Resocialization: A Neglected Paradigm

The micro clinical sociologist is better understood as being a social role change agent than as a “counselor”\u27 or a “otherapist.” Many of the personal problems which clients bring to clinicians are the result of dysfunctional social roles. These clients are best helped by Resocialization, that is, by the alteration or replacement of their failed roles. This can be accomplished by a) reexperiencing the failed roles, b) letting go of them, and c) renegotiating new, more satisfying roles

Dysfunctional Role Maintenance

Many of the problems that clients bring to clinical sociologists are caused by dysfunctional social roles that they are unable to change. These roles are often fixed in place by dysfunctional variations of the mechanisms that normally stabilize role structures. The cognitive, emotional, volitional, and social components of role scripts that ordinarily keep roles from changing also serve to maintain painful ones. Understanding how they accomplish this is the first step toward facilitating effective personal growth

Book Review: Mismatch

Review of the book MisMatch: How Affirmative Action Hurts Students It’s Intended to Help, and Why Universities Won’t Admit It, by Richard H. Sander and Stuart Taylor, Jr

The Social Generalist\u27s Dilemma

We humans are social generalists. Our behavior is open to modification, but potential changes are constrained by the requirements of social cohesion. This exposes us to a dilemma. A concurrent need to be both flexible and stable introduces inescapable conflicts. Moreover, the biological mechanisms that evolved to meet this challenge produce their own contradictions. Thus, while social hierarchies can be functional, they can also be divisive. Whereas they allow us to collaborate on complex projects, they may produce both arrogance and follies that interfere with flexibly resolving disputes. Morality too, although it is designed to control interpersonal conflicts, can exacerbate them. The orthodoxies and idealism that result from our efforts to make necessary adjustments often have the opposite effect. As a consequence, the social generalist’s dilemma is never fully eliminated. It remains as a limitation on how effective social reforms can be

Review: Coming Apart

Review of Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010, by Charles Murray. New York: Crown, 2012

Book Review: Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life.

Book Review: Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life, By Annette Lareau

Historical Amnesia

While safely ensconced on an American campus, it is easy to forget that people in different parts of the world may see things differently. My encounter with Romanian high school students was a reminder of this. Teenagers from around the world are apt to understand history through a veil of patriotism and ignorance. This need not be based on malice and can be addressed with honest and respectful communications

Socially Adjustable Morality: A Neo-Functional Account

Morality has always been contentious. Thus, in recent years, absolutists have been aligned against relativists. Both sides, however, are mistaken about the nature of morality. Absolutists come in many varieties, which include: the religious, the naturalist, the philosophical, the Marxist, and the scientific. Meanwhile, relativists are divided into social and individual camps. Opposed to both groups are the moral nihilists who may be classified as nice, nasty, and skeptical. Sadly, all miss the mark because they do not account for morality as it actually operates. A socially adjustable model fits the facts much better. It describes morality as consisting of 1) informal rules that are paradigmatically transmitted, 2) created via polarized social negotiations, and 3) maintained through the agency of intense emotions such as anger, guilt, shame, and disgust. Together these explain how morality can be simultaneously stable and changeable. They also elucidate the manner in which morality controls important social conflicts