International Encyclopedia of the SOCIAL SCIENCES
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International Encyclopedia of the SOCIAL SCIENCES
[ C O N T I N U E D ]
THOMAS, W. I. William Isaac Thomas (1863-1947), American sociologist and social psychologist, was born in Virginia. Little is known about his early years, but he entered the University of Tennessee at the age of 17 and graduated in 1884. He remained at the university for the next four years as an instructor in modern and classical languages, thereby acquiring a linguistic facility that was to prove invaluable in his later work. After marrying Harriet Park in 1888, he spent a year studying in Germany and then joined the faculty of Oberlin College, where he taught English. In 1893, while on leave from Oberlin, he began graduate work in sociology at the University of Chicago and received his doctorate in 1896. Between 1896 and 1910, when he attained his professorship at the University of Chicago, Thomas published a series of papers on the social psychology of sex (1907) and prepared the Source Book for Social Origins (1909). These early writings reveal an orderly and scholarly mind, a lucid, unpretentious prose style, a grasp of varied but relevant literature, and a flair for interpreting human phenomena. They also contain, in embryonic form, several ideas more fully developed in later works, e.g., the role of attitudes, the "four wishes," the importance of social science, and the interplay of biological and sociocultural factors in human behavior. (These are reviewed in detail in Young 1963.) Between 1908 and 1918 Thomas traveled extensively in Europe, with the support of the Helen Culver Fund for Race Psychology, and began to collect materials on Polish society and the migration of the peasants to America. In 1914 he began
his collaboration with Florian Znaniecki, which culminated in the monumental The Polish Peasant in Europe and America (1918-1920). This was not merely a monograph on a particular cultural and political group but a work that contained important theoretical and methodological insights. Included in it were the "Methodological Note"; a lengthy, intensive life history; theories of personality development and of social change; a typology of personalities; an analysis of the salient features of social organization; and the central attitudevalue schema. Nearly twenty years later it was selected as one of the most significant volumes in social science and was subjected to a searching reappraisal (see Blumer 1939). During this period Thomas also kept abreast of ideas in a variety of fields, from the newer biology of Jacques Loeb, H. S. Jennings, C. M. Child, and A. J. Carlson to the psychology of Pavlov and J. B. Watson and the psychiatry of Freud, Adolf Meyer, and Harry Stack Sullivan. This intense curiosity about ideas provided a rich intellectual background against which his own creativity could flourish. In 1918, as a result of a newspaper scandal, Thomas' appointment at the University of Chicago was terminated, and thereafter his only academic appointments were at the New School for Social Research, from 1923 to 1928, and at Harvard University, in 1936/1937. His later career was maintained through independent research and writing that was often supported by interested individuals, private foundations, or other agencies. With the assistance of Mrs. W. F. Dummer, a Chicago philanthropist, he completed The Unadjusted Girl (1923) and organized an important symposium, later published as The Unconscious (1928). He was in fact the author of Old World 1
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Traits Transplanted (1921), a volume in the Americanization Studies series, supported by the Carnegie Corporation. The Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial supported his work, with Dorothy S. Thomas, on approaches to the behavior problems of children, in The Child in America (1928). As president of the American Sociological Society in 1927, he delivered the address "The Behavior Pattern and the Situation" (1927). In succeeding years he was on the staff of the Social Science Research Council, preparing a lengthy memorandum on research problems in the field of culture and personality (published for the first time in 1951, part 4). In connection with this work he again traveled extensively in Scandinavia and elsewhere in Europe, reviewing research on crime, personality formation, and population trends. His first marriage ended in divorce in 1934. His second wife, Dorothy S. Thomas, whom he married in 1935, is an eminent sociologist in her own right and in 1952 was also president of the American Sociological Society. Thomas' last book, Primitive Behavior: An Introduction to the Social Sciences, was published in 1937, and a year later he took part in a symposium that reviewed the significance of The Polish Peasant (see Blumer 1939). After spending a few years in New Haven, Connecticut, he moved to Berkeley, California, where he died at the age of 84. In private life Thomas was an urbane, genial, and witty cosmopolitan. He savored good food, good wine, and good companionship. He had a zest for life, an enormous curiosity about all human experience^ and a generous capacity for warmth and friendship. Few men have worn the mantle of "gentleman and scholar" so gracefully. During the more than forty years of his active career, Thomas was author, coauthor, or editor of 7 books and 38 articles, all marked by erudition, imagination, and seminal ideas. Yet he had no formal doctrine or sociological system, nor did he found a school of sociology. Rather, he directed his attention to a variety of empirical areas— including sex differences, migration, delinquency, and social organization—and fashioned methods and concepts that seemed appropriate to the subject at hand. Nevertheless, certain central themes appear and reappear in a number of his works, and together they constitute his essential contributions to the development of social science. Social behavior. Thomas' interest in human behavior began with his first publications on the sources and consequences of sex differences. Exploring such subjects as modesty, feminine character, and the sex division of labor, he utilized
