Items Vol. 37 No.1 (1983)

SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH COUNCIL

VOLUME 37 • NUMBER 1 • MARCH 1983 605 THIRD AVENUE. NEW YORK, N.Y. 10158

Experimenting with Scale: Changes in the Units of Production, Culture, and Governance in Western Europe A new program of the Joint Committee

on Western Europe lly Philippe C. Schmitter*

SINCE ITS INCEPTION IN 1975, the Joint Committee on Western Europe has defined its purpose primarily in terms of research planning. It has sought to influence the agendas of social scientific inquiry on that part of the world by exploring topics which its members regarded as neglected or misspecified by existing scholarship and which its members felt were promising and tractable enough to warrant the concerted attention of a small group of North American and Western European scholars for a protracted period.

During its first phase of activity, the committee focused on the issue of "Organizing Interests"; its product, edited by Suzanne Berger,! has already had a considerable impact on several social science disciplines. "Changing the Boundaries of the Political" was the next topic chosen; Charles Maier is currently putting the finishing touches on the product of that effort.

Planning for the third phase Faced with the difficult task of continuing such a tradition of successful innovation, a small planning group was formed to explore possible topics for the third phase of the committee's existence. After two long discussions (Washington, D.C. in May 1982 and Airlie House, Virginia in October 1982), the participants identified a core theme which they believe will be able to attract and retain the attention of a larger, CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE

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* The author is currently professor of political and social SCIences at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, on leave from the Department of Political Science, University of Chicago. He serves as chairman of the Joint Committee on Western Europe (see box on page 2).

1 Suzanne D. Berger, editor. Organizing Interests in Western Europe. London and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981.

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Experimenting with Scale: Changes in the Units of Production, Culture, and Governance in Western Europe-Philippe C. Schmitter The Council's Role in Research on Child Development-Lonnie R . Sherrod Perspectives on Latin American Population Research-Thomas W . Merrick Recent Activities of the Committee on Life-Course Perspectives on Human Development Current Activities at the Council -The measurement of occupation (page 25) -Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) (page 26) .,-Survey of dissertation fellows in employment and training (page 27) -Reviews of African research (page 28) - Latin American research (page 28) Personnel -John W. Hall honored by Japanese government -Staff appointment Newly-issued Council Publications

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multidisciplinary group of scholars and which is both sensitive to historical trends and relevant for current policy choices. They have tentatively labeled it: "Experimenting with Scale: Changes in the Units of Production, Culture, and Governance in Western Europe"-continuing the committee's established penchant for gerunds. This article attempts to reflect the conclusion of the two discussions, but the author is solely responsible for the present formulation.

The point of departure in these discussions was the need participants felt to raise questions about the units which scholars have been using in theory to analyze economic, social, and political events and trends and to draw attention to changes in the units which European actors have been using in practice to organize their economic interests, their cultural identities, and their political authority. While Europe appears in many ways to be peculiarly fixed in its spatial, functional, cultural, and proprietary demarcations by well-established law and custom-compared with the "new nations" of Africa and Asia or even with the "middle-aged" ones of the Americas-it has long been recognized that a distinctive feature of this part of the world has been its extreme "crowdedness" and "interconnectedness." Nowhere else are so many and so different units of economic production, social existence, and political choice so near each other physically, so sensitive to each other's actions and ideas, and, at least until recently, so dangerous for each other's survival.

All attempts to order or manage this overlapping mosaic through centralized means have failedwhether attempted by force of arms, by unity of religion, by similarity of culture, or by integration of markets. These unsuccessful attempts at forging uniformity or congruence have left "bloody but unbowed" an astonishingly resilient system of national states, economies, and societies, themselves further divided into highly diverse sets of territorial, functional, and cultural subunits.

North Americans are accustomed to thinking of their own systems as pluralistic, but if one considers Western Eu~ope as a whole (or even parts of i~ in detail), the pattern of identities, interests, and authorities is even more complex and a good deal less congruent. Imagine the automobile worker in Stuttgart, the artichoke grower in Morlaix, the clothing manufacturer in Prato, or the social worker in Birmingham, and the puzzling array of sentiments and choices he or she faces: • Between loyalty to communities, ranging from the immediate neighborhood or village, to the sur2

Joint Committee on Western Europe Members and Participants 1982~J The Joint Committee on Western Europe is sponsored by the Council and the American Council of Learned Societies. Its current members are: PHILIPPE C. SCHMITTER, European University Institute (Florence), CHAIRMAN PETER A. GoUREVITCH, University of California, San Diego GUDMUND HERNES, University of Bergen PETER J. KATZENSTEIN, Cornell University CHARLES S. MAIER, Harvard University FRITZ W. SCHARPF, International Institute of Management (Berlin) Jose Maria Maravall, University of Madrid, was a member until the October election in Spain; he resigned from the committee when he received a ministerial appointment. Other participants in the 1982 Washington, D.C. and Airlie House, Virginia discussions were Arnaldo Bagnasco, University of Turin; Victoria de Grazia, Rutgers University; Ronald F. Rogowski, University of California, Los Angeles; Charles F. Sabel, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; L. J. Sharpe, Nuffield College (Oxford); and Carlo Trigilia, University of Cosenza.

rounding metropolitan area, the region, the nation, or even to Europe as a whole • Between representation, through formal organizations of widely differing functional domain, territorial scope, hierarchical position, ideological conviction, and strategic connection • Between obligation to regulations, coming from the immediate local agents of authority, themselves implementing, at least in part, rules of national government agents, who in turn are presumably following guidelines established by the European Community, while attempting to cope on their own with supra-European market forces and transnational regimes Add to this the possible fact that the actors he or she has to deal with may speak different languages (or at least different dialects), may operate within different legal and administrative traditions, and may respond to different appeals or threats-one can get a general idea of the complexity facing Europeans today. It is arguable that the vast increase in intraEuropean commercial transactions, production interdependencies, information flows, tourism, etc. has VOLUME 37, NUMBER 1

not only brought our imagined German worker, French farmer, Italian industrialist, and English civil servant into much closer contact with each other than ever before, but it has destroyed virtually any possibility that the unit or constituency within which he or she establishes identity, pursues interests, or obeys authority will be the same as before.

Under these conditions, social scientists must give up their cherished pretense of dealing with selfcontained units separated by affect, product, and law, and develop new concepts and theorems for understanding an increasingly incongruent reality. In Western Europe, in particular, it has become difficult for analysts to ascertain what unit is "really" responsible for making policy choices, what constituency is "really" capable of mobilizing action, and what community is "really" likely to command loyalty. For actors and citizens situated in this confusing mosaic, it has become virtually impossible to hold any specific unit accountable for its actions, to determine where sovereign authority lies, and even to locate the boundaries of one's own collective interest or identity.

As a result, Western Europeans have experienced a growing sense of powerlessness to solve their present problems-"loss of fate control," as one of the participants phrased it.

Concepts and themes have been creeping into various social sciences disciplines in a diffuse attempt to label and, therefore, to "problematize" this growing confusion about the nature of units and their interrelationships. Consider a few of these concepts and themes: • • • • • • • • • • • • •

International division of labor Center-periphery relations Internal colonialism Economic interdependence Organized complexity Diffusion processes Fiscal federalism Politikveiflechtung Territorial devolution Transnational phenomena International regimes Micronationalism Neolocalism

New protodisciplines or interdisciplinary fields such as regional science, peace research, international integration theory, theories of the local state, and world-systems analysis have emerged to deal with analyzing situations in which the units of interest, identity, and authority have become increasingly incongruent, and with describing the efforts which have MARCH

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been made--or should be made-to readjust spatial boundaries, redistribute functional competences, restructure productive systems, and redefine collective images in order to cope with this new reality.

The committee will attempt to bring out more systematically the links between this rich, if bewildering, variety of concepts-without pretending, however, to create yet another protodiscipline. It will do so by concentrating on relatively circumscribed problems of Western Europe, where "experiments with the scale" of economic, cultural, and political arrangements by a wide range of public and private actors are, or have been, a frequent response to a growing overlap and ambiguity of units within it.

Principal themes "Experimentation" may seem an unusual emphasis for a working group on contemporary Western Europe. After all, this is supposed to be the part of the world where critical choices and crucial experiments-some glorious successes, others catastrophic failures-were made long ago. Moreover, "the silent revolution" in values and practices after World War II seemed to many scholars to point toward a more consensual and less problematic future. 2 Protracted economic growth across all of Western Europe, vast increases in commercial interdependence, unprecedented flows of persons and information across (and within) national boundaries, the emergence of multiple regional institutions for policy coordination, the decline of imperial power for some, and of international hegemony for the continent as a whole-all this was supposed to lead inexorably to a homogenization of objective life situations and subjective group identities for Western Europeans. The emergent imperatives of what came to be called "postindustrialism"--capital and knowledge-intensive technology, professionalization of the occupational structure, widespread diffusion of management and marketing techniques, and increasing economies of scale-were expected not only to homogenize, but also to narrow the range of choices available to individual citizens, economic elites, and political decision makers.

The "new middle class," which was supposed to be emerging to predominance under the auspices of this "technostructure," was presumably free of such atavisms as nationalistic or localistic sentiment, willing

2 See the essays in Stephen R. Graubard, editor. A New Europe7 Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1964.

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to move about without regard for territorial or cultural constraints, committed to pursuing careers within large, bureaucratic institutions, and dedicated to a common goal of rational efficiency. Under these conditions, the historically diverse local and national units of Western Europe would become irrelevantdoomed either to disappear or to be transformed into categories of mere administrative convenience.

These assumptions have proven, with hindsight, to be largely ill-founded. After several decades of presumed homogenization, Western European countries and their respective social, cultural, and territorial subdivisions seem as varied as ever. In some cases, the saliency of these differences has increased rather than decreased. Instead of facing an ever narrower agenda of similar problems and being forced to resolve them in a concerted, ever more encompassing fashion, policy makers persist in responding in quite diverse ways. Technology, interdependence, and subordinate status in the world system do not seem to have deprived European countries of either the capacity to choose or the will to experiment. The present protracted crisis in economic performance throughout the region has, if anything, strengthened rather than weakened the trend toward divergent responses by both public and private actors.

One way Europeans have coped with such complexity has been to experiment with the scale of constituent units. Faced with situations in which existing units of production, culture, and governance were no longer capable of meeting member expectations and producing predictable outcomes because of the growing incongruence between the spheres of interest, identity, and authority embodied in them, European actors have reacted in diverse ways: • They have sought to go beyond and beneath their own nation-states • They have enlarged the scale of their industry and sought refuge in smaller enterprises • They have committed themselves to a more cosmopolitan "regional" image and revived some parochial loyalties long thought to be extinct • They have adopted many aspects of mass culture and consumption coming from the United States and rejected "Americanization" as inappropriate for their fragmented and differentiated cultures The most obvious response has been the attempt to create overriding regional institutions such as the European Community to reap the benefits of an increased volume of exchange and an expanded scale of production, presumably while regulating the en4

suing behavior of external and multilocal actors through standardized norms and harmonized policies. Not only have several European countries opted out of this formal process-Austria, Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland, for example-and not suffered appreciably for having done so, but many of those who chose to join have, in fact, continued to interpret and implement Community norms and policies in a highly selective and particularistic manner.

Nor is it clear that the widening of market opportunities as a result of regional integration and the general liberalization of international trade and investment flows has necessarily entailed a concomitant shift upward in the scale of production. In some countries and industrial sectors, concentration in the ownership of enterprises and an increase in the size of productive units have indeed occurred and reached unprecedented levels-in part as the result of explicit government policies for promoting so-called "National Champions." More recently, there has even been talk of jointly encouraging the development of very large scale "European Champions" to meet the challenge of competing with gigantic combines from the United States,Japan, and the newly-industrialized countries. Elsewhere, however, the strategic response has been quite different. Taking advantage of peculiar local conditions and decentralized public and private incentives, small scale and highly specialized units have proliferated in certain parts of Western Europe. They have even created whole new systems for the social and physical organization of production and have often been strikingly successful in exploiting distinctive market niches.

Looking at Western Europe as a whole, one is struck not only by the failure of regional integration to "spill over" into ever more important areas of policy formation and ever more sensitive areas of political community, but also by the increased rather than decreased relevance and salience of smaller units of interest, identity, and authority.

Precisely in response to the development of more homogenized opportunities and standardized norms, people have become more aware of the persistence of cultural differences and the threat to local arrangements. Transnational production and distribution undermine the efforts of national authorities to control outcomes; European Community norms clash with established local community restrictions and tastes; intersocietal mobility brings in foreign workers and tourists with different forms of social organization, standards of behavior, and preferences for consumption. Perhaps the phenomenon which has most VOLUME

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captured the attention of Europeanists has been the resurgence of peripheral or micronationalist movements-if only because they have posed the most vocal and, at times, most violent challenges.

C.onsider the Basques and the Catalans, the Corsicans and the Bretons, the Scots and the Welsh, the Flemings and the Walloons. Somewhat less visible have been the experiments which several European states have undertaken to devolve authority for certain matters to smaller units of governance, either by interjecting new intermediate layers of provincial or regional government such as in Italy and Spain, or by enhancing the powers of existing localities such as is presently being done in France. Again, the pattern across Western Europe has hardly been uniform.

While in southern Europe the trend has been toward experimentation with decentralization, countries of the center and north-Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and West Germany-have responded with a consolidation of existing national subunits.

Even where formal reshuffling of authority across territorial units has not occurred, governments have been experimenting with a wide range of less visible arrangements for coping with new interdependencies, externalities, and overlapping competences. Social scientists in different European countries have begun to label these arrangements, e.g., "cooperative-" or "functional-federalism," "policy overlap (Politikveiflechtung)," etc., but have yet to analyze their distribution or evaluate their importance comparatively.

"Experimenting with scale" has not been just a matter of objective problem solving-say, of finding a profitable way of responding to market changes or an efficient means for implementing public policies. It has been deeply conditioned by subjective factors such as the importance attached to community, the definition of political accountability, the sharing of common symbols, the perception of status in the world order, and so forth. The size and boundaries of units have always been infused with enduring cultural and social meanings and this, of course, is one of the reasons they have been so resistant to changes dictated only by calculations of economic efficiency or administrative convenience.

This is not so say that these meanings are not themselves subject to change. In the past, Western Europe has gone through periods of extensive experimentation during which whole schemes of territorial domination were imposed, uniform conditions of legal and political status established, standardized forms of social behavior and economic organization created, and new symbols of natural identity forged-all in the face of strong resistance from members of smaller comMARCH

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mum tIes and the defenders of traditional customs.

The diverse outcomes of these struggles over scale during the "heroic" period of European nation, state, and enterprise building provide the baseline upon which present day experimentation is taking placeand a possible historical analogue for understanding outcomes in the future.

