Current Folklore in the Criticisms of Parsonian Action Theory*

This paper examines the often repeated assertion that Parsons abandoned the notion of “voluntarism” in favor of “macrofunctionalism” or ”behavioristic naturalism” and that the Parsonian scheme therefore reveals marked discontinuity. When Parsons’strategy for theory building is appreciated, this prevalent assumption proves to be incorrect. In fact, the Parsonian action scheme evidences a considerable degree of continuity from 1937 to the present. While a prevalent piece of sociological folklore is refuted by a careful examination of the Parsonian theory building strategy, a number of significant problems in following this strategy are felt to remain.     

INFLATION AND THE ACCUMULATION OF ASSETS IN PRIVATE PENSION FUNDS*

The effect of inflation on asset accumulation in private pension funds is analyzed using a stock adjustment model which incorporates nonbehavioral saving. Nonbehavioral saving (such as capital gains) occurs with considerably lower adjustment cost than behavioral saving. The regressions using time series data suggest that inflation has a large negative effect on aggregate funded pension saving. This effect is apparently not due to a behavioral adjustment to changed relative rates of return, but is primarily due to capital losses. The effect is larger the higher the proportion of pension fund holdings in corporate equities.     

Making the Tacit Explicit

Tacit knowledge is both a ubiquitous and puzzling notion, related to the idea of hidden assumptions. The puzzle is partly a result of the conflict between the idea that assumptions are in the mind and the apparent audience‐relativity of the "fact" of possessing an assumption or of the tacit knowledge that is articulated. If we think of making the tacit explicit as constructing a certain kind of inference repairing explanation for a particular audience "on the fly" we come closer to an explanation of what happens when we "make our tacit knowledge explicit." We can account for our capacity to construct such statements for particular audiences by reference to our non‐conceptual capacities to understand others. This approach avoids problematic assumptions about shared representations that are common in cognitive science, and the equally problematic notion that tacit knowledge is sentence‐like content that we retrieve when we articulate something based on our tacit knowledge.     

"Is Public Sociology Such a Good Idea?"

Michael Burawoy's call for a public sociology disciplined by professional and policy sociology, on the one side, and driven by critical sociology, on the other, exposes the ideological biases of sociology to publics. In so doing, public sociology will thwart non-ideological efforts for sociology to exert influence on broader publics and on political decision-makers. In order for sociology to be able to influence public opinion and the decisions of key players in the political and economic arenas, it will need to earn respect through a long evolutionary process of careful research and explanation without ideological fervor. To expose the ideological biases of sociology will thwart this evolutionary process. In contrast, sociology would be much better to develop an engineering mentality in addressing issues, problems, and concerns of publics in present-day societies.     

Locating Footbinding: Variations across Class and Space in Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century China*

In this article I look at footbinding as a social and cultural practice embedded in the daily life conditions of women and their families. I sketch a picture of variations based primarily on regional and class differences in nineteenth and early twentieth century practices of footbinding and in efforts to eradicate them. The period in question is one of interest precisely because it is a time of transition. I look simultaneously at footbinding as a practice and as a target of criticism, defense, and transformation. This allows me to consider the ways in which it was practiced by women to represent, shape, and constrain their own, their daughters,' and their families' cultural, social, economic, and political lives. Relying largely on missionary journals, personal histories, diaries, and travel writing, I examine the practice and the demise of footbinding in various social and spatial locations. Although sources which permit a close look at embedded social practices of footbinding are scarce, it seems clear that both the practice of various forms of footbinding and the process of its eventual demise involved strategies, conflicts, and habits which differed along gender, class, and geographic lines of distinction. I suggest that the variety of forms the practice of footbinding took in lived experience of women's social lives is not incidental to its conceptualization and meaning, but rather central to it.