both biological and sociocultural data, a technique he was to use often. Although he viewed the behavioral differences between the sexes as a function of both internal (organic) and external (sociocultural) conditions, he followed the practice of his time by giving some primacy to the organic factors. That is, he had some tendency toward "reductionism," but he was not consistent, as the development of the "four wishes" and the situational approach to behavior indicates. The four wishes were first presented in the paper "The Persistence of Primary-group Norms" (1917). Thomas described them as "interests," connected with the "desires" for new experience, for mastery, for recognition, and for safety or security. While he did not indicate clearly the precise place of these wishes in the spectrum of motivation, he derived them from "original emotional reactions," such as fear, rage, and love. Further, he suggested the primacy of biology by the statement that all forms of behavior can ultimately be reduced to two fundamental appetites, food hunger and sex hunger. In The Polish Peasant, the wishes became in effect synonymous with attitudes and were defined as partly biological and partly social in character. Two of them—the desires for mastery and security —are linked respectively with the "instincts" of hate and fear, but the desires for new experience and for recognition are free of such organic anchorage. Further, Thomas altered the theoretical significance of the wishes: their rationale now is social control rather than reductionism. Society, through suitable appeals to the wishes as well as by punishments and rewards relating to their expression, can achieve effective social control because it is the essence of the wishes that they must be satisfied socially. The final formulation of the wishes appeared in The Unadjusted Girl, in which Thomas used them to analyze and interpret various forms of female delinquency. Now, however, he dropped the wish for "mastery," replacing it by the wish for "response," which is based on the instinct of love. In this version, the wishes for new experience and for security are linked respectively to the instincts of anger and fear; only the wish for recognition appears to be derived completely from social experience. In this work Thomas referred to the wishes as being "forces which impel to action" and as corresponding in general to the "nervous mechanism." The wishes, in one form or another, became extremely popular in American sociology; their very simplicity and versatility made them attrac-
THOMAS, W. I. This was Thomas' vision in "The Persistence of Primary-group Norms" (1917) and in the famous "Methodological Note" of The Polish Peasant (1918-1920). Clearly, Thomas' view was similar to the one developed by Emile Durkheim some twenty years earlier, for Durkheim was also concerned with problems of social integration and the development of a sociological science. The "social facts" which were the subject matter of Durkheim's social science did not, however, include individual consciousness or subjective states, "facts" that Thomas considered to be of great importance. Thus, in The Polish Peasant, the "attitude-value" schema was introduced precisely for the purpose of studying the relationship between objective and subjective factors. The concept of a "value" in the schema is very similar to Durkheim's concept of a "social fact" in that it is an objective datum. It is also similar to Thomas' earlier concept of "control" in the sense that it is an object of activity. An "attitude" is a motivational element in individual consciousness, such as one of the postulated four wishes. Thus, Thomas regarded social theory and social science as primarily concerned with the interactions and combinations of social values with individual attitudes, because the "cause" of a social or individual phenomenon is never one of these alone but always a joint product. The intent here was to limit, at least abstractly, the number and kind of phenomena with which social science must deal, in order to increase the possibility of formulating a limited number of sociological laws. Indeed, the laws of "social becoming" can be discovered only by studying the interaction of values and attitudes as it has occurred through time in various societies. The schema implied an endless series of empirical studies because the number of possible social values and individual attitudes is almost infinite; but such research would presumably result in a limited number of highly abstract laws, a conception that was clearly based upon the model of the more successful physical sciences of the time. In addition, since the greatest strides in these sciences had been made by men who were moved more by theoretical concerns than by the practical problems of the moment, such theoretical concerns should be primary for social scientists. In Thomas' view, the major weakness of social science was that it lacked theory rooted firmly in systematic data: there was too much aimless empiricism on the one hand and grand conceptualizing on the other, with little relationship between them. Social scientists had to develop methods of investigation compara-