More recently and less contentiously, there have been dramatic internal changes in the mutual imagery of hostility as well as external changes in the relative status of the region as a whole. For a long time, perhaps since World War I, Western Europe suffered from a persistent sense of inferiority in scale vis-a-vis the United States, which seemed to embody the advantages of massive economic production and homogeneous cultural consumption. Much of the impetus for a "United Europe" after World War II came from the perception of a need to catch up with the more dynamic and efficient Americans and a desire to emulate their federal institutions, seen as more balanced and uniformly dispersed than the hodgepodge of authorities in Western Europe. In more recent years, this imagery of scale seems to have altered. To many, the United States no longer seems such a formidable, if paradoxical, combination of efficiency and accountability-of centralized large-scale production and decentralized small-scale governance.

Contemporary "experiments with scale" in Western Europe are perhaps less haunted by the specter of Americanism and Americanization than they were in the past.

Possible topics The successful exploration of such a general theme as "Experimenting with Scale" demands that it be broken down and translated into much more concrete and tractable topics. The experience of the committee's first two phases shows clearly that this depends in large measure upon the on-going research activities of the social scientists and humanists who become its members. Given the limited resources at its disposal, the committee 'cannot simply commission and fund research on topics it believes should be accorded priority. It has in the past and will in the future invite outside scholars to present papers and participate in discussions on specific topics. From these discussions among scholars from a wide range of academic disciplines will come, hopefully, a more comprehensive vision of the theme and a more consistent set of concepts for analyzing its multiple manifestations. In the process, the participating scholars may be expected to modify the approach they take to their own work and 5

the eventual publication of their essays may perform the sort of research agenda-setting function described above as the primary purpose of the committee.

Because so much depends on the composition of the committee and because its ranks have yet to be filled, it is difficult to specify what specific topics will be taken up. The planning group, in fact, is interested in receiving suggestions from social scientists and humanists who believe their current research addresses in some way the theme of "Experimenting with Scale."

At its second meeting last October, the group did begin discussing some areas of inquiry which it thought should be included. For example, participants felt that at least two historical baselines should be established: one focusing on the critical period from 1860 to 1890 when a major revision of the units of production, culture, and governance throughout Western Europe was accomplished; the other centering on the 1920s and 1930s, when the threatening specter of "Americanization," with its popular culture and mass production, explicitly posed the issue of scale to the fragmented, heterogeneous, and demoralized institutions of Western Europe. Both of these seemed to offer interesting analogies for the analysis of post-World War II developments.

For the more contemporary period, the group discussed several potential topics linked to critical choices involving the scale of units at the level of economic production and industrial policy making.

Rejecting the assumptions of technological determinism and regional homogenization, it was felt that an effort should be made to explain why some countries and sectors had opted for a strategy of concentration of ownership (including state ownership) and increased scale of production, as, for example, has been the case in France, while others, such as the regions of Emilia-Romagna and Tuscany in Italy, had moved in a quite different direction. Was this the result of market forces interacting with the structural conditions of particular territorial units or industrial sectors, or was it the outcome of deliberate and discrete policy incentives, themselves influenced by local class relations and political configurations?

At the macropolicy level, the issue arose of the alternatives open to countries of differing geographical location, physical size, natural resource endowment, installed industrial plant, etc. Is it possible to specify a range of responses, say from neoliberalism to neomercantilism via neolocalism, then to explain through a "sociology of policy preferences" why some would be preferred over others, and eventually to 6

trace the consequences of such choices for the scale of economic, social, and political units?

Underlying these choices between alternative policies is the question of longer-term alliances between sectoral interests. During the founding period of modern Europe (1860--90), mentioned above, the infamous "Pact of Rye and Iron" between protectionist forces in agriculture and basic metal processing provided important support for both authoritarian rule and defensive policies in Imperial Germany, and a less conspicuous "Pact of Pasta and Textiles" played an analogous, if weaker, role in the case of Italy. Are new sectoral interest alliances of comparable significance emerging in contemporary Western Europe, and, if so, at what level? For example, one could imagine a resurgence of defensive protectionism based on national quotas and cartels in artificial fibers and steel, or a more open competitive alliance built around redimensioned Europe-wide high technology industries such as electronics and aerospace, or even a series of dispersed, subnational arrangements bringing together small-scale producers of specialized machinery and luxury goods.

To what extent are these possible alliances incompatible with each other, and, if Europeans are being forced or are going to be forced increasingly to choose among them, what will be the impact upon national political outcomes and processes of regional integration? Are large, relatively autarchic European countries (e.g., France, West Germany, the United Kingdom) at an advantage or disadvantage in their strategic choices in comparison with small, internationally penetrated ones (e.g., Austria, the Netherlands, Switzerland)? Are the former more or less free to engage in experimentation?

One topic on which participants did agree that a great deal of experimentation has occurred was that of the territorial distribution of political authority and administrative competances. What forces lay behind these contradictory trends toward centralization and devolution? Were these changes induced by motives of efficiency, accountability, or authenticity? What impact have they had, or will they have, upon the units of production and cultural identity within or beyond their governing unit? How do these subnational redistributions of authority relate to Europewide patterns of policy coordination and economic interdependence? Is there some general logic of unit transformation which encompasses both the development of a more integrated core area for Western Europe as a whole, and a more dispersed set of identities and authorities for its periphery?

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Two themes kept appearing in the discussion of the planning group but were not explored further because of the absence of more specialized knowledge about what was being done on them or what could be done to study them from another perspective. The first involved questions about possible changes going on in the microunits of Western European societythose units of personal affect and social reproduction such as the couple, the family, the neighborhood, the circle of friends, etc., and the extent to which these had been affected by coordination, standardization, and concentration at higher levels of production, culture, and governance. The second looked at the problem of scale from the opposite end: what has been the impact of developments in global international security relations upon constituent units within Western Europe? More particularly, has detente encouraged a greater experimentation with scale, both at the regional and the subnational level, and now that a "new chill" had settled over East-West relations, would this be echoed through lower levels of the respective systems?

Finally, the planning group agreed that one subtheme running through all these concerns with the changing size and scope of units was that of democracy, or better put, democratic theory and practice.

Only a few of these experiments with scale of recent years have been carried out ostensibly in the name of democracy, but all have been affected by its underlying elements of social equality, citizen accountability, popular responsiveness, and partisan competitiveness.

In turn, shifts in unit boundaries and functions have affected the legitimacy and viability of democratic governments. They help determine the level at which citizen preferences get aggregated and they condition

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the way in which citizen services get provided. It was felt, in other words, that these important changes in constituent units have been affecting democratic practice but have remained largely ignored by democratic theory, and that Western Europe offered a uniquely privileged site upon which scholars could reflect on this lacuna, given the great vitality and variety of experience with democracy in that part of the world.

The committee proposes to make "Experimenting with Scale: Changes in the Units of Production, Culture, and Governance" its central theme for the next few years. It recognizes that the trends underlying this issue are hardly unidirectional, nor are the outcomes yet clear. There is divergent movement "beyond" and "beneath" those venerable European nation-states. Ironically, at the very moment that so many social scientists and humanists are rediscovering "the state,"3 the committee will be attempting to capture the changes in interest, identity, and authority which are undermining, circumventing, and transforming, as well as enhancing the state. Western Europe is currently in the midst of large- and smallscale adjustments in its interested constituencies, its cultural identities, and its sovereign authorities.

By focusing concerted, multidisciplinary attention on these growing incongruences among units and the diversity of efforts being made to cope with them, the committee hopes it will be able to make more systematic sense not only of what has been happening but also of what is likely to occur in the future. D 3 See, for example, Theda Skocpol, "Bringing the State Back In: A Report on Current Comparative Research on the Relationship Between States and Social Structures." Items, 36(112): 1-8, June 1982.

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The Council's Role in Research on Child Development*

by Lonnie R. Sherrod**

SINCE THE COUNCIL'S INCORPORATION IN 1924, its research planning committees have examined many critical issues in the study of child development. As the field of child development has grown and prospered, the Council's committees have included more and more activities with an explicit focus on development during childhood. Throughout the Council's history, some committee programs have pursued different topics on children's development; these activities are cited in several sections of this history. In other cases, committees have explored issues of child development as part of a larger agenda. Overall, the sweep of Council activity in child development during the past 50-plus years has been broad and diverse.

The following description of this history, representing a sampling of relevant activities assembled from Council records and publications, documents the substantial role which the Council has played in advancing research in this relatively young field.

BIOLOGICAL BASES OF BEHAVIOR AND DEVELOPMENT

Nature versus nurture

Relations (1925-1930) was concerned with comparative studies of the effect of hereditary and environmental factors on the development of black and white children. Continuing similar concerns, a Committee on Social Adjustment (1940-1942) sponsored Robert S. Woodworth's (Columbia University) critical review of studies of twins and foster children. l This monograph represented a significant advance in the sophistication with which the nature-nurture issue was handled. Only three decades later did similar questions resurface in the Council's agenda. In 1971, a Committee on Biological Bases of Social Behavior (1966-1979) undertook a comprehensive survey of the relevant research and policy questions concerning the scholastic achievements and intelligence test scores of white and nonwhite children. The survey was initiated at a time when reports were emerging that school desegregation had not been successful in influencing scholastic and intellectual performance.

The volume sponsored by this committee remains a definitive statement in this area of research. 2

Behavior genetics

Perhaps one of the longest-standing traditions of research on child development involves questions of the hereditary versus environmental bases of individual and group differences in behavior and development. Council efforts have both applied these questions to specific topics such as ethnic differences and have contributed to the refinement with which such questions are addressed. A Committee on Interracial

During the 1960s, behavior genetics was emerging generally as a scientifically promising and socially irriportant field and as a powerful perspective, with specific tools, for studying child development. Recognizing that studies of child and human development specifically, and social behavior generally, must move to more precise questions regarding biology than the broad nature versus nurture formulation, the Council appointed a Committee on Genetics and Behavior * This article is based on a proposal submitted to the Founda- (1961-1966). This committee sought to encourage tion for Child Development (New York) for general support of research in this interdisciplinary area and to facilitate the Subcommittee on Child Development in Life-Span Perspec- communication between geneticists and social scientive. The author is indebted to two earlier reviews of the Council's tists.

history: Elbridge Sibley, SSRC: The First Fifty Years. New York: Social Science Research Council, 1974, and M. Brewster Smith and Gardner Lindzey, "Research on Social Behavior: Impact of Council Committees," Items, 28(1): 4-8, March 1974. Orville G. Brim, Jr., Peter B. Read, and M. Brewster Smith are acknowledged for their valuable assistance. ** The author received the Ph.D. in psychology from Yale University; he serves at the Council as staff to the committees on Biosocial Perspectives on Parent Behavior, Cognitive Research, Life-Course Perspectives on Human Development, and its Subcommittee on Child Development in Life-Span Perspective.

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I R. S. Woodworth. Heredity and Environment: A Critical Survey of Recently Published Material on Twins and Foster Children. Bulletin 41.

New York: Social Science Research Council, 1941. (Sponsored by the Committee on Social Adjustment.)

2 John C. Loehlin, Gardner Lindzey, and J. N. Spuhler. Race Differences in Intelligence. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman & Co., 1975. (Sponsored by the Committee on Biological Bases of Social Behavior.)

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Because few social scientists were equipped to work in this interdisciplinary area, the committee gave high priority to providing basic biological training to social scientists, particularly developmental psychologists.

The committee, and its successor with a broadened charter, the Committee on Biological Bases of Social Behavior, sponsored a number of summer training institutes over a lO-year period. These institutes substantially extended the biological competence of able young social scientists in behavior genetics, population genetics, neurobiology, and psychophysiology.

Through conferences and workshops on topics in the same areas (population biology, neurobiology, and psychophysiology) these two committees also encouraged research examining the contributions of genetics to the study of social behavior.

At the same time, a Committee on Comparative Developmental Behavior (1961-1966) was concerned with advancing comparative studies of the development of early social behavior. Chaired by Harold W. Stevenson (then at the University of Minnesota), this committee employed comparative studies of animal behavior to examine potential biological contributions to behavioral development. It organized activities on topics such as learned and nonlearned behavior in immature organisms; its final statement was published in a volume of essays.3

Biological foundations of behavior The work of the committees mentioned above has contributed notably to current views of development that recognize the interdependence of biological and social factors, and it has stimulated new research on more precisely defined questions, examining the contributions of specific biological and social factors to development. Current Council activities reflect some of the directions which have emerged from this research.

A Committee on Biosocial Science (1976-1980), following the tradition of the earlier Committee on Comparative Developmental Behavior, established a working group to use cross-species and cross-cultural comparisons to examine biological contributions to parental behavior and early offspring development.

This working group has expanded to become a Committee on Biosocial Perspectives on Parent Behavior (1980-present). The committee is employing 3 Harold W. Stevenson, Eckhard H. Hess, and Harriet L. Rheingold, editors. Early BehavWr: Cumparative and Developmental Approaches. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1967. (Sponsored by the Committee on Comparative Developmental Behavior.)

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cross-species as well as cross-cultural and cross-time comparisons to examine current issues in parentchild behavior. The committee wishes to examine the family as the social institutional context through which humans fulfill their reproductive potential and to consider reproductive biology in conceptualizations of parental and family behavior. The biosocial perspective is used to pinpoint areas in which contemporary human parental behavior involves radical departures from human history and to identity continuities in patterns of human kin relations and in the biological bases of social behavior. Identification of discontinuities between current practice and past behavior may illuminate why adults experience difficulties in parenting and/or why children undergo less than optimally healthy development. The committee believes that such discontinuities and their possible costs should be examined in order to assess the benefits or costs of modern circumstances. 4 The biosocial perspective, therefore, is used to extend our understanding of parental behavior, sensitizing us to patterns in current use as well as highlighting parental practices that have been abandoned during human history. Both the range of options and the basis for makingjudgments about these options are expanded.

As part of its activities on the measurement of emotions, the Committee on Social and Affective Development During Childhood (1976-present) has considered the psychophysiology of emotions, focusing on developmental neuroendocrinology and the implications of psychophysiology for measuring emotions in infants.5 The Subcommittee on Child Development in LifeSpan Perspective (1981-present) of the Committee on Life-Course Perspectives on Human Development (1977-present) is examining adolescence as a period of intense interaction of biological, social, and cognitive development. Adolescence, which is characterized by dramatic endocrinological changes, the expansion of the social world, and transitions in the nature of reasoning and logical thought, provides an ideal opportunity for examining biobehavioral interactions. One conference has been held on pubertal 4 Alice Rossi. "Parenting, Kinship, and Adult Development: A Research Agenda to Test Kin Selection Theory." Presented at the meeting of the American Sociological Association, August 1980, New York. (Prepared during her tenure on the Working Group on Parenting and Offspring Development of the Committee on Biosocial Science.)

