Knowledge that Transforms

Zimmerman, Don H. 1969 Some issues in labeling theory. Read at the annual meeting of the Pacific Sociological Association, Seattle, Washington. 1970 Record-keeping and the intake process in a public welfare organization. Pp. 319354 in Stanton Wheeler (ed.), On Record: Files and Dossiers in American Life. New York: Russell Sage. Zimmerman, Don H. and Melvin Pollner ForthThe everyday world as a phenomenon. coming To appear in Harold Pepinsky (ed.), People and Information (in press).

This paper analyzes the empiricat utility of cossensual and conNictual theories in explaining the social cohesion of the liberal democracies of Britasn and the United States. After clarifying conceptual problems of value consensus tSleory and Marxist theory, it examines the forms and extent of value-commitment in these countries. The conclusion is that both theories grossly overstate the amount of both value consensus betweee individuals and value consistency within individuals that actually exists. Cohesion in liberal democracy depends rather on the lack of consistent commitment to general values of atry sort and on the pragmatic acceptance by subordinate classes of their limited roles in society. Suggestive evidence is also found for the existence of some false consciousness among sgbordanate classes.

Growth of a Policy (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1946), p. 138. 33 U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Digest of Education Statistics, 1968 Edition (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1968) p. 128 (Table 160). 34Ibid., p. 95. Table 115. It should perhaps be added that the total of $3.2 billion spent for basic research in 1966 compared with $18.9 billion spent for applied research and development. 35 Clark Kerr, The Uses of the University (Harper Torchbooks. New York: Harper & Row, 1966), pp. 57-69. This summary selects the aspects most directly related to the autonomy of decision-making by scholars and universities. It should be noted that Kerr concentrates on the federal grant university, but that analogous considerations apply to research funds from private foundations. 36 Bush, op. cit., p. 52. 37 Reinhard Bendix, Social Science and the Distrust of Reason (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1951), passim.

The events with which this book deals provide a particularly sensitive vantage point for examining the relationship of social science endeavors to public policy formation and for studying the complex interactions between the federal goverment and the civil rights organizations.