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ble to those of the natural sciences, linking concepts and hypotheses with measurable systematic observations and eliminating their reference to a particular social "problem." The attitude-value schema is now generally regarded as being oversimplified. Nevertheless, it was important at the time as an illustration of what is involved in theory building and of what social science might become—not only a theoretical science, but also one that in due course might find practical application. In all his writings Thomas never deviated from his insistence that rigorous method lies at the heart of successful science. But some of his related views on social science were not so consistent. For example, in his later years he began to doubt that social science can discover "laws" in the same sense as physics and chemistry, for these sciences deal with relatively few variables; the properties of their phenomena do not change; and they can operate within closed systems. In social science, on the other hand, the variables are many; the properties of its phenomena (people) do change; and the systems of personality, society, and culture are open-ended. Thus he came to speak of probabilities and inferences rather than laws and at one point remarked that he did not believe in comparisons between physics and sociology. (For the evolution of Thomas' ideas regarding science and method, see 1951, part 1.) In his later works Thomas emphasized the advantages to social science that might result from taking a situational approach to behavior: "Individuals differentiated in what ways placed in what situations react in what patterns of behavior, and what behavioral changes follow what changes in situation?" (1951, p. 18). The task of the scientist is to describe the situation as accurately as possible in either experimental or field studies and then to observe the behavior in the situation of persons with specified characteristics. In this way systematic inferences can be drawn regarding the crucial variables intervening between stimulus and response. The use of control groups in research will also be facilitated. Many of these ideas regarding social science and social research are now so firmly held and practiced that they are commonplace. But in the years between the two great wars, they required a spokesman, an advocate, and a demonstrator— roles that Thomas filled with distinction. In several ways Thomas was one of the most influential social scientists of the century. During his years at the University of Chicago he helped
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by habit, but from time to time crises arise in social life, either in the form of completely new situations or of old situations on a different scale. Attention is then directed to alternative patterns and new solutions. Extraordinary individuals, building on existing techniques, become especially important in this process of change through adaptation. During his study of the Polish peasant, Thomas became interested in the different rates of change manifested in different societies and the consequences thereof. In nonliterate and peasant societies, the slowness of the rate of change permits the incorporation of new elements into the existing cultural fabric, thereby preventing any widespread demoralization among the people. In modern society, however, change seems so rapid and complex that traditional social controls are steadily being weakened. Group solidarity is being fragmented, and behavior is becoming individualized. The primary group is being replaced by a differentiated mass society with different and conflicting definitions of situations. To deal with these phenomena, Thomas and Znaniecki presented a new model of social change in The Polish Peasant. As a base line, there is an ideal type of "social organization" in which norms and behavior are generally congruent. In every group there are some deviations, either innovative or destructive, from the norms, but as long as these remain few and scattered, the validity of the norms themselves is not questioned; the group can handle the challenge of deviation through a process of "social reorganization," which is essentially any collective response that reaffirms and reinforces existing norms and values. However, when deviations become frequent and widespread, even reaching the point of rebellion or revolt, the normal process of reorganization is inadequate; "social disorganization" has set in, either through the general acceptance of new norms and values by younger generations or through lack of consensus among adults or through combinations of both. This condition, which reflects a decrease in the influence of social norms, is characteristic of modern complex societies and requires nothing less than "social reconstruction," or the creation of new codes and institutions better adapted to the changed conditions of life. In this process, creative individuals are once again assigned major leadership roles, to be guided perhaps by the fruits of successful social research. Since change appeared to sociologists of Thomas' generation to have gone beyond the point at which such concepts as social organization and reorgan-