5 See, e.g., Carroll E. Izard, editor. Measuring Emotions in Infants and Children. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982.

(Sponsored by the Committee on Social and Affective Development During Childhood.)

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and psychosocial change (see pages 23-24 in this issue) and a series of workshops in this area is being considered.

The Committee on Giftedness, Development, and the Learning Process (1980- present) is planning activities to encourage more research on the organismic basis for extraordinary performance--to explore the ways in which certain individuals might be biologically predisposed to attain exceptional levels of achievement.

PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT AND SOCIALIZATION Cultural influences on personality and development Council activities in personality development and in adult and child socialization began in 1930 with the appointment of the Committee on Personality and Culture (1930-1940). This committee's activities offered direction to research within the "culture-andpersonality" tradition during the 1930s and 1940s, facilitating investigations of the sociocultural bases of personality and turning social scientists' attention from speculations about "racial" types of personality.

This redirection represented an important step in the refinement of research on personality development.

The successor Committee on Social Adjustment (1940-1942) tackled similar interdisciplinary areas, and its Subcommittee on Motivation sponsored a monograph by Robert R. Sears, then at Yale University. This book was the first to bring Freudian theory-which was then capturing the attention of psychologists-under scientific scrutiny.6 It thus is a significant contribution to the study of children, although it is not focused specifically on child development.

The Committee on Social Behavior (1951-1956) was formed to continue interdisciplinary work on personality, culture, and social behavior. The committee focused on a variety of topics, including interpersonal communication and influence, public communication, community studies, and social integration. It developed major interests in childhood socialization.

Reflecting the committee's commitment to developing a systematic cross-cultural approach for understanding socialization processes during childhood, a Subcommittee on Socialization was appointed under John W. M. Whiting's (Harvard University) chairmanship. This subcommittee employed cross-cultural studies of personality development to examine the diversity of socialization variables or practices and to 10

differentiate normal variations in behavior patterns from actual deviance. In 1954, the subcommittee was reconstituted as the Committee on Personality Development; it participated in the planning and preparation of a field manual for the collection of systematic observational data. This manual was employed in a coordinated study of child rearing in six cultures. A still-influential volume, Six Cultures: Studies of Child Rearing, resulted 7; the manual, following some revisions, was published a few years later. s Several monographs on child rearing in particular cultures were also published. This classic research contrasted with the more qualitative and clinical orientation of the earlier "culture-and-personality" studies by relying on quantitative methods.

The current Committee on Biosocial Perspectives on Parent Behavior is continuing the cross-cultural examination of childhood development, focusing on its interaction with the adult development of parents.

In this case, cultural comparisons are being used in the context of a larger framework, applied to such topics as pregnancy, the birth process, and infant development. Contemporary cultures which are believed to be similar to societies that were important during early history (e.g., hunter-gatherers such as the ! Kung) are examined in order to capture a glimpse of the evolutionary past underlying contemporary behaviors. The Committee on Social and Affective Development has also recognized the need for incorporating a cross-cultural perspective into the study of children's emotional and social growth. It has sponsored activities in which anthropologists representing different approaches to the analysis of ideational structures compare findings and address common theoretical issues. The committee has related these emerging anthropological conceptions of culture and their acquisition to recent psychological research on similar aspects of childhood socialization. 9

6 Robert R. Sears. Survey of Objective Studies of Psychoanalytic Concepts. Bulletin 51. New York: Social Science Research Council,

1943. (Prepared for the Committee on Social Adjustment.)

7 Beatrice B. Whiting, editor. Six Cultures: Studies of Child Rearing. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1963. (Sponsored by the committees on Social Behavior and on Personality Development.)

8 John W. M. Whiting, Irvin L. Child, William W. Lambert, et at. Field Guidefor a Study of Socialiwtwn. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1966. (Revision of a field manual originally sponsored by the Committee on Social Behavior.)

9 Richard Shweder and Robert A. LeVine, editors. Conceptions of Culture and Its Acquisitwn. Forthcoming. (Sponsored by the Committee on Social and Affective Development During Childhood.)

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Socialization Council work in socialization continued during the 1960s, emphasizing socialization as a lifelong process.

A Committee on Socialization and Social Structure (1960-1967) was appoi~ted under the chairmanship of John A. Clausen (University of California, Berkeley). In a now classic volume, members of the committee described new interdisciplinary perspectives on socialization research which had been developed during the program. to The family, the school, and other institutions of the community at large were examined as contexts for socialization, understood by the committee to extend also into adult life. Moral development was a newly active research topic and was used to examine competing theories of personality development and socialization. l l Interactions between socialization and emerging views on cognitive development were considered. 12 The committee established good communication with those doing relevant research in France, Germany, Israel, and the United Kingdom.

The Committee on Sociolinguistics (1963-1978) examined socialization from the perspective of language development-focusing particularly on rule- and role-learning at various stages of life, including childhood. This committee's program reflected the view that linguistic and social competences are learned on a lifelong basis, and this learning goes beyond the simple picking up of supplemental lexicons (involving, e.g., the learning of professional jargon). A project of this committee under the direction of Allen D. Grimshaw (Indiana University) concentrated on adolescence and early adulthood and brought together anthropologists, linguists, sociologists, and others to explore this little-known aspect of socialization. !he Committee on Work and Personality in the Middle Years (1972-1979), under the chairmanship 10 john A. Clausen, editor. Socialization and Society. Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1968. (Report of the Committee on Socialization and Social Structure.)

11 See, e.g., Martin L. Hoffman. "Development of Internal Moral Standards in Children," in Merton P. Strommen, editor, Research on Religious Development. New York: Hawthorn Books, 1971; and justin Aronfreed. Conduct and Conscience: The Socialization of Internalized Control Over Behavior. New York: Academic Press, 1968. (Sponsored by the Committee on Socialization and Social Structure.)

12 Lawrence Kohlberg. "Stage and Sequence: The CognitiveD~velopmental Approach to Socialization," in David A. Goslin, editor, Handbook of Socialization Theory and Research. Chicago: Rand-McNally and Company, 1969. (Sponsored by the Committee on Socialization and Social Structure.)

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1983

of Orville G. Brim, Jr. (Foundation for Child Development), employed the middle years to continue the study of socialization as a lifelong process. Its successor, the current Committee on Life-Course Perspectives on Human Development (originally on Middle and Old Age, 1977-present) has formed a Subcommittee on Child Development (1981-present).

The appointment of this subcommittee represents the beginning of another era in the study of personality development and childhood socialization at the Council. During earlier phases of child socialization research, child rearing has generally been viewed as the discipline and caretaking that mothers impose on their young children. Typical images of family upbringing have slighted the father's role, the socialization experience of older children and parents, the reciprocal nature of social interaction, and the educative dimension of family influence. The acquisition by parents of knowledge about how to raise children entails a process of interaction between parents and children. Hidden behind this simple notion is a new concept in the largely age-specific world of child development: the notion that child socialization and development proceed interactively with the socialization and development of parents. Current research is putting an end to the premise that children can be understood without knowledge of the developmental experience of parents, or that adults can be understood apart from the children in their lives. 13 Thus, one objective of the subcommittee's program is to employ the work of its parent committee and the predecessor Committee on Work and Personality to interconnect knowledge of adult development and aging with socialization research on childhood. Like its predecessors, the subcommittee's program involves European researchers.

The Committee on Social and Affective Development During Childhood has recently initiated a series of workshops to examine the socialization of specific affects. One of the least understood aspects of emotions is their evolution from physically nonverbal expression into emotional experiences that possess complex verbal and cognitive components, a process that is shaped largely through interaction with family, teachers, and peers. The committee is convening small interdisciplinary groups of researchers to explore the nature and progress of this development for

13 Glen H. Elder, jr. Manuscript in preparation for Glen H. Elder,jr., editor, Life-Course Dynamics: From 1968 to 1980's. (Sponsored by the Committee on Life-Course Perspectives on Human Development.)

11

several specific emotions, including anger, fear, joy, sadness, and guilt.

Television and social behavior In the early 1970s, a great deal of concern arose about the potential impact of television on children's development-particularly in light of the increasingly "violent" content of prime time programming. A Committee on Television and Social Behavior (1973-1979) was appointed to assess the state of research in the area. A portion of the committee's program was the evaluation of TV as a socialization influence, specifically reviewing research on the effects of TV's violent content on children's aggressive behavior. The committee recognized the difficulty of analyzing the content of television programming and recommended the development of a multidimensional profile of violence portrayal on television. In its final report, the committee drew upon concepts and research domains within various disciplines in an attempt to show how these concepts might be enriched by their application to television and its interrelationships with social behavior: it sought to extend concerns beyond violence and from childhood to adulthood. I4 A parallel volume examined the psychological and social psychological nature of TV as an entertainment medium. IS

cognitive development in the field of child development. Appropriately, the first in a series of committee publications dealt with Piaget's monumental contributions to the study of cognitive development during the first six years of childhood, examining his theory and observations in relation to other existing theories of child learning and cognition. 16 The Committee on Intellectual Processes Research, chaired successively

by Roger Brown (Harvard University) and William Kessen (Yale University), played an important part in giving both coherence and momentum to research in this area. The committee published numerous conference reports on such topics as language acquisition in children, mathematical learning, learning to read, and transcultural studies of cognitive systems. I7 The committee also strengthened the international network of scholarly communication, which is particularly important to research in this area.

The Committee on Learning and the Educational Process (1962-1971) pursued a program complementary to that of the Committee on Intellective Processes Research, examining interactions between educational systems and cognitive development. The topics explored by this committee ranged from preschool learning and early education to learning by discovery, computer-assisted instruction, and compensatory education. A variety of activities was organized, resulting in several important publications. I8 A new generation of workers in cognitive research has been emerging during the past decade, placing

COGNITIVE AND INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT Cognition, perception, and learning

Reflecting research trends in psychology generally and in the study of childhood specifically, personality and personality development have been foci of attention through most of the Council's history. Interest in the cognitive development of children entered the Council's program later, with the appointment of a Committee on Intellective Processes Research (1959-1964). It was the impact of Jean Piaget's work, more than anything else, that catalyzed an interest in

14 Stephen B. Withey and Ronald P. Abeles, editors. Television and Social Behavior: Beyond Violence and Children. Hillsdale, New

Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1980. (Sponsored by the Committee on Television and Social Behavior.)

15 Percy H . Tannenbaum, editor. The Entertainment Functions of Television. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1980. (Sponsored by the Committee on Television and Social Behavior.)

12

16 William Kessen and C1ementina Kuhlman, editors. Thought in the Young Child: Report of a Conference on Intellective Development, With Particular Attention to the Work ofJean Piaget. Monographs of

the Society for Research in Child Development, Vol. 27, No. 2 (Serial No. 835). Lafayette, Indiana: Child Development Publications, 1962. (Sponsored by the Committee on Intellective Processes Research.)

17 See, e.g., John C. Wright and Jerome Kagan, editors. Basic Cognitive Processes in Children: Report of the Second Conference Sponsored by the CfJTTImittee on Intellective Processes Research. Monographs

of the Society for Research on Child Development, Vol. 28, No. 2 (Serial No. 86). Lafayette, Indiana: Child Development Publications, 1963. (Sponsored by the Committee on Intellective Processes Research.)

18 E.g., Robert D. Hess and Roberta M. Bear, editors. Early Education: Current Theory, Research, and Action. Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company, 1968; Wayne H. Holtzman, editor.

Computer-Assisted Instruction, Testing, and Guidance. New York: Harper & Row, 1970; and Eleanor E. Maccobyand Miriam Zellner. Experiments in Primary Education: Aspects of Project FollowThrough. New York: Harcourt Brace, Jovanovich , 1970. (All sponsored by the Committee on Learning and the Educational Process.)

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developmental interests in a broader framework. As a consequence, an interdisciplinary Committee on Cognitive Research (1972-prestmt) has examined information processing models of perception and cognition, as well as theory and research on the nature of categories used by children in describing the natural world. 19 Subsequently, this committee has moved to consider cognition in natural settings and to ask how experimental and laboratory studies of cognition, including both adult and childhood cognition, explain daily cognitive behavior in settings such as schools, homes, and occupations. The committee has also asked how research on cognition must be modified to generalize to these natural settings. A recent publication sponsored by the committee, for instance, examines problems specific to cross-cultural studies of cognition. 20 Another example of this work is represented by a project on reading comprehension, involving issues such as the representation of the end product of the successful comprehension of a text, the identification of the skills and capabilities the reader must bring to a text in order to comprehend it, and the nature of "taking a reading test" as a cognitive activity. The focus of the project was on the comprehension of text material as a naturally-occurring cognitive activity.

Likewise, the Subcommittee on Child Development in Life-Span Perspective will continue the tradition of examining childhood cognition within a broadened framework by exploring plasticity in cognitive development. Research aimed at studying the range of cognitive development capable by the individual child and the conditions for optimizing individual cognitive development can be subsumed under the heading of plasticity or intra-individual modifiability. The success of compensatory interventions aimed at optimizing cognitive functioning has varied according to age. The relationship between age and plasticity must, therefore, be considered. The subcommittee wishes to examine such research and to explore issues such as the design of intervention studies, the measurement of intellectual functioning, the definition of

19 Herbert L. Pick, Jr. and Elliot Saltzman, editors. Modes oj Perceiving and Processing Infonnation. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Erlbaum, 1978. And Eleanor Rosch and Barbara B. Lloyd, editors. Cognition and Categorization. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1978. (Both sponsored by the Committee on Cognitive Research.)

20 Michael Cole and Barbara Means. Comparative Studies oj How People Think: An Introduction. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981. (Sponsored by the Committee on Cognitive Research.)

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1983

"endpoints" of cognitive development, and the concept of "cognitive reserve."

Social cognition Within child development and psychology, there has been in recent years a renewal of interest in the study of social and emotional development. One particularly active area involves investigations of interactions between cognition and social development. The Committee on Social and Affective Development During Childhood has recognized that childhood is an ideal period in which to study such relationships and has sponsored a series of activities on social cognition. Indeed, such explorations have formed much of the core of the program of the committee appointed in 1976 to examine neglected areas of research in child development. One central, social cognitive interest of this committee has been the child's conception of self. While there has been considerable research on the concept of self at points in adolescence and adulthood, relatively little work has focused on the young child's development of a sense of self. There are many reasons for this neglect, including a fundamental difficulty in developing methods which operationalize the self concept. especially in children. The committee is encouraging new work on the development of self that will address the following issues: (1) the measurement of self, including self reports, physiological measures, and behavioral measures; (2) a study of the categories which children use to think about themselves, and the influence of culture, social class, and experience on these categories; and (3) the role of self in emotional, cognitive, and social development. The committee is sponsoring a series of publications describing its activities in social cognition. 21 More recently, the committee has turned its attention to affect and emotional development. Much of this attention has emerged from studies of cognition : ways in which cognition and affect necessarily interact. This research indicates that cognition and affect may be far less independent systems than some theories propose or some scholars espouse. The committee is planning a number of activities in this area.

