The Last Half-Century

by Janowitz, Morris

• ISBN13: 9780226393070
• ISBN10: 0226393070
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1984-02-01
• Publisher: Univ of Chicago Pr

Summary

The Last Half-Centuryrepresents the culmination of a lifetime of scholarship by Morris Janowitz. In this comprehensive and systematic analysis of the major trends in American society during the past fifty years, he probes the weakening of popular party affiliations and the increased inability of elected representatives to rule. Centering his work on the crucial concept of social control, Janowitz orders and assesses a vast amount of empirical research to clarify the failure of basic social institutions to resolve our chronic conflicts. For Janowitz, social control denotes a society's capacity to regulate itself within a moral framework that transcends simple self-interest. He poses urgent questions: Why has social control been so drastically weakened in our advanced industrial society? And what strategies can we use to strengthen it again? The expanation rests in part on the changes in social structure which make it more and more complicated for citizens to calculate their political self-interest. At the same time, complex economic and defense problems also strain an already overburdened legislative system, making effective, responsive political rule increasingly difficult. Janowitz concludes by assessing the response of the social sciences to the pressing problem of social control and asserts that new forms of citizen participation in the government must be found.

Author Biography

Morris Janowitz is the Lawrence A. Kimpton Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Sociology and the College at the University of Chicago. His most recent books include The Reconstruction of Patriotism: Education for Civic Consciousness, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

Table of Contents

List of Tables

Preface

Frame of Reference

Sociological Objectives

The Idea of Socialnbsp;Control

The Logic of Systemic Analysis

Master Trends, 1920-1976

Political Participation: Emergence of Weak Regimes

Social Stratification: Occupation and Welfare

Military Participation and Total War

The System of Social Organization

Bureaucratic Institutions: The Hierarchical Dimension

Residential Community: The Geographical Dimension

Societal Socialization: Mass Persuasion

Societal Socialization: Legitimate Coercion

Rationality, Institution Building, and Social Control

The Management of Interpersonal Relations

Experiments in Community Participation

Political Elites and Social Control

Epilogue

Author Index

Analytic and Subject Index

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