ization could be effectively applied and since blueprints for a program of social reconstruction did not exist, sociological attention was focused on social disorganization. The phenomena of divorce, crime, delinquency, and mental illness were all studied intensively, and courses in social disorganization became standard offerings in most American colleges and universities. All too often, however, attention was concentrated on the phenotypic elements, and the underlying genotypic processes of change were ignored. As a result, little progress has been made in recent decades toward more comprehensive theories of deviance or of social disorganization as a phase of massive social change. Thomas' legacy, then, lies in formulating macro concepts of a distinctively sociological theory of change that may still warrant research which leads to more specific indicators and hypotheses. Toward a social science. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the idea of a social science was weak and uncertain. Anthropology was largely dominated by concepts borrowed from biology and archeology; psychology was in its infancy; sociology was largely concerned with amelioration of social "problems" or the creation of vast intellectual systems; social psychology was just beginning to be talked about; and psychiatry was preoccupied with nosology and organic approaches to "insanity." The principal science that seemed to offer any clues to understanding man and his behavior was biology and, understandably enough, many persons found it convenient to "reduce" social phenomena to biological terms. Only a few—Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Sumner, and, to some extent, Spencer—had managed to rise above the major presuppositions of the time. It is against such a background that Thomas' contributions to the development of a truly social social science must be viewed. As has been indicated, Thomas thought that the modern world was undergoing such rapid and farflung change that it was becoming disorganized socially. The mutual dependence of the individual and the group that fostered stability in the primary groups of the past was being shattered by forces and pressures that seemed incomprehensible. "Common sense" explanations of the causes and trends of events were proving inadequate, as was the social control technique of "ordering and forbidding." Thus, the great need was for a social science that would study, systematically and empirically, large classes of social events, with the intent of achieving explanatory principles that could then be applied to rational social control.
THOMAS, W. I. This was Thomas' vision in "The Persistence of Primary-group Norms" (1917) and in the famous "Methodological Note" of The Polish Peasant (1918-1920). Clearly, Thomas' view was similar to the one developed by Emile Durkheim some twenty years earlier, for Durkheim was also concerned with problems of social integration and the development of a sociological science. The "social facts" which were the subject matter of Durkheim's social science did not, however, include individual consciousness or subjective states, "facts" that Thomas considered to be of great importance. Thus, in The Polish Peasant, the "attitude-value" schema was introduced precisely for the purpose of studying the relationship between objective and subjective factors. The concept of a "value" in the schema is very similar to Durkheim's concept of a "social fact" in that it is an objective datum. It is also similar to Thomas' earlier concept of "control" in the sense that it is an object of activity. An "attitude" is a motivational element in individual consciousness, such as one of the postulated four wishes. Thus, Thomas regarded social theory and social science as primarily concerned with the interactions and combinations of social values with individual attitudes, because the "cause" of a social or individual phenomenon is never one of these alone but always a joint product. The intent here was to limit, at least abstractly, the number and kind of phenomena with which social science must deal, in order to increase the possibility of formulating a limited number of sociological laws. Indeed, the laws of "social becoming" can be discovered only by studying the interaction of values and attitudes as it has occurred through time in various societies. The schema implied an endless series of empirical studies because the number of possible social values and individual attitudes is almost infinite; but such research would presumably result in a limited number of highly abstract laws, a conception that was clearly based upon the model of the more successful physical sciences of the time. In addition, since the greatest strides in these sciences had been made by men who were moved more by theoretical concerns than by the practical problems of the moment, such theoretical concerns should be primary for social scientists. In Thomas' view, the major weakness of social science was that it lacked theory rooted firmly in systematic data: there was too much aimless empiricism on the one hand and grand conceptualizing on the other, with little relationship between them. Social scientists had to develop methods of investigation compara-