21 E.g., John H. Flavell and Lee Ross, editors. Social and Cognitive Development: Frontiers and Possible Futures. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981; and Tory Higgins, Diane Ruble, and William Hartup, editors. Social Cognition and Social Development: A Socio-Cultural Perspective. New York: Cambridge University Press, in press, 1983. (Both sponsored by the Committee on Social and Affective Development During Childhood .)

13

Giftedness and creativity The 1960s and 1970s represented a time marked by increased scholarly interest in improving the lives of socially and economically disadvantaged children through a variety of intervention programs. Little attention was paid, however, to the highly gifted and talented. In 1975, the Council appointed a Committee on Gifted Children (197~ 1980) to study the development of intellective giftedness and artistic and musical creativity during childhood. This committee considered methods for identifying the gifted at early ages and began exploring whether there might be optimal periods for the establishment of particular learned skills. The committee gradually recognized the need to examine the development of giftedness in a broader context, involving the interplay of biological, social, psychological, and historical factors. Thus, i~ 1980 the committee was reorganized by the Counal to become the Committee on Development, Giftedness, and the Learning Process. A major concern of this new committee is to encourage research on giftedness that accounts for the nature of abilities that are unique to specific domains. While there has been considerable research on the nature and developmental course of giftedness as general cognitive functioning, there have been few attempts to investigate the nature and maturation of exceptional abilities within specific domains such as music, artistic expr~ssion, and writing. The committee is conducting a senes of workshops focused on domain-specific performance.

LINGUISTICS AND LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT The Council has a long history of activities involving linguistics and the social sciences. 22 A number of these activities have involved considerations of childhood linguistic competences and the acquisition of a primary and a secondary language. The Committee on Intellectual Processes Research (1959-1964) examined children's first language acquisition by sponsoring a conference, the proceedings of which were published in 1964 in the Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development. 23 One interest of the Committee on Sociolinguistics (1963-1978) was "microsociolinguistics," the study of 22 See, e.g., Susan M. Ervin-Tripp. "Two Decades of Council Activity in the Rapprochement of Linguistics and Social Science."

Items, 28(1):1-4, March 1974; and Allen D. Grimshaw. "Sociolinguistics at the Council, 1963-1979: Past and Prologue." Items, 34(1):13-18, March 1980.

14

face-to-face interaction. The committee adopted a cross-cultural approach to studies of the acquisition of communicative competence. The program involved three foci: cross-linguistic study of semantic phonological, and grammatical development in chil~ dren; the development of the social functions and rules of language in children-child sociolinguistics; and th~ study of the nexus of beliefs and practices regardmg language which are the milieu of the child's l~nguage learning-the ethnography of communication. The program of activities in this area involved t~e prep.aration of a field manual, the preparation of dlssert~ttons based on studies in field sites in eight countnes, and summer workshops bringing together students, field workers, faculty, and visiting scholars for intensive study. ~he comm~ttee also examined the process by whIch early chIldhood language acquisition is affected by who talks to children and how. The special features. of parents' and other caretakers' speech that may mfluence the course of children's acquisition of their first language and the general forms of baby t~lk a.s w~ll as theoretical considerations of linguistic slmphcatton are considered in a recent volume. 24 Finally, the committee also sponsored activities on pr?blems of communication in the classroom, postchIldhood modification of social interactional lin. . ' gUlStlc and sociolinguistic rules, and similar topics.

SOCIAL INDICATORS AND CHILDREN'S WELL-BEING The Council's primary mandate is the advancement of basic research. Nonetheless, concerns for children's well-being and for the usefulness of research in contributing to the improvement of children's wellbeing frequently flow through Council activities in the area of child development. A few examples are particularly noteworthy.

Social indicators An interest in indicators of the well-being of children and families has existed throughout the Coun23 Ursula Bellugi and Roger Brown, editors. The Acquisition of Language: Report of the [Third] Conference Sponsored by the Committee on Intellective Processes Research. Monographs of the Society for

Research in Child Development, Vol. 29, No. 1 (Serial No. 92).

Lafayette, Indiana: Child Development Publications, 1964.

(Sponsored by the Committee on Intellective Processes Research.)

24 Catherine Snow and Charles Ferguson, editors. Talking to Children: Language Input and Acqui5ition. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1977. (Sponsored by the Committee on Sociolinguistics.)

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cil's history. Council work in the area of social indicators achieved coherence and integration, under the Council presidency of Eleanor Bernert Sheldon, who in 1972 initiated the formation of the Council's Center for the Coordination of Research on Social Indicators, located in Washington, D.C. The Advisory and Planning Committee on Social Indicators (1972present) has sponsored a number of subcommittees and advisory groups. An Advisory Group on Child and Family Indicators (1979-present) was formed to pursue activities directed toward improving the data base, research, and reporting related to the current and changing well-being of children and their families. The group has now prepared a major report that provides a detailed assessment of measurement in specific child and family areas. 25 The report offers a framework and a classification scheme for formulating indicators of child and family well-being.

The current status and progress of work on childhood social indicators is summarized in areas of health, socioemotional development, moral and ethical attitudes, and intellectual functioning, and a series of recommendations is offered for maintaining and improving data collection and archival efforts.

The Subcommittee on Child Development in LifeSpan Perspective is currently preparing an inventory of longitudinal research on childhood. Though not directed specifically to social indicators, this inventory, when published, will provide a resource for assessing the status of data bases on children.

Developmental psychopathology

contexts" or "patterns of interaction" among all family members.

Clinical practice now may include entire family units, but there is a paucity of research on affective communication among family members. Often, efforts to detect and prevent social and emotional maldevelopment are not grounded in conceptual frameworks that distinguish discrete concepts and variables.

Clearly, clinicians and researchers could learn much from each other about developmental psychopathology and the committee is organizing activities to contribute to this objective.

Problems of parental behavior The Committee on Biosocial Perspectives on Parent Behavior is employing its approach to examine the etiology and the developmental consequences of particular failures or potential problems of parental behavior-e.g., school-age pregnancies and parenthood 26 and child abuse and family violence. The committee believes that the biosocial perspective may have an especially important contribution to make in these areas. Emergence of such problems may be related to changes across human evolutionary history in the size and nature of the family, the birth spacing of children, and the households in which families live.

Examining the issues in terms of the evolutionary history of the species and the biological roots of behavior while at the same time maintaining a developmental perspective may cast these problems in a new light and lead to increased understanding with unique recommendations for policy.

The Committee on Social and Affective Development believes that research on developmental psychopathology could benefit from. a sharing of knowledge between practitioners in clinical settings and those researchers who study children in the laboratory, home, and school. Several clinical approaches to the treatment of troubled children that have emerged in recent years focus on aspects of development that are of considerable interest to nonclinical researchers, and there is a growing body of important clinical research and documented observations. For example, just as nonclinical researchers have become more interested in the total family system, an increasing number of clinicians has realized that treatment must include a consideration of "transactional

The Committee on Development, Giftedness, and the Learning Process will consider those individual characteristics and contextual factors that facilitate the maturation of giftedness into productive adult expression. For domains of giftedness, there may be a critical period in the development of exceptional abilities, often during adolescence, when the individual transforms these abilities into a productive career.

For some, this transformation does not occur. The transition may involve the connection of exceptional abilities with a sense of purposefulness, identity, and the capacity for reflective abstraction. At the same

25 Harold W. Watts and Donald J. Hernandez, editors. Child and Family Indicators: A Report with Recommendations. Washington, D.C.: Social Science Research Council, 1982. (Sponsored by the Advisory Group on Child and Family Indicators.)

26 See, e.g., Beatrix A. Hamburg and Jane B. Lancaster, editors. School-age Pregnancies and Parenthood: Biosocial Dimensions.

In preparation, 1983. (Sponsored by the Committee on Biosocial Perspectives on Parent Behavior.)

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1983

Approaches to developmental interventions

15

time, there may be certain social and environmental conditions that can accelerate or impede this transition, conditions that may occur naturally or be intentionally structured through training efforts. The committee is exploring such possibilities.

The Subcommittee on Child Development in LifeSpan Perspective plans to examine various theories of and approaches to early childhood intervention in both cognitive and social areas. For example, cognitive training seems to carry more success with the aged than with children; one needs, therefore, to question whether this result pertains to age-related limitations on the individual's potential for change or is a function of variation in the intervention strategies and techniques employed at different ages. Several hypotheses regarding intervention and its effects have emerged in child development in recent years.

The subcommittee wishes to examine these in the context of our knowledge of child and adult development.

INTERNATIONAL ACTIVITIES

and the United States-in consultation with members of the Committee on Life-Course Perspectives. These activities are examples of the Council's contribution to the inclusion of child development research in the increasing internationalization of the social sciences. 28

CHILDHOOD AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT The preceding sections suggest the extent to which the Council's half century-long substantiv~ agenda has involved topics and issues central to research on child development. The most recent of the projects described in previous sections of this report represent yet another major development of the field-the incorporation of childhood into a broader, multidisciplinary view of human development. During the past few years, scholars of human development have begun to examine child development as a prologue to subsequent development in adulthood and old age.

Historical and evolutionary influences on child development, along with age-graded factors, are being explored. Nonnormative as well as normative events in children's lives are viewed as important contributors to developmental sequelae during childhood and throughout life. 29 This perspective is most explicitly represented by the formation in 1981 of the Subcommittee on Child Development by the Council's Committee on Life-Course Perspectives. But a view of child development which recognizes its interdisciplinary nature and life-long implications is characteristic of all current Council programs in the field. This approach has emerged from several decades of research on child and human development, and its beginnings can be traced back through Council activities at least as far as the Committee on Socialization and Social Structure. The implications of this broadened outlook on child development are now being articulated through Council activities and research on child and human development across several disciplines.

Committee activities in child development have frequently involved contact and collaboration with scholars outside the United States; Child Development in Life-Span Perspective, Intellective Processes Research, Learning and the Educational Process, and Socialization and Social Structure are all examples.

Additionally, several of the foreign area committees have examined issues of child development-either as committee projects or in collaboration with a relevant research planning committee. In 1973, the Committee on Scholarly Communication with the People's Republic of China (1966-present)-sponsoredjointly with the American Council of Learned Societies and the National Academy of Sciences-arranged a visit to the People's Republic by an American delegation on early childhood development. 27 The joint Committee on japanese Studies (1967-present) has sponsored conferences and other activities comparing early childhood socialization in japan and the United States-in collaboration with members of the Committee on Social and Affective Development-and is 28 Kenneth Prewitt. "Annual Report of the President, organizing a series of workshops to examine the fam1978-79." In Social Science Research Council, Annual Report, ily and its role in life-course development in japan 1978-79. New York: Social Science Research Council, 1979.

27 William Kessen, editor. Childhood in China. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975. A report of the American delegation on early childhood development, which visited the People's Republic of China under the auspices of the Committee on Scholarly Communication with the People's Republic of China, November 15-December 5, 1973.

16

29 See, e.g, Paul B. Baltes. "On the Potential and Limits of Child Development: Life-Span Development Perspectives." Newsletter of the Societyfor Research in Child Development, Summer 1979: 1-4; and Paul B. Baltes, Hayne P. Reese, and Lewis P. Lipsitt. "Life-Span Developmental Psychology." Annual Review of Psycholof5jl, 31:65110, 1980. (Both sponsored by the Committee on Life-Course Perspectives on Middle and Old Age, now on Human Development.)

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During its 60-year history, the Council has played a significant role in child development scholarship. The future holds promise for a continuation, if not even an expansion, of this role. Current Council committees remain active in the child development area. The Subcommittee on Child Development in Life-Span Perspective will attempt to develop an interdisciplinary view of childhood, attending to events in children's lives and to the influence of the historical context on child development. The Committee on Development, Giftedness, and the Learning Process will examine the development of exceptional abilities in

particular domains. The Committee on Social and Affective Development During Childhood will explore the early socialization of emotions. The Committee on Biosocial Perspectives on Parent Behavior will examine the contributions of evolutionary history to child development and parent behavior. These activities, and others to come, by incorporating examinations of concept, theory, and methodology across disciplines and by the involvement of junior and senior scholars from the United States and abroad, should contribute to the continued growth and refinement of the study of child development.

D

Perspectives on Latin American Population Research

by Thomas W. Merrick*

IN 1978, the Joint Committee on Latin American Studies decided to support population research projects that are not confined to demographic questions but rather consIder populatIon structures and processes within the larger economic, political, and social context of the region. A working group consisting of investigators with a wide range of Latin American population research experience was formed to consider and recommend innovative approaches that would guide the parent committee's future research support. 1 The working group addressed both substantive and methodological issues that it saw in recent Latin American population trends.

On the substantive side, the working group's interest centered on relationships between population and health, morbidity and mortality, mobility of labor, and the significance of social inequality, with the link between individual, family, and household behavior, on the one hand, and broader social and economic

* Thomas W. Merrick, a demographer, is director of the Center for Population Research at Georgetown University.

1 The working group was composed of Eduardo Arriaga, U.S. Bureau of the Census; Jorge Balan, Center for the Study of State and Society (CEDES, Buenos Aires); Elsa Berquo. Brazilian Center of Analysis and Planning (CEBRAP, Sao Paulo); Hariey Browning. University of Texas; Brigida Garda. El Colegio de Mexico; Mary M. Kritz. The Rockefeller Foundation (New York); Thomas W. Merrick, Georgetown University; Axel Mundigo, The Population Council (Mexico City); Alberto Palloni. University of Michigan; Zulma Recchini de Lattes, Center of Population Studies (CENEP, Buenos Aires); T. Paul Schultz. Yale University; and Maria Elena de Trinidade Henriques, Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (Funda~ao IBGE. Rio de Janeiro).

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1983

structural determinants, on the other, as a common thread running through each topic.

As the working group continued, communication across the diverse disciplinary and methodological traditions that were represented ("mainstream" economics and sociology, formal demography, Marxian and structural-historical approaches to name a few) proved to be a problem. While there was shared interest in the themes described above, there were quite different perceptions of both the substantive and methodological significance of what it was to link individuallmicrolevel behavior to macrolevel structure and change.

As an outgrowth of the working group's experience, several of its members planned a followup conference, which took place in Ixtapan de la Sal, Mexico, in August 1982, with funds provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The goal of the conference was to increase cross-disciplinary communication about ways in which various research traditions approach the task of relating individual and household level behavior to broader social and economic structure and change-the links between "micro" and "macro" level approaches. Authors of invited papers, who included researchers with Latin American experience as well as those with relevant experience in other regions, were asked to illustrate how their particular research tradition used its theory and evidence to draw conclusions about relationships between individ ual and household level demographic processes and the societal level. The conference participants are listed at the end of this report; the co or17

dinators of the conference were Jorge Balan, Center for the Study of State and Society (CEDES, Buenos Aires), and Thomas W. Merrick, Georgetown University.

