in social policy and personality, in cultural values and variables. Methodology, as such, is at a minimum; so too is theorizing. The professor deals in the sociology of development, emphasizing comparative and historical disciplines, always connecting the past with the evolving present, but citing limitations here, cautioning on differences there. Sociology, he says, ""can choose units of study of manageable size"", in which the specific social structures, their functions and frictions, are expressed and explained. Reshapings and refashionings rear up throughout his prescriptions: educate the anxiety-security complex; democracy's equality/inequality contradictions, though chronic, are capable of compromise; the soulful Welfare State must reconquer the soulless Affluent one; be cognizant of the constantly changing character of professional stratifications, status symbols and class wars. At heart, philosophical pragmatism pumps the progressive preferences, thoughtfully separating the strands, the statutory and voluntary, the public and private needs. A scholarly boon of considerable clarity and charm.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1963

Categories: NONFICTION