ble to those of the natural sciences, linking concepts and hypotheses with measurable systematic observations and eliminating their reference to a particular social "problem." The attitude-value schema is now generally regarded as being oversimplified. Nevertheless, it was important at the time as an illustration of what is involved in theory building and of what social science might become—not only a theoretical science, but also one that in due course might find practical application. In all his writings Thomas never deviated from his insistence that rigorous method lies at the heart of successful science. But some of his related views on social science were not so consistent. For example, in his later years he began to doubt that social science can discover "laws" in the same sense as physics and chemistry, for these sciences deal with relatively few variables; the properties of their phenomena do not change; and they can operate within closed systems. In social science, on the other hand, the variables are many; the properties of its phenomena (people) do change; and the systems of personality, society, and culture are open-ended. Thus he came to speak of probabilities and inferences rather than laws and at one point remarked that he did not believe in comparisons between physics and sociology. (For the evolution of Thomas' ideas regarding science and method, see 1951, part 1.) In his later works Thomas emphasized the advantages to social science that might result from taking a situational approach to behavior: "Individuals differentiated in what ways placed in what situations react in what patterns of behavior, and what behavioral changes follow what changes in situation?" (1951, p. 18). The task of the scientist is to describe the situation as accurately as possible in either experimental or field studies and then to observe the behavior in the situation of persons with specified characteristics. In this way systematic inferences can be drawn regarding the crucial variables intervening between stimulus and response. The use of control groups in research will also be facilitated. Many of these ideas regarding social science and social research are now so firmly held and practiced that they are commonplace. But in the years between the two great wars, they required a spokesman, an advocate, and a demonstrator— roles that Thomas filled with distinction. In several ways Thomas was one of the most influential social scientists of the century. During his years at the University of Chicago he helped
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to train a. number of young sociologists and social psychologists who, in turn, occupied faculty positions in many universities. Together with his colleagues at Chicago he formed a graduate department which, in terms of quantity and quality of graduate students and scholarly production, dominated American sociology for several decades. He helped to lead sociologists out of the armchair and into the field and the laboratory by establishing the tradition of empirical research for doctoral degrees in sociology. The many concepts he fashioned found their way into textbook after textbook and into the classrooms, thereby influencing generations of younger sociologists. His pioneering memorandum on research in culture and personality influenced the later course of the Social Science Research Council and the work of other scholars in the field. Moreover, he placed social science in the context of modern times, giving due weight to theory and fundamental research but also insisting that the ultimate test of a science must lie in its fruitful application to practical problems. His own keen insights led to a wealth of concepts that not only illuminated specific areas but also possessed more generalized theoretical power. He anticipated and contributed to the formation of a number of current issues in theory and research. His contributions have become a respected part of the culture of modern social science, and we are all, in one way or another, intellectually indebted to him.
(1923) 1964 The Unadjusted Girl: With Cases and Standpoint for Behavior Analysis. Boston: Little. 1927 The Behavior Pattern and the Situation. American Sociological Society, Publications 22:1-13. 1928 The Configurations of Personality. Pages 143-177 in The Unconscious: A Symposium, by C. M. Child et al. New York: Knopf. 1928 THOMAS, W. I.; and THOMAS, DOROTHY S. The Child in America: Behavior Problems and Programs. New York: Knopf. 1937 Primitive Behavior: An Introduction to the Social Sciences. New York: McGraw-Hill. 1951 Social Behavior and Personality: Contributions of W. I. Thomas to Theory and Social Research. Edited by Edmund H. Volkart. New York: Social Science Research Council. On Social Organization and Social Personality: Selected Papers. Edited and with an introduction by Morris Janowitz. Univ. of Chicago Press, 1966. SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY
BLUMER, HERBERT 1939 An Appraisal of Thomas and Znaniecki's The Polish Peasant in Europe and America. New York: Social Science Research Council. HINKLE, GISELA J. 1952 The "Four Wishes" in Thomas' Theory of Social Change. Social Research 19:464-484. JANOWITZ, MORRIS 1966 Introduction. In W. I. Thomas, W. I. Thomas on Social Organization and Social Personality. Univ. of Chicago Press. VOLKART, E. H. 1953 Aspects of the Theories of W. I. Thomas. Social Research 20:345-357. YOUNG, KIMBALL 1963 The Contribution of William Isaac Thomas to Sociology. Unpublished manuscript. -> Distributed by Student Book Exchange, 1737 Sherman Ave., Evanston, 111.