The meeting sought to stimulate innovation in research, not in the sense of discovering an overriding synthesis to substitute for previous approaches but rather with the idea that effective cross-disciplinary communication on the question of micr<r-macro links would enrich existing approaches by revealing how others derive their insights and by making it possible for investigators to draw more effectively on such insights in the future. It was also trying to come to grips with what it recognized as a particular ambiguity in the field of demography about levels of understanding. Demographic events (birth, death, migration, marriage) are experienced by individuals, while their outcomes are measured in aggregates (birth and death rates for communities, socioeconomic groups, nations). Some would argue that the appropriate level at which demographic change should be interpreted and explained is the community level, but the advent of large scale surveys and of computers with software packages for multivariate statistical analysis of these surveys made it possible to approach the explanation of demographic change on the basis of individual and household level observations rather than community level averages, and attracted the interest of disciplines whose approach to empirical analysis ran along these lines. The rapid rise of interest in demography during the 1970s among microeconomists and quantitative sociologists is illustrative.

The entry into demography of new or alternative approaches has been comparatively easy, because explanation in the field has not required commitment to anyone of the traditional social science disciplines in the way, for example, that a sociologist or historian would need to know and be willing to work with the basic tenets of microeconomic theory before being taken seriously by economists in an effort to delve into the economic side of a question. In demography one finds sociologists, historians, anthropologists, and economists, all in a variety of stripes, practicing the trade, with disciplinary boundaries less rigorously enforced by the economist-, sociologist-, historiandemographer than in other branches of their fields.

While this offers increased opportunity to enrich the explanation of demographic change by drawing on a variety of approaches, it also increases the risk of misunderstanding and confusion if cross-disciplinary communication is poor.

While the conference agenda concentrated on 18

practical questions about how researchers in different traditions determine the appropriate level for measurement and analysis, the role of theory, and links to other disciplines, rather than more fundamental epistemological questions about the nature of the research enterprise, it was hard to avoid the latter in dealing with a number of points. It surfaced in the discussion of a paper by John C. Caldwell, P. H. Reddy, and Pat Caldwell, "The Micro Approach in Demographic Investigation: Toward a Methodology." Participants discussed the tension between the positivist approach, in which theory provides a clearcut conceptual framework that guides the assessment of factual evidence by generating falsifiable hypotheses from theoretical models, and the phenomonological approach, which starts by trying to see the world on the actors' terms before moving to explanations of their behavior.

In defense of the latter, Caldwell expressed concern that a great deal of existing factual data has been collected by government agencies and institutions that present ethnocentric perspectives, so that the investigator faces the fundamental problem of placing evidence in context and avoiding distorted perceptions of individual behavior imposed by the categories of available data. The experience described in the paper by Caldwell et al. suggests the need for a healthy skepticism about survey research that is undertaken without quasianthropological or microlevel investigation as a prerequisite. This micro approach is both a method of collecting data and a theory about what kinds of data are relevant in the analysis of demographic behavior. The cost is a substantial increase in the investment of investigators' time in field work, first in getting to know and gaining the confidence of the study population, and then in using the "play-back" method to test one's own perceptions of demographic processes against those of members of that population. 路The distinction between phenomenological and positivist approaches also revealed different perceptions of the meanings of the terms "micro" and "macro." The Caldwell et al. paper used "micro" to describe a method of collecting data, while those with a positivist orientation, particularly economists, defined it in terms of the level at which decision processes are examined, with "micro" referring to the fundamental decision-making unit (individual, family, household), and "macro" to aggregates of those units and to the institutional environment that prescribes limits that the fundamental unit takes as given.

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fortable with the notion of the household or family as a fundamental decision-making unit because it failed to account for intrahousehold dynamics.

Those dynamics were the topic of Elisabeth Jelin's paper, "A Microsocial Processing of a Life Style: the Organization of Expenditures Among Domestic Units of the Popular Sectors." She used a microapproach (in the Caldwell sense) to follow response patterns within domestic units to inflationary pressures in Argentina. Changes in expenditure patterns observed at the household level masked a complexity of negotiation and adaptation among household members about whose needs and what needs would be adjusted for the budget squeeze, with outcomes that appeared to be irrational, when viewed at the household level, making much more sense when understood in the perspective of intrahousehold bargaining and power relationships.

The family history approach to linking macro- and microlevel behavior was described in Tamara Hareven's paper, "Synchronizing Family Time and Historical Time: The Workings of Family History."

Drawing mainly on evidence from her studies of the American family during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, she departs from conventional life-cycle approaches to the family and recommends the life-course approach. Its main feature is to emphasize the timing of transitions in family life, and it is in the synchronization of family and individual transitions with external (period) changes that Hareven sees the main opportunity for linking micro: and macro level change.

Reaction to the paper focused on difficulties in defining transitions in the case of more complex households, particularly in the developing countries, and in the limited accounting for demographic processes in Hareven's account of the effects of broader social and economic change.

The logic with which household economic theory explains demographic change was outlined in T. Paul Schultz's paper, "Extending Economic Research Using Household and Community Data," which also described research strategies that could help economists to enrich their analyses of micro level behavior by incorporating community level evidence rather than assuming that macroconditions (e.g., market wages and prices) are exogenous at the individual and household level. Since empirical work in household economics is heavily geared to econometric analyses of individual and household level observations in survey data, Schultz outlined an approach that would modify the specification of micro models to include community level variables. He drew on his MARCH

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own studies about the effects of public health programs on child health to suggest how such a modification might be accomplished, but cautioned in the discussion that since economic analysis starts with the household in a equilibrium state, the economist is faced with a constant struggle in trying to account for changing external forces as well as the internal dynamics of the household.

Yoram Ben Porath pointed out that economists are not all of one mind on how adequate an accounting of household economic and demographic behavior the microeconomic theory of the household can provide.

Historically, political economy was largely concerned with broade,r social and economic change and recognized few of today's disciplinary boundaries. While modern neoclassical theory has had comparatively little to say about intrahousehold dynamics, economists working on household demographic behavior have begun to adapt their thinking to account for what happens within households. He cited Becker's effort to incorporate family ties in utility theory and discussed his own work with the Fconnection, which draws on transaction theory.2 He has been examining the hypothesis that larger households are an advantage when markets are not developed because transaction costs will be lower owing to the household's control over greater stocks of capital and labor. He noted that while the approach is still basically deductive, it represents an example of how insights can be enriched by drawing on descriptive evidence from research that is more phenomenological in orientation.

Modern Marxian theory belongs to the tradition of political economy. It is also basically deductive in approach, although critical of neoclassical economics because of the latter's apparent blindness to structural issues in its concentration on individual rationality, optimization, and equilibrium. Jane Humphries' paper on Marxian approaches to micro- macro links, "The Family and Economy: Notes Toward a Relative Autonomy Approach," spoke in terms of strategies adopted by families in response to institutional and structural changes: for example, changes in the sexual division of labor in response to the proletarianization of labor. She introduced the notion of relative autonomy as an attempt to provide space for mi2 Gary Becker. A Treatil"e on the Family. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1981.

Yoram Ben Porath. "TheF-Connection: Families, Friends, and Firms and the Organization of Exchange." Population and Development Review, 6( 1): I-3~, March 1980.

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crolevel responses to the macroforces that are traditionally emphasized in Marxian theory. Concern was expressed in the discussion about the validity of Marxian categories in the peasant economies of the developing countries, in contrast to Western Europe, where many of the ideas first emerged.

One example of research in Latin America whose design was guided, at least in part, by the framework of Marxian political economic theory, is the study of Brazilian reproductive behavior conducted by the Brazilian Center of Analysis and Planning (CEBRAP). Prior to starting their field work to gather individual-level reproductive life histories, the CEBRAP team examined a wide range of evidence on Brazilian economic and social change in order to establish typologies of geographic settings that correspond to differences in modes of production and modes of insertion into the national and international economy and which might have had a differential impact on demographic behavior at the individual level. On the basis of these contextual studies, surveys were conducted in each of nine settings representing different modes. Circumstances prevented a CEBRAP participant from attending the meeting, which would have permitted greater discussion of how CEBRAP investigators used their contextual information to draw conclusions that are not obtainable from conventional survey data.

Partial insight into how the CEBRAP data could be utilized to link micro- and macrolevels of analysis was provided in the paper by Brigida Garcia, Humberto Munoz, and Orlandina de Oliveira, "Family and Work in Different Structural Contexts," since they discussed their work with data from two sites in the CEBRAP study (Sao Jose dos Campos and Recife, along with data on Mexico City) to illustrate an approach to relating family economic behavior, particularly female labor force participation, to differentials in structural contexts. Labor market characteristics 'and recent population dynamics were the key structural features studied in the three cities in the study, each being examined with a view toward learning how individual behavior was conditioned by the structural context, with the family and household playing a mediating role.

Discussion of the Garcia, Munoz, and Oliveira paper focused on an issue that surfaced often during the conference: where to draw boundaries around the family-household-domestic unit in moving from individual to societal levels of analysis. Their study provided a good example of the need to deal with the limitations imposed by available data, in which co20

residence (a housing unit being the primary sampling unit) in fact settles the issue, even though theoretical interests suggest that support systems based on kinship and/or neighborhood proximity, interfamily transfers of income and services, and intrafamily interactions may be more pertinent to the story being told. Again, it was recognized that the kind of participant observation practiced by anthropologists and recommended in the Caldwell et al. paper should be a prerequisite to survey work when survey data are used in such circumstances and that these circumstances may be the rule rather than the exception in developing countries.

The Garcia, Munoz, and Oliveira paper also touched on another theme that has interested Latin American social scientists working in both the Marxian and structuralist traditions. This one relates household level demographic responses to societal level change in terms of "survival strategies." The survival strategy literature was reviewed by Marta Tienda in her paper, "Household Structure and the Division of Labor: Linking Demographic Responses to Social Change." According to Tienda, a "survival strategy is the process by which households actively engage in decisions and behaviors to allocate scarce resources among a range of potentially competing demands and in light of changing social and economic arrangements." While the definition sounds very similar to a description of the content of the economic theory of household demographic behavior, proponents of the survival strategy concept argue that it focuses much more explicitly on the exogenous factors than do the economic models.

Critics of the survival strategy approach were troubled by the ambiguity of the words "survival" and "strategy" in describing household behavior. Strategy suggests an orderliness that may miss much of the haphazardness in what families do, and also appears to ignore intrafamily conflict. If survival implies more than biological survival and includes living standards, the term is laden with a great deal of historically and culturally determined relativity, which, indeed, is part of the story which the survival strategy approach is trying to tell. The example in Jelin's paper of the link between meat in the diet and the preservation of a sense of self worth among working-class Argentine families is illustrative, since her research showed the lengths to which these families go to maintain a particular standard of living in the face of inflation and declining real incomes. While it was recognized that the process being described is similar to the one addressed by standard microeconomic theory (decisions VOLUME

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at the margin about allocation of scarce resources, it was more practical to recognize the validity of discigiven preferences), few noneconomists were willing to plinary specialization as a starting point and to consettle for recounting the story without the political tinue working against narrowness of vision through nuances about income inequality and, for Marxists, on-going efforts at cross-disciplinary collaboration class struggle, from which neoclassical economists and communication. abstain.

Participants and their presentations included Jorge Dandier's paper, "Household Diversification Yoram Ben-Porath, The Hebrew University, "Notes and Labor Processes," illustrates an approach to on the Changing Role of Economics in Demography"; household responses to social change in terms of a John C. Caldwell, The Australian National Universtructure of options rather than survival strategies. sity, "The Micro Approach in Demographic InvestiLand was the crucial variable for the Andean peasant gation: Toward a Methodology"; Jorge Dandier, households that he studied. Household demographic Center for the Study of Socioeconomic Reality behavior is viewed as a dynamic element in changing (CERES, La Paz), ':Household Diversification and control of land in that all three components of demo- Labor Process: Some Anthropological Perspectives on graphic change (fertility, mortality, and migration) as the Andean Peasantry"; Tamara Hareven, Clark well as marriage both produce and are affected by University, "Synchronizing Family Time and Historisuch change, through retention and loss of household cal Time: The Working of Family History"; Jane members. Macroprocesses condition. household re- Humphries, University of Cambridge, "The Family sponses, particularly through penetration of peasant and Economy: Notes Toward a Relative Autonomy areas by nonagricultural activities from the capitalist Approach"; Elizabeth Jelin, Center for the Study of sector, which proved to be closely interrelated with State and Society (CEDES, Buenos Aires), "Mithe diversification of peasant household organization. croprocessing of a Life Style"; Orland ina de Oliviera, The issues on the agenda of the conference were El Colegio de Mexico, "Family and Work in Different not new ones. Social scientists have continued to pon- Structural Contexts"; Paulo Paiva, CEDEPLAR, Unider the questions of the appropriate level at which versity of Minais Gerais (Brazil), "Notes on the linkages between social, economic, and demographic CEBRAP-CEDEPLAR Study of Fertility Change in structure and change should be studied and how Brazil"; T. Paul Schultz, Yale University, "Extending those linkages should be specified. It was an oppor- Economic Research Using Household and Commutune time for students of Latin American demogra- nity Data"; and Marta Tienda, University of Wisconphy to rethink those questions: the region has experi- sin, "Household Structure and Division of Labor: enced significant changes during the last two decades Linking Demographic Responses to Social Change in and the rapid increase in the stock of survey data and Latin America."

Commentators included Carlos E. Aramburu, analytical tools to work with these data have challenged investigators to develop research strategies Catholic University of Peru; Harley L. Browning, that provide an adequate understanding of such University of Texas; Mead Cain, The Population Council (New Yo~k); Axel Mundigo, The Population change.

It was clear from both the papers and discussion Council (Mexico City); Joseph E. Potter, El Colegio de during the conference that there are various useful Mexico; Richard Smith, SSRC-Cambridge Group for approaches to "telling the story," and that no single the History of Population and Society (Cambridge, account can claim a monopoly on significant insights. England); Verena Stokke, Autonomous University of Issues that came into clear focus in a microlevel optic Barcelona; and Charles Wood, University of Florida. were blurred in those that brought broader structural The coordinators were Jorge Balan, Center for the questions into view. It was tempting to think of Study of State and Society (CEDES, Buenos Aires), equipping investigators with multidisciplinary bi- or and Thomas W. Merrick, Georgetown University. tri-focal research lenses, but participants agreed that Brooke Larson served as staff.

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Recent Activities of the Committee on Life-Course Perspectives on Human Development Conference in Berlin The committee sponsored an International Conference on Life-Course Research on Human Development at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development and Education (Berlin), from September 16-21, 1982. The conference was made possible by funding from the Volkswagen Foundation (Hannover).

The conference was designed to present research on human development throughout the life course from a variety of disciplines and on both sides of the Atlantic. Nine sessions were held, consisting of one or two presented papers with two or three commentaries by discussants; each session was organized to incorporate both interdisciplinary and transatlantic perspectives. (The affiliations of committee members are given at the end of this report.)

Session One:

Session Two:

Session Three:

Session Four:

Session Five:

22

The Development of the State and the Structure of the Life Course Karl Ulrich Mayer, University of Mann. heim , and Walter Muller Discussants: Hartmut Kaelble, Free University of Berlin; Gudmund Heroes, University of Bergen Life-Course Patterns of Women and Their Men, 16th to 20th Century Arthur E. Imhof, Free University of Berlin Discussants: Abner Cohen, University of London; Matilda White Riley Conflict and Stress as Organizers of the Life Course Hans Thomae and Ursula Lehr, University of Bonn Di.~cussants: Erhard Olbrich, University of Giessen; Glen H . Elder, Jr. Social Organization and Subjective Construction of the Life Course Martin Kohli, Free University of Berlin Discussants: John W. Meyer; M. Brewster Smith Senile Dementia of Alzheimer's Type: Clinical, Genetic, and Pathogenetic Aspects Carl G. Gottfries, University of GOteborg Discussant: George M. Martin Senile Dementia of Alzheimer's Type: Epidemiological and Psychosocial Aspects Klaus Bergmann, Maudsley Hospital (London) Discussant: Brian Cooper, Central Institute for Mental Health (Mannheim)

Session Six:

Session Seven:

Session Eight:

Session Nine:

Huntington's Chorea: Clinical, Genetic, and Pathogenetic Aspects Heinrich Oepen, University of Marburg Discussants: Friederich Vogel, University of Heidelberg; Caleb Finch Personal Control and the Life Span Martin E. P. Seligman Discussants: Ellen Shinner, Max Planck Institute for Human Development and Education (Berlin); John Teasdale, The Waroeford Hospital (Oxford) Achievement and Motivation Through the Life Span Heinz Heckhausen, University of Bochum Discussants: Sigrun-Heide Filipp, University of Trier; Orville G. Brim, Jr.; Aage B. S~ren足 sen Developmental Variations of Memory Performance and Memory-Related Knowledge Across the Life Span Franz E. Weinert Intellectual Development During Adulthood and Old Age: Propositions Toward Theory Paul B. Baltes with F. Dittmann-Kohli and R. A. Dixon, Max Planck Institute for Human Development and Education (Berlin) Discussants: Rainer H. Kluwe, University of the Federal Armed Forces (Hamburg); David L. Featherman

Paul B. Baltes and Glen H. Elder, Jr., as cochairmen of the committee, presented concluding remarks and chaired the final discussion session of the conference. Other participants included Ronald P. Abeles, National Institute on Aging; Hans Jiirgen Andress, University of Bielefeld; Margret M. Baltes, Free University of Berlin; Peter Burgard, University of Saarbriicken; Irene Burtchen, University of Munich; Anselm Eder, University of Vienna; John W. Riley, Jr., Washington, D.C.; Alfred Schmidt, Volkswagen Foundation (Hannover); Kari Skrede, Institute of Applied Social Research (Oslo); Kerstin Steiner, University of Mainz; and Lonnie R. Sherrod, staff.

The committee met in business session for one day following the conference to assess the meeting, plan subsequent activities, and plan a volume from the conference, to be edited by Aage B. S.0rensen, Franz E. Weinert, and Lonnie R. Sherrod. The manuscript will incorporate many presentations from the conferVOLUME

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ence, several discussions that will be expanded into independent contributions, and new chapters from committee members and consultants who have worked with the committee over several years.

Attributions in mothers and children: A lifespan approach The first in a series of workshops to be organized by the Subcommittee on Child Development in LifeSpan Perspective will focus on emotional development and attributions of causality in young children and their parents. A planning meeting for a first workshop was held on October 15-16, 1982, in Philadelphia. Participating were Judith Dunn, University of Cambridge; Carol Dweck, Harvard University; Glen H. Elder, Jr.; Christopher Peterson, Virginia Polytechnic Institute; Martin E. P. Seligman; M. Brewster Smith; and Lonnie R. Sherrod, staff.

A workshop is scheduled for December 8-11, 1983.

The objective of the meeting will be to use existing data sets containing transcripts of mother-child conversations to address such questions as: What is the earliest age at which children make causal attributions? Is there an attributional style in preschool children? How does the formal structure of causal attri- 路 butions and attributional style change over time? What is the relationship between a mother's and a child's attributions? Subsequently, members of the subcommittee and other participants in the workshop will examine continuities and changes in attributional processes from early childhood through adulthood and search for contextual influences on the development of attributional style.

Although in recent years there has been some research examining attributions of causality, the style of attributions, and relationships to cognitive and emotional development in children eight years and older, there is relatively little attention to children at younger ages. As a result, little is known about the age at which attributions emerge or about the origins of the childhood attributions. The instruments which have been developed to measure attributions in older children are simply not appropriate for preschoolers.

During the planning meeting, participants examined transcripts of mother-child conversations from one study of preschoolers (Dunn's longitudinal study of siblings), and determined that such materials do allow the analysis of mothers' and preschoolers' attributions. Transcripts from several studies will be analyzed as one part of the workshop agenda, and probMARCH

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lems of analysis and interpretation and topics for subsequent research will be discussed.

Senior participants in the workshop will include Paul B. Baltes; Judith Dunn; Carol Dweck, Harvard University; Christopher Peterson, Virginia Polytechnic Institute; and Martin E. P. Seligman. At least an equal number of participants will be invited on the basis of applications submitted to the Council.

Research scientists at the advanced graduate student and any postdoctoral level who are already doing research or are interested in beginning research examining young children's (2 to 8 years) attributions of causality are invited to apply for participation in the workshop. Access to mother-child transcripts is desirable, but not mandatory. Interested persons may apply by sending a 1-2 page letter describing their interests, background, and opportunities for research in this area, along with a curriculum vitae to Lonnie R. Sherrod at the Council.

Materials should be received by June 1; a participant list will be assembled by July 1. Travel, lodging, and other expenses will be paid for all invited participants.

Pubertal and psychosocial change The second conference sponsored by the Subcommittee on Child Development in Life-Span Perspective was held on December 10-11, 1982 in Tucson, Arizona.

The major objective of the subcommittee's program is to examine possible interactions between theories of and research on child development and the life-span approach to studies of human development. This meeting was organized to examine the contributions of the life-span perspective, with its emphasis on developmental change as a potentially life-long phenomenon and its contextual view of the person, to the study of the multiple transitions that occur during adolescence-in biological, cognitive, and social domains. During the past decade, there has been an increased interest in adolescence, so that one aim of the conference was to review existing research, employing a life-span approach to explore major findings and identify areas where further conceptual or empirical work is needed.

The meeting was organized by subcommittee members Glen H. Elder, Jr., E. Mavis Hetherington, Richard M. Lerner, and Ross D. Parke. The agenda consisted of the following presentations and discussions:

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Introductory Session:

Session One:

Session Two:

Adolescence in Life-Span Perspective Glen H . Elder, Jr. Pubertal and Psychosocial Change Richard M. Lerner Biological and Psychosocial Influences on Puberty, chaired by Richard M. Lerner Onset of Puberty: Developmental Crisis or Transactional Phenomenon?

Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, Educational Testing Service (Princeton, New Jersey) Endocrinological Factors: Overview and the Example of Precocious Puberty Gordon B. Cutler, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development The Nature of the Effect of Puberty on Early Adolescent Development Anne Petersen, Pennsylvania State University The Impact of Puberty, School Type, and Sex on Adjustment Roberta Simmons, University of Minnesota Discussants: Orville G. Brim,Jr. and Ross D. Parke The Experience of Puberty: Individual, Familial, and Sociocultural Factors, chaired by Paul B. Baltes Behavioral Correlates of Early versus Late Maturation Ruth T. Gross, Stanford University Psychosocial Development in Adolescence: Continuities With Young Adulthood Richard Jessor, University of Colorado Cultural Links Between Gender Roles and Identity John W. Meyer Discussants: Glen H. Elder, Jr. and E. Mavis Hetherington

Other participants included Margret Baltes, Free University of Berlin; Merrill Carlsmith, Stanford University; Gary Jensen, University of Arizona; Matilda White Riley; and Lonnie R. Sherrod, staff.

A number of directions for further work were outlined during the meeting, and the subcommittee is considering a variety of subsequent activities. For example, attention to development over age periods

24

before and after adolescence may be particularly useful, and it may be especially important to compare the adolescent's development to that of other "transition" periods which also seem to be characterized by rapid and multiple changes and by change in several domains--e.g., school entry at ages 6-7 years and male and female "midlife crises" during the middle years. Furthermore, adolescence may be a particularly important age period for examining the impact of social change and of nonnormative life events. One can cite factors such as the increases in adolescent suicide and teenage pregnancies, the drop in age of puberty, trends in societal body shape preferences, and increases in the divorce rate and ask how these interact with the individual level changes that occur during adolescence. A report of the meeting is available from the Council.

Committee members, 1982-83; Paul B. Baltes, Max Planck Institute for Human Development and Education (Berlin); Glen H. Elder,Jr., Cornell University; Orville G. Brim, Jr., Foundation for Child Development (New York); David L. Featherman, University .of Wisconsin; Caleb E. Finch, University of Southern California; George M. Martin, University of Washington; John W. Meyer, Stanford University; Walter Miiller, University of Mannheim; Matilda White Riley, National Institute on Aging; Martin E. P. Seligman, University of Pennsylvania; M. Brewster Smith, University of California, Santa Cruz; Aage B. S.orensen, University of Wisconsin; Franz E. Weinert, Max Planck Institute for Psychological Research (Munich).

Subcommittee members, 1982-83: Paul B. Baltes, Max Planck Institute for Human Development and Education (Berlin); Orville G. Brim, J r., Foundation for Child Development (New York); Judith Dunn, University of Cambridge; Glen H. Elder, Jr., Cornell University; E. Mavis Hetherington, University of Virginia; Richard M. Lerner, Pennsylvania State University; Ellen M. Markman, Stanford University; John W. Meyer, Stanford University; Ross D. Parke, University of Illinois; Martin E. P. Seligman, University of Pennsylvania; M. Brewster Smith, University of California, Santa Cruz; Franz E. Weinert, Max Planck Institute for Psychological Research (Munich).

Lonnie R. Sherrod serves as staff to the committee and its subcommittee.

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Current Activities at the Council The measurement of occupation In 1980, the Council's Advisory and Planning Committee on Social Indicators and the U.S. Bureau of the Census jointly appointed a Subcommittee on Comparability of Occupation Measurement. The instigation was the adoption by the federal government of a substantially revised occupational classification system for its various statistical programs, including the 1980 Census of Population and Housing.

Unless steps are taken to restore the over-time comparability of occupation measurement, this change will seriously disrupt one of the data series that has been fundamental to research on social mobility, lifetime career changes, labor force behavior, vocational choice, and socioeconomic differentiation. This disruption will also reduce the usefulness of census occupation data for carrying out the employment and training activities of businesses and governments, including affirmative action programs. Projections of occupational structure will be affected.

The occupation data from the decennial censuses provide part of a basic empirical foundation for analyses that link long-term social, economic, demographic, and occupational change. Census sources of occupation data are particularly important for these analyses because of the scope, size, and continuity of the census.

The census provides much more geographic detail than most other data sources, in some cases providing statistically reliable data for small subgroups of the population for which other data sources are usually inadequate because of their small samples. Finally, the census data series extends much further back than most other series; public use samples have been produced from the 1900, 1940, 1950, 1960, and 1970 censuses. In addition, tabulations of census data are widely available in public libraries and can be fairly readily and inexpensively used.

These were all reasons why the scientific community expressed concern that steps be taken to ensure that the occupation data from the 1980 and succeeding censuses can be compared with data from prior censuses.

The disruption of data series is not new to those accustomed to working with occupation data, as well as to other students

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of change. It is a continual problem with roots in the very phenomena studied.

The changes that are themselves objects of study require that modifications be made in the measuring instruments used to study those changes (Parke 1979, page 5). With each census it has been necessary to make at least minor modifications in the occupational classification scheme; major changes were made in 1940, 1970, and 1980. As occupations emerge, they must be represented in the classification; as they disappear, they must be removed or absorbed into other categories. Many modifications involve aggregating or disaggregating existing categories. For example, the census of 1960 had no specific category for computer programmers; in 1970, computer programmers were counted as one of three categories of computer specialists. In 1980, the computer programmers of 1970 were split into two categories. An unchanging classification would be of little use for research or policy purposes.

Accordingly, students of occupation are faced with the continuing task of calibrating new measures against old ones.

The calibration of occupation measures may be particularly difficult, since there is an unusually wide variety in the responses to census questionnaires. In the 1980 census, more than 50,000 different responses to the occupation questions had to be coded into 503 separate categories. Few of these categories could be defined with absolute distinctiveness, since many occupations tend to have characteristics in common with others. The traditional method of calibrating data series that have been disrupted by a change in classifications has been recoding of the data according to both systems, but the very large size of the data set (the public use samples for 1980 include five per cent of the entire population) makes this a mammoth undertaking.

The Subcommittee on Comparability of Occupation Measurement was charged to find a technical means of meeting the needs of researchers for data that can be used to study changes in the occupational structure of the United States. Recognizing that the traditional approach (clerical double coding) seemed likely to be quite

expensive, the subcommittee considered several options for imputing the 1980 codes by some statistical procedure that would not require clerical intervention.

The Census Bureau conducted a smallscale experiment in the most promising of these techniques: a procedure that calculates regression models which may be used to estimate 1980 occupation codes from knowledge of 1970 occupation codes and variables found to be associated with occupation. These models are calculated on the basis of a small doublecoded sample, and may then be applied to large public use samples, thus resulting in the assignment of 1980 codes in addition to 1970 codes at less cost than clerical procedures. However, the imputation of a single code for each case would be misleading, because it would overestimate the precision of this statistical procedure.

In order to permit an assessment of the error resulting from imperfect models, it seems to be necessary to provide multiple imputations of the 1980 occupation codes. A method for producing multiple imputations that will yield valid inferences is now available (Rubin 1978) and will receive its first large-scale test in an evaluation study that has been recommended by the subcommittee.

In the subcommittee's opinion, this method of recalibrating the disrupted occupation data series warrants a trial because of its potentially general applicability as well as because of significant cost savings. The method is probably applicable to certain other points in the occupation time series, particularly to the calibration of the 1960 data with 1980 (clerical recoding may be preferable for earlier censuses). More generally, the method has promise of application to a variety of other needs for calibration, including instances in which classifications have changed over time or differ between data sets. With the encouragement of the subcommittee, two of its members are seeking funding for an evaluation of the 1970-1980 calibration. The subcommittee will interpret the results of its comparison oflogistic regression and multiple imputation with clerical recoding, and will make further recommendations regarding the preparation of public use

25

files containing comparable occupation data.

The subcommittee has prepared an interim report to its sponsors which states the problem of noncomparability of occupation measurement, describes the method of imputation as an alternative to traditional approaches, and proposes a trial of imputation. The document further recommends that research be conducted on other topics, including coder consistency and the conceptual bases for classifying occupations. Copies of the report, Altematnle Methods for Ef- ' fecting the Comparability of Occupation Measurement Over Time, may be obtained by writing the Social Science Research Council, 1755 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036. Please include $5.00 for postage and handling. An abbreviated early version was presented at the 1982 meetings of the American Statistical Association (Nam, Parke, and Scopp 1982). Inquiries concerning the subcommittee's work should be directed to Richard C. Rockwell at the Council's Washington office.

Charles B. Nam, Florida State University, serves as chairman of the subcommittee. The other members are William T. Bielby, University of California, Santa Barbara; Clifford C. Clogg, Pennsylvania State University; Stephen E. Fienberg, Carnegie- Mellon University; William H. Form, University of Illinois; Robert M. Hauser, University of Wisconsin; David L. Kaplan, U.S. Bureau of the Census (retired); Ann R. Miller, University of Pennsylvania; Mary G. Powers, Fordham University; Donald B. Rubin, University of Chicago; James G. Scoville, University of Minnesota; and DonaldJ. Treiman, Universit.y of California, Los Angeles.

Richard C. Rockwell serves as staff.

References Nam, Charles B., Robert Parke, and Thomas Scopp. "Historical Comparability of Occupation Statistics: Report of a Project." In ProctedingJ of the Social Statirtical Section, 1982 MeetingJ of the American Statirtical A.rJociation.

Washington, D.C.: American Statistical Association, 1982.

Parke~ Robert. "Population changes That 'Affect Federal Policy: Some Suggestions for Research." Items, 33(1):3-8, March 1979.

Rubin, Donald B. "Multiple Imputations in Sample Surveys-A Phenomenological Bayesian Approach to Nonresponse," pp.

2~28 in Proceedings of the Suroey Methods Section of the American Slatirtical Association.

Washington, D.C.: American Statistical As~ociation, 1978.

26

Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) For many years, the Annual Demographic Supplement to the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey (CPS) has been the chief source of national data on the economic situation of persons and families in the United States.

It is expected that this role will be assumed by the new Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) when that survey begins in the fall of 1983. The new survey will collect intrayear information on various sources of money and nonmoney income, taxes, assets, and liabilities, and will enable social scientists to produce improved estimates of income distributioJl, poverty, and wealth. The survey will also collect information on labor force status, participation in various government transfer programs, household composition and expenses, disability, pension coverage, and work history and expenses. The SIPP has been designed as an ongoing series of national panels with interviews taken at intervals within each year and recalled income data collected for each month. This design permits the study of intrayear changes in income and their relationship to participation in government programs, changes in household composition, and other factors.

Because the SIPP's longitudinal design and wide range of economic and social data will make it an especially important source of information for research on American social conditions and trends, the Council's Advisory and Planning Committee on Social Indicators is sponsoring activities intended to enable academic social scientists to participate in designs for data collection and plans for methodological and substantive research.

In October 1982, the committee sponsored a conference on "Technical, Conceptual, and Administrative Lessons of the Income Survey Development Program (ISDP)." The ISDP was a developmental project which undertook research on data collection and data processing strategies and instruments for the SIPP. Following the conference, the committee appointed a working group on the Survey of Income and Program Participation as an interim arrangement to help ensure that the research potential of the SIPP remains high.

The ISDP was jointly sponsored by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Bureau of the Cen-

sus. Field tests and other efforts were well under way for an anticipated Febraury 1982 start of the SIPP when funding was abruptly withdrawn. The conference on the ISDP was first conceived as a salvage operation, an attempt to ensure that some of what had been learned from the intellectual and financial investment in the ISDP ($12,750,000 between 1977 and 1982) was recorded and available for the future. Participants, most of whom had been members of the ISDP staff in Washington or in field sites, were asked to reflect on and evaluate the results of ISDP research, to say where further research was needed, and to generalize what they had learned for application in other data collection programs. Between 1977 and 1980, the ISDP collected data in four major field tests, ending in a 19791980 panel study that provided nationally reliable estimates of many aspects of income and program participation. Research on these data had already yielded a ~umber of positive findings, some of which served to cast doubt both on concepts of annual income and on estimates of th!! prevalence of poverty.

By the time the conference convened, the salvage operation had taken on an entirely different cast: during the summer of 1982, the Congress appropriated funds so that the SIPP could initiate data collection in 1983. Conference participants were asked to consider what the new measures would add to existing measures, their problems of validation and aggregation, and issues of longitudinal analysis and the linking of survey and administrative data. Panels were convened to consider four questions: (I) What aspects of the ISDP can and should be integrated with the Consumer Expenditure Survey and the CPS? (2) How effectively does the ISDP deal with intraannual income? (3) What agenda and priorities should be set for further research on the ISDP? (4) How do we build a unified data base when agencies have overlapping or conflicting mission statements? The conference was organized by Martin H. David, University of Wisconsin, who is presently an American Statistical Association Fellow at the U.S. Bureau of the Census and a member of the Council's committee on Social Indicators. The chair was Stephen E . Fienberg, Carnegie-Mellon University, who is a member of the Council's board of directors.

Fifteen research papers were prepared as background reading for participants.

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Following the conference, Mr. David prepared a summary statement, "Measuring Income and Program Participation." The conference proceedings will be available this spring and may be ordered (include $5.00 for postage and handling) from the Social Science Research Council, 1755 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W., W~shington, D.C. 20036.

As Mr. David observes in his summary, the conference recognized a need for a strong institutional mechanism for monitoring the design and content of the SIPP and for arbitrating decisions about how this important scientific resource is to be used. Participants observed that the programmatic importance of the SIPP is so great-the survey will be used as a basis for evaluating activities of federal and state governments that redistribute income and provide services-that discussions about the SIPP should be quite general and not limited to the parochial needs of particular agencies. The role of the Office of Management and Budget in statistical policy was noted. One aspect of the needed discussion is consideration of the still-evolving concepts and tools for data collection, data processing, construction of measures, data distribution, and analysis that are required for the SIPP. Another aspect is planning and organizing new research on the ISDP (which could address many methodological and substantive questions that have not yet been answered) and basic and applied research on the data collected in the first waves of the SIPP. These concerns are on the agenda of the Council's working group on the SIPP, which was appointed in November 1982, with funds provided by the National Science Foundation. Martin H. David serves as chairman; the academic members include Philip E. Converse, University of Michigan; James A. Davis, Harvard University; Daniel G. Horvitz, Research Triangle Institute (Research Triangle Park, North Carolina); Graham Kahon, University of Michigan; and Harold W. Watts, Columbia University. The group is assisted by Richard C. Rockwell, a staff associate at the Council. Inquiries should be directed to him at the Council's Washington office.

Survey of dissertation fellows in employment and training In the fall of 1982, the Council conducted a survey of a 1968 cohort of reMARCH

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cipients of dissertation fellowships in the field of employment and training and of a more recent cohort who completed their dissertations in the years 1979 to 1981.* Currently administered by the Council under a grant from the U.S. Department of Labor, the program was administered by the National Council on Employment Policy in 1979 and 1980 and by the Department of Labor between 1966 and 1979. The survey was primarily aimed at describing the employment status, job characteristics, fields of employment, and scholarly and administrative contributions of these recipients to the fields of employment and training. Although the results of a brief inquiry of former recipients can only be suggestive, the survey does provide a vehicle to reflect on the utility of dissertation programs of this kind.

The responses of former fellowship recipients suggest that dissertation awards of this kind serve several important functions. Most importantly, they enable recipients to complete a higher quality and more timely dissertation than would have otherwise been possible. Recipients noted that the award provides resources for data collection, coding, computer expenses, and typing which allow them to complete analysis they would otherwise not have been able to do and to devote greater attention to the development and presentation of research, rather than hone their skills as typist and keypuncher.

In addition to timeliness and quality, fellows noted that: (1) writing the proposal helped organize the dissertation; (2) the award provided confidence and motivation to complete the dissertation; and (3) the process provided experience in preparing proposals. The fellowship program requires graduate students to articulate research goals clearly and briefly and to work with grants or contract offices within their respective universities; there may be few such requirements for many graduate students.

The award also plays a modest role in the recruitment and retention of scholars in the field of employment and training.

* Of the 42 members of the 1968 cohort whom we attempted to reach, 24 returned completed questionnaires (a completion rate of 57 per cent). Eighty-one members of the more recent cohort totaling 105 did so (a completion rate of 76 per cent). The completion rate for the more recent cohort was substantially higher, apparently because of the more complete and accurate record of addresses.

Because dissertation awards in employment and training are available only to those students who have completed all requirements for the Ph.D. except the dissertation, one would expect few students to alter the choice of their dissertation field because of the availability of such support. Yet four per cent of the recipients judged the availability of the award to have been critical in their choice of field and 23 per cent thought it was the primary reason, among other factors. And 81 per cent of the respondents indicated they were presently employed in a position related to employment and training (84 per cent of the most recent cohort and 71 per cent of the older group). Although we know of no comparable data, these retention rates appear large, given the career flux that characterizes much of academia. It is possible-although the data cannot conclusively demonstrate this-that the continued involvement of these recipients in the field of research is attributable to the investment, rewards, and accomplishments which followed their receipt of the award.

It is somewhat more difficult to assess how the fellowship contributed to the field of research itself, but 65 per cent knew of specific instances when the results of their dissertation research were used by others. The survey also revealed that former recipients are actively involved in teaching, research, and administration. Seventy-one per cent of the respondents are employed in four-year academic institutions; 79 per cent of the academically employed older cohort hold tenured positions while 90 per cent of the more recent cohort hold tenure track appointments. Twelve per cent of the respondents are employed by a local, state, or federal government agency and eight per cent work for a private business or are self-employed. The most frequently noted primary and secondary work activities are teaching and basic research (59 per cent teaching and 51 per cent conducting basic research).

In sum, recipients of dissertation fellowships in employment and training testify to the value and benefit of the fellowship award. It provides resources and motivation for many to produce better dissertations in a shorter period of time than they would have been able to do in the absence of such support. The dissertation fellowship was a critical factor for several fellows in their choice of field; many scholars, long after the receipt of the award, continued to devote their pro-

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fessional careers to research and administration in the field of employment and training.

Reviews of Mrican research In order to stimulate a dialogue that will assess the state of social scientific and humanistic research on Africa, the Joint Committee on African Studies of the American Council of Learned Societies and the Social Science Research Council has begun to sponsor research overview sessions at the annual meetings of the African Studies Association. The committee initiated these sessions at the October 1981 meeting of the Association, at which commissioned review papers were presented on "Africa and the World Economy," by Frederick Cooper, University of Michigan; "Household and Community in African Studies," by Jane I. Guyer, Harvard University; "African Ideology and Belief," by Wyatt MacGaffey, Haverford College; and "States and Social Processes in Africa," by John Lonsdale, Cambridge University. These commissioned papers were presented together with prepared commentaries at special plenary sessions as the basis for open debate and discussion on the state of theory and research on those topics. The revised papers were subsequently published as a special issue of the African Studies Review, 24(2/3): 1981.

At the 1982 meeting of the African Studies Association, the committee commissioned and presented a research overview paper on "Ecological Change and the Politics of African Land Use," by Paul Richards, University College, London.

The revised paper together with a critical essay written by MichaelJ. Watts, University of California, Berkeley, will form the core of a special issue of the African Studies Review, 26(2): 1983.

For presentation at the December 1983 meeting of the Association, the committee has commissioned review papers on "Africa and the Agrarian Crisis," by Sara S. Berry, Boston University; "The Social Study of Health in Africa," by Steven Feierman, University of Wisconsin; and "Labor History," by William Freund, Harvard University. Topics of papers planned for 1984 and 1985 include African Philosophy; Class, Ethnicity, and Nationalism; African Oral Traditions and Literature; Peasants and Rural Social Protest; and The Visual Arts.

28

The decision of the committee to initiate this series of review papers arose from a clear need for sharper, more penetrating definitions of the basic conceptual and empirical issues and debates in the fragmented and increasingly disparate field known as "African Studies." Topics have been selected which bridge disciplines and which have been addressed from divc;rgent theoretical perspectives and with a variety of methodologies. In commissioning the review papers, the committee has asked scholars to consider major issues and trends in scholarship on the topics, including shifts in theory and method, new paradigms, changing issues, and changing definitions and treatment of old issues. The papers are to highlight bodies of cumulative research and to identify major gaps. Authors have been asked to consider existing tensions between different disciplinary perspectives, including the issues they raise, and the methods they employ. As a series, the papers are intended to address systematically questions regarding the impact of paradigms employed, questions asked, and answers given upon the development of social science and humanities research on Africa.

The 1982-83 members of the committee are Allen F. Isaacman, University of Minnesota, chairman; Jane I. Guyer, Harvard University; Bennetta JulesRosette, University of California, San Diego; Thandika Mkandawire, Z.I.D.S. (Zimbabwe); V. Y. Mudimbe, Haverford College; Peter Anyang' Nyong'o, EI Colegio de Mexico; Harold Scheub, University of Wisconsin; and Michael J. Watts, University of California, Berkeley.

Martha A. Gephart serves as staff.

Latin American research Thanks in part to a new three-year grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and continued support from the Ford Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Joint Committee on Latin American Studies initiated a number of new research planning projects over the course of 1982 and early 1983.

Markets, coercion, and responses in the Andean world. Following a planning meeting

in October 1981, the committee approved support for a project on the effects of market expansion and labor policies of the state on indigenous societies in high-

land Peru and Bolivia, and the initiatives and responses of Andean people to those outside pressures. Much recent research in Andean history has proceeded from structural analyses of native Andean societies transformed during the late 16th century under the impact of Spanish colonial rule and the imperatives of a dominant mining economy oriented toward the world market. In contrast, social and ethnohistorians of the Andes have tended to place more weight on the distinct ecological and cultural contexts within which Andean people have responded to or imposed their own conditions on the wider commercial and coercive forces at work. A central aim of this project is to bring historians and anthropologists representing these different perspectives to explore indigenous responses to and intervention in the mercantile economy in specific historical periods.

The first conference, to be held in July 1983 in Bolivia, will provide a forum for anthropologists and historians to discuss the ways in which mercantile capitalism has reshaped rural Andean society since the Spanish conquest. Specifically, participants will examine Andean patterns of subsistence organization in southern Peru and Bolivia and how peasants adapted to the changing pressures of extractive institutions, such as tribute and forced migratory labor, as well as to market forces.

They will also explore how the participation or non participation of Andean people in the market economy altered the terms of exchange and affected the very nature of commercial enterprise and political economic organization over the course of colonial and republican rule.

Political parties and democracy in the Southern Cone. Following a planning

meeting held in July 1982 in Buenos Aires, the committee decided to sponsor a project on contemporary political parties in Brazil and the Southern Cone. The project's aim is to study comparatively the political parties of these four countries and to seek, on the basis of the historical context, a new approach to the theory of political parties.

The project speaks to the needs of the field in two ways. First, the prevailing liberal and Marxist conceptual frameworks are ill-equipped to deal with the fact that in these societies parties do not only compete among themselves, but also must compete-usually in zero-sum fashionagainst alternative modes of political organization associated with authoritarian

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regimes. Second, recent literature on the struggle for democracy in Southern Cone countries has underemphasized the active role played by political parties in the transition from authoritarian rule.

At two conferences, planned for late 1983 and 1984, participants will address the ways parties and the systems of party representation were associated with the breakdown of the old (populistreformist) order; the effects that societal transformations under authoritarian rule have had on parties; and the limits and potential of the actions of political parties in the eventual reconstruction of democracy.

Social transfonnation in small, peripheral economies in the Caribbean basin. Two plan-

ning workshops held in the summer and fall of 1982 produced a proposal for a conference on the problems facing small countries of the Caribbean basin (including the rim countries of Central America) which have recently experienced political upheaval and are in the process of social transformation. These problems are compounded by the historic hegemony exercised by the United States in the region.

A central aim of the project is to examine the military and strategic interests of the United States and how those interests are threatened by and may in turn condition and impede political and economic change in the region. Participants will discuss, for example, how global issues (external debt, the cold war, intercapitalist competition) are concretized in specific U.S. policies in the region. Another set of issues will speak to the problems of transition, such as the disintegration of the region's common market and trade policies, that are peculiar to the Caribbean basin.

Popular culture, political resistance, and everyday life in Latin America. The purpose

of this project is to outline some theoretical and methodological approaches to popular culture and political resistance in Latin America, in order to go beyond empirical studies and the theoretical limitations posed by the term "cultural imperialism." Prevailing notions of cultural imperialism have tended to regard the popular classes simply as passive recipients of foreign-imposed values and norms. This project proposes to reexamine popular culture as a dynamic, contradictory process in which the state exploits, reworks, or deploys forms of popular culture for its own political or

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ideological ends. At the same time, popular culture also defines the limits of state power-the point at which it is challenged, parodied, or forced to introduce reforms.

The dynamic relationship between popular culture and modern states will be explored in different national and political contexts. Attention will be paid, for example, to the use of television by authoritarian regimes in Brazil and Chile to incorporate the masses into the politics of the regime. Participants will also focus on how popular resistance deVeloped outside the official culture and areas of surveillance, spreading along informal networks of women's activities, story telling, gossip, etc. In "open" societies, such as those of Venezuela, Colombia, and Mexico, the social contradictions between the values of consumerism, reified by television, and the scarcity and intensified economic crisis of those countries, will also be explored.

At a preliminary meeting, to be held in the summer of 1983, a small group of scholars will assess the contribution and limitations of recent literature on popular culture and identify the critical issues for a more searching, interdisciplinary inquiry into popular culture in contemporary Latin America.

New approaches to Latin American labor history. A planning meeting, to be held in

October 1983, will bring together a small group of scholars to take stock of recent advances in the field, identify the m;uor issues of controversy, and assess the relationship of Latin American labor studies to current research on labor history in other parts of the world. Above all, the workshop is intended to provide a forum for a critical discussion of new and alternative ways to conceptualize and revise the standard evaluation of the role of organized (and unorganized) labor in 20th century Latin America.

On the basis of their own research, invited participants will address the following issues: (1) the problems associated with a "world-systems" approach to Latin American labor history; (2) the usefulness of applying to the field concepts and methods drawn from the new social history; (3) the problem of defining the scope of Latin American labor history, that is, whether to include organized and unorganized workers and the rural and urban proletariat; and (4) and the relationship of studies of working class and popular culture (including class con-

sciousness itself) to the more traditional political and institutional concerns of labor history.

Social inequality and gender hierarchy in Latin America. Two workshops, to be held

in the fall of 1983 and in late 1984, are being organized around the issues of ideology and gender relations in societies undergoing social and economic transformation. The different rhythms and forms of capitalist expansion in Latin America during the late 19th and 20th centuries offer the possibility of comparing the continuities and discontinuities in gender relations and their historical roots.

While much recent research has focused on the effects of capitalist penetration on the sexual division of labor, little comparative research has yet been done on the relationship between local economic change and values, consciousness, and social meaning that define and inform social relations between men and women.

This project intends to explore the implications of culture, ideology, and values for understanding gender relations, particularly under historical circumstances of political and economic transformation.

Agrarian production relations. A proposal for a planning conference on agrarian production relations in Latin America was discussed and approved at the October 1982 meeting of the committee.

There is a growing body of research on agrarian change in different national and regional contexts which often addresses similar issues and problems without the benefit of an overarching comparative framework. Yet much debate centers around the current status of the rural population in Latin America, which has experienced rapid industrialization over the past several decades. This debate usually focuses on the degree to which peasants engage in rural or urban wage work and its meaning for the decomposition, on the one hand, or the economic viability, on the other, of the peasant household economy.

This project will bring together scholars to discuss, on the basis of their own empirical research, the variety and predominance of specific types of production relations in different agrarian settings.

The project will try to harness the new research on peasant household dynamics and the role of women in the work force to map the various configurations of production relations among peasants and rural wage workers. In addition, the project will explore the relationship between

29

agrarian production relations, on the one hand, and policies of agrarian reform, social welfare, and rural union organization, on the other. A planning

meeting is tentatively scheduled for late fall 1983, where a half dozen participants will identify the major conceptual issues of common concern and the state of re-

search on those issues in different Latin American countries.

Personnel John W. Hall honored by Japanese government John Han, the A. Whitney Griswold professor of history at Yale, and chairman of the Joint Committee on Japanese Studies, has received one of the highest awards of the government of Japan, the Second Class Order of Sacred Treasure, for his contributions as a scholar of Japanese history and for his work in promoting Japanese-American relations.

Mr. Han received the decoration of the Order at a special ceremony in the Japanese Embassy in Washington on November 30, 1982. This award of the government of Japan honors leaders in other countries who have contributed to a better understanding of Japanese culture.

Mr. Han is one of two Americans selected this year; the other is S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution.

In decorating Mr. Hall, Yoshio Okawara, ambassador of Japan, cited his scholarly work and his leadership in national and international organizations dealing with Japanese studies. Mr. Hall was chairman of the Joint Committee on Japanese Studies when it was first appointed in 1967; he became chairman again in 1981. From 1968- 71 he was

30

chairman of the U.S. Panel of the U .S.Japan Conference on Educational and Cultural Exchange initiated by the governments of the two countries. From 1975 to 1980, he was the first chairman of the Japan-United States Friendship Commission, created by the Congress to promote Japanese studies in America and American studies in Japan. He is a member of the American Advisory Committee of the Japan Foundation, and in 1967-68 he served as president of the Association of Asian Studies. He is the author or editor of 12 books on Japanese history ,and is currently one of the general editors of the forthcoming Cambridge History of Japan.

The Joint Committee on Japanese Studies is sponsored by the Council and the Americ"an Council of Learned Societies. In additon to Mr. Hall, the members for 1982-83 are Susan B. Hanley, University of Washington; Jeffrey P. Mass, Stanford University; Earl Miner, Princeton University; T. J. Pempel, Cornell University; SusanJ. Pharr, University of Wisconsin; J. Thomas Rimer, Washington University; Seizaburo Sato, University of Tokyo; Gary R. Saxonhouse, University of Michigan; Patricia G.

Steinhoff, University of Hawaii; and Masakazu Yamazaki, Osaka University.

Theodore C. Bestor serves as staff.

Staff appointment Thedore C. Bestor, an anthropologist, has joined the Council as a staff associate.

He will serve primarily as staff to the Joint Committee on Japanese Studies and the Joint Committee on Korean Studies. Mr. Bestor received a Ph.D. in anthropology from Stanford University in 1983, as well as an A.M. in East Asian studies from Stanford in 1976. He received his B.A. from Fairhaven College in 1973. His doctoral dissertation is an ethnographic study of the social organization of a Tokyo neighborhood, focused particularly on the relationship between community concerns and the municipal government. He has taught courses in anthropology and in Asian studies at Stanford and at the Experiment in International Living's program in Japan. His major research interests include comparative urban social organization, modernization and social change, and contemporary Japanese society and culture.

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Newly-issued Council Publications An Assessment of Research-Doctorate Programs in the United States: Social Be Behavioral Sciences, edited by Lyle V. Jones, Gardner Lindzey, and Porter E. Coggeshall. A publication of the Conference Board of Associated Research Councils. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1982. xii + 249 pages.

Paper, $10.50.

This is a publication in a series sponsored by the Committee on an Assessment of Quality-Related Characteristics of Research-Doctorate Programs in the United States, a project of the Conference Board of Associated Research Councils.

Other publications are on programs in Mathematical and Physical Sciences, the Humanities, Engineering, and the Life Sciences. The Conference Board is comprised of representatives of the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Council on Education, the National Research Council, and the Social Science Research Council.

With this series of volumes the Conference Board continues a tradition pioneered by the American Council on Education, which in 1966 published An Assessment of Quality in Graduate Education,

the report of a study conducted by Allan M. Cartter, and in 1970 published a Rating of Graduate Programs, by Kenneth D. Roose and Charles J. Anderson. The Cartter and Roose-Anderson reports have been widely used and frequently cited.

The volume is available from the National Academy Press, 2101 Constitution Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20418.

Karma: An Anthropological Inquiry, edited by Charles F. Keyes and E. Valentine Daniel. Papers from a project sponsored by the Joint Committee on South Asia. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983, ix + 313 pages. Cloth, $27.50.

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Ideas of karma and rebirth are fundamental to millions of Buddhists and Hindus living in South and Southeast Asia.

The papers in this volume are concerned with the practical implications of these ideas for the daily life, decision making, and understandings of social existence in these cultures. Together with the prior committee-sponsored volume on historical theories, Karma and Rebirth in Classical Indian Traditions, edited by Wendy O'Flaherty, this new volume represents part of a general effort by the Joint Committee on South Asia to explore and develop the social-analytical utility of concepts and models indigenous to the cultures of the region.

Drawing on intensive field research on myth, folk tales, ritual fasting, kinship relations, astrology, and village disputes in North and South India, Thailand, and Bali, and among Tibetans, the authors in the volume suggest how people think about and use karmic ideas and how these ideas are related to other ideas in their conceptual worlds, and to other bases for individual and social action.

The contributors include Lawrence A. Babb, Amherst College; Brenda E. F. Beck, University of British Columbia; James A. Boon, Cornell University; E. Valentine Daniel, University of Washington; Sheryl B. Daniel, University of Chicago; Lawrence Epstein, University of Washington; Paul Hiebert, Fuller Theological Seminary; Charles F. Keyes, University of Washington; David Lichter, Stanford University; Judy Pugh, University of British Columbia; and Susan S. Wadley, Syracuse University.

Moral Order and the Question of Change: Essays on Southeast Aian Thought, edited by David K. Wyatt and Alexander Woodside. Papers from a project sponsored by theJoint Committee on Southeast Asia. Yale University South-

east Asia Studies Monograph Series No. 24,1982. vii + 421 pages. Paper, $16.00.

Much of the recent historical scholarship on Southeast Asia has attempted to go beyond earlier tendencies to focus on the colonists and colonial policies and impacts, and to deal with the internal socioeconomic and political histories of the countries themselves. Nevertheless, almost no attention has been given to the types, forms, and nuances of Southeast Asia thought itself. In an effort to redress this imbalance, the Joint Committee on Southeast Asia convened a small workshop and then a conference on Southeast Asian intellectual history, held at Cornell University in August 1978. .

The papers in this volume result from that conference and draw on a wide variety of documentary materials-law codes, philosophical essays, religious epics, historical chronicles, folk tales, and poetry-from Burma, Cambodia, Java, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam.

They all demonstrate that beyond the broad philosophical and religious traditions of the region, specific individuals can be identified who helped to formulate 18th and 19th century understandings of the moral order, social forms, and social trends, and the various internal and external pressures for change in the countries of the region. At the same time, the essays question the common Western presumption that intellectual creativity can only be demonstrated through the labor of individual thinkers.

The contributors include Michael Aung Thwin, Elmira College; David P. Chandler, Monash University; Anthony Day, University of Sydney; Reynaldo C. Ileto, University of the Philippines; and Alfred W. McCoy, University of New South Wales; Alexander Woodside, University of British Columbia; and David K. Wyatt, Cornell University.

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SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH COUNCIL 605 THIRD AVENUE, NEW YORK, N.Y. 10158 Incorpomt,d in th, Slnt, of

Iffinoi~.

D,umb,r 27, 1924, for th, purpO.l, of advancing m,arch in thr .locMl .lci,nc,.1

DiTrcWTS, 1982-83: STEPHEN E. FIENBERG, Carnegie-Mellon University; HOWARD E. GARDNER, Veterans Administration Hospital (Boston); CHARLES O.jONES, University of Virginia; MICHAEL KAMMEN, Cornell University; ROBERT W. KATES, Clark University; ROBERT A. LEVINE, Harvard University; GARDNER LINDZEY, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences; ELEANOR E. MACCOBY, Stanford University; MARC NERLOVE, University of Pennsylvania; HUGH T. PATRICK, Yale University; KENNETH PREWITT, Social Science Research Council; MURRAY L. SCHWARTZ, University of California, Los Angeles; DONNA E. SHALALA, Hunter College, City University of New York; STEPHEN M. STIGLER, University of Chicago; SIDNEY VERBA, Harvard University; IMMANUEL WALLERSTEIN, State University of New York, Binghamton; WILLIAM JULIUS WILSON, University of Chicago.

Officer.l and Staff" KENNETH PREWITT, Presidmt; DAVID L. SILLS, Executive Associate; THEODORE C. BESTOR, MARTHA A. GEPHART, BROOKE LARSON, ROBERT PARKE, ROBERT W. PEARSON , PETER B. READ, RICHARD C. ROCKWELL, SoPHIE SA, LONNIE R. SHERROD, DAVID L. SZANTON ; RONALDj . PELECK, Controller.

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