THOMAS AQUINAS, SAINT See AQUINAS, THOMAS.
E. H. VOLKART [For the historical context of Thomas' work, see the biographies of COOLEY; DURKHEIM; PARK; SUMNER; ZNANIECKI. For discussion of the subsequent development of his ideas, see CREATIVITY, article on SOCIAL ASPECTS; DEVIANT BEHAVIOR; OBSERVATION;
VALUES.] WORKS BY THOMAS 1907
Sex and Society: Studies in the Social Psychology of Sex. Univ. of Chicago Press. (1909) 1920 Source Book for Social Origins: Ethnological Materials, Psychological Standpoint, Classified and Annotated Bibliographies for the Interpretation of Savage Society. 6th ed. Boston: Badger. 1917 The Persistence of Primary-group Norms in Presentday Society and Their Influence in Our Educational System. Pages 159-197 in Suggestions of Modern Science Concerning Education, by Herbert S. Jennings et al. New York: Macmillan. (1918-1920) 1958 THOMAS, W. I.; and ZNANIECKI, FLORIAN The Polish Peasant in Europe and America. 2 vols. 2d ed. New York: Dover. 1921 Old World Traits Transplanted, by Robert E. Park and Herbert A. Miller. New York: Harper. -> Circumstances made it impossible for this work to be published under Thomas' name.
THOMPSON, WILLIAM William Thompson (1775-1833), a British socialist, was born in Cork, Ireland, but exercised his greatest political influence in England, where industrial development was raising new economic and social problems. The most powerful influence on his early writings was Bentham, from whom he derived his underlying utilitarian philosophy. Bentham, he wrote, "had done more for moral science than Bacon did for physical science" by exposing the fallacies of traditional social and political arguments and by relating the actions of both individuals and governments to the principle of "the greatest happiness of the greatest number" ([1824] 1963, p. x). The influence of Bentham shaped Thompson's earliest, biggest, and most important book, An Inquiry Into the Principles of the Distribution of Wealth (1824). Thompson's view of economics, however, diverged sharply from that of Bentham even at this early stage. Thompson was
THOMPSON, WILLIAM preoccupied with the problem of distribution. He drew a contrast between unequal distribution, under a system of competitive capitalist production, and fair distribution according to labor performed, under a system of cooperative production. He coined many interesting phrases (such as "misery in the midst of all the means of happiness") and touched on a number of original questions of theory (for example, diminishing utility). He saw the problems of economics as the problems of a "system" and incorporated in his analysis an account not only of "social motives" and incentives but of the relationship between cooperative distribution and production. A second influence on the Inquiry was Robert Owen, who in turn greatly admired Thompson's work. In the later 1820s, indeed, Thompson became the most powerful Owenite theoretician, drawing Owen himself into socialist argument and workingclass politics. Labour Rewarded (1827), a reply to Thomas Hodgskin's Labour Defended (1825), is specifically Owenite in tone, strongly advocating the creation both of cooperative societies and trade unions. Thompson distrusted the coercive power of the state, fully accepted Owen's program of community living, and in 1830 published detailed plans with the title Practical Directions for the Establishment of Communities. Yet Thompson's analysis had more depth than Owen's, for it passed from the mechanics of community building to a survey of broad trends in social history, an evaluation of rival contemporary philosophies, including utilitarianism and socialism, and a prediction of the shape of the future. He emphasized the facts of "exploitation," and he anticipated Marx by his use of the term "surplus value" and by his "realistic" approach to problems of class. He held, following James Mill, that public opinion in the past was "the opinion of the influential classes of society." The rich, "like all other classes in every community," must "obey the influence of the peculiar circumstances in which they are placed" ([1824] 1963, p. 211). "The Industrious Classes," however, were "learning their own importance" and would "soon speak out" (1827, pp. 40-41). This was a fair statement of the position in Britain at that time, and Thompson did much to stimulate working-class initiative. He was present at the Co-operative congresses of 1831 and 1832, advocated the appointment of "Cooperative missionaries" on Saint-Simonian and (later) Chartist lines to spread the gospel, and bequeathed his Irish estate to the Co-operative movement. He recognized the importance of agitation
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and propaganda among productive laborers as well as "mental labourers, literati and men of science." He accused Hodgskin of paying too much attention to the latter and quarreled with Owen in 1832 about the paternalist and autocratic elements in Owen's own plans. In his opposition to Owen he was supported by a majority of Co-operative delegates at the third congress of 1832 (see Co-operative Congress 1832). Although legal difficulties eventually prevented the Co-operators from securing his estate, his intellectual legacy was greatly treasured. The revival of interest in early socialist doctrines in the late nineteenth century led H. S. Foxwell and Anton Menger to proclaim Thompson as "the most eminent founder of scientific Socialism" from whom "the later socialists, the Saint-Simonians, Proudhon, and above all, Marx and Rodbertus, have directly or indirectly drawn their opinions" (Menger [1886] 1962, p. 51). One other aspect of Thompson's thought which has historical interest is his passionate championing of the rights of women. His Appeal of One Half the Human Race (1825) has an important place in the literature of female emancipation. ASA BRIGGS [For the historical context of Thompson's work, see the biographies of BENTHAM and OWEN; for discussion of the subsequent development of his ideas, sec ECONOMIC THOUGHT, article on SOCIALIST THOUGHT; and the biographies of MARX; PROUDHON; RODBERTUS.] WORKS BY THOMPSON (1824) 1963 An Inquiry Into the Principles of the Distribution of Wealth Most Conducive to Human Happiness. New York: Kelley. 1825 Appeal of One Half the Human Race, Women, Against the Pretensions of the Other Half, Men, to Retain Them in Political and Thence in Civil and Domestic Slavery. London: Longmans. 1827 Labour Rewarded: The Claims of Labour and Capital Conciliated; Or, How to Secure to Labour the Whole Products of Its Exertions. London: Hunt & Clarke. 1830 Practical Directions for the Establishment of Communities. London: Strange. SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY CO-OPERATIVE CONGRESS, THIRD, LONDON, 1832 1832 Proceedings. London: Strange. HODGSKIN, THOMAS (1825) 1922 Labour Defended Against the Claims of Capital. London: Labour Pub. MENGER, ANTON (1886) 1962 Right to the Whole Produce of Labour: The Origin and Development of the Theory of Labour's Claim to the Whole Product of Industry. New York: Kelley. -> First published as Das Recht auf den vollen Arbeitsertrag. PANKHURST, RICHARD K. P. 1954 William Thompson: Britain's Pioneer Socialist, Feminist, and Co-operator. London: Watts.
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THORNDIKE, EDWARD L. THORNDIKE, EDWARD L.
Edward Lee Thorndike (1874-1949) has been rightly called America's most productive psychologist. He was an indefatigable researcher with wide interests. As important as his capacity for work was his responsiveness to the intellectual and social currents generated by contemporary scientific and technological developments. He once described his career as "a conglomerate amassed under the pressure of varied opportunities and demands," and he doubted whether being faithful to one's own plans made science as rich as did following the world's plans for the scientist. Showing great imaginative and creative powers while living this credo, Thorndike so much determined the character of the whole of modern American psychology that his contribution is largely taken for granted. Historical background. "It is certain that man should try to match his understanding of masses, atoms, and cells by understanding of himself," Thorndike wrote in Human Nature and the Social Order (1940, p. 97). These words express the sentiment that had ordered not only his career but those of his fellow builders of a science of man since the dawn of the Darwinian age. Just as Bacon, Locke, and Newton had invigorated and redirected the physical sciences, so empiricism and theory building in the biological and social sciences flourished after the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species in 1859. The doctrine of evolution made man an objective, physical fact in a natural world. The interplay of organism and environment became something to be examined. The biological and psychological processes of the lower animals became relevant to the understanding of man. Interest in the differences between species and in the theory of natural selection generated a curiosity about intraspecies variation; the study and measurement of individual differences grew into a major enterprise of the "new psychology," especially in the United States. In sum, psychology became "genetic." It was feared by some that in the process of becoming genetic, the various social sciences would threaten the existing social order. Others, however, heralded the new sciences of man, modeled as they were upon the spirit and methods of the physical sciences, as basic to a future "social engineering." They hoped the new sciences would make social problems amenable to solution and would enrich social life, just as the older physical sciences had produced technological and material progress. To become scientific, however, psychology had to do more than view human nature and institutions as part of a continuum connecting all organic
life; it had to renounce armchair theorizing and introspection, develop a new methodology, and imitate the rigor and precision of the established sciences in gathering and interpreting data. The important features of the new approach were experimentation and quantification. Psychological experimentation received early direction from the German psychophysicists, especially Fechner and Helmholtz. Next, Wilhelm Wundt founded the first psychological laboratory, at Leipzig in 1879. By 1900 such laboratories were common as centers for research and training, especially in the United States. Although they were at first preoccupied with such psychophysical phenomena as sense perception and reaction time, many laboratories later turned to investigations of memory, learning, and problem solving. The methodological prototypes of contemporary American psychological investigation and data gathering were soon evident: G. Stanley Hall's questionnaires, Thorndike's problem boxes and paper-and-pencil tests, Charles Judd's instruments. By 1900 the "new psychology" was committed to the use of quantification: in the collection of empirical data through counting and measuring, as a statistical method of testing hypotheses, and as the universal language of scientific reporting. Public record keeping was improving rapidly, furnishing a potentially invaluable source of social science data. Still more important were early refinements in statistical methods of manipulating data. Galton developed the correlation coefficient for biology and applied it to psychology; he also used certain conceptual tools of astronomy. Pearson, Spearman, and Cattell contributed early improvements, and Thorndike popularized the statistical treatment of social science data, writing the first influential handbook in the field, An Introduction to the Theory of Mental and Social Measurements (1904). Thorndike's statement, "Whatever exists, exists in some amount and can be measured," epitomizes his devotion to quantification. There was yet another component in the intellectual legacy available to Thorndike. American pragmatism was evolving as an articulated philosophical system, and although Thorndike was not an exponent of philosophical pragmatism, he approached science from a pragmatic standpoint. He rejected traditionalism, sentimentalism, and a priori postulates. His theories of value and social action were firmly guided by appraisals of consequences. Furthermore, he helped to give American psychology its behavioristic and functional cast; behavior was to give the social sciences their data, and behavior was to test their theories.
THORNDIKE, EDWARD L. The formative years. Thorndike was born in Williamsburg, Massachusetts, the second of four children. His father, Edward Roberts Thorndike, was first a lawyer, then a Methodist clergyman. The religious environment of the home has been described as rather austere, and the children were active in church activities. As an adult Thorndike helped support the local Methodist church financially but did not attend or require attendance of his children. He believed churches had certain benefits for some people and could perform useful philanthropic tasks; however, he sought to guide his own life by ethical and not religious precepts. Intellectual pursuits were important in his childhood home-, his mother, Abigail Thorndike, described as highly intelligent, may well have encouraged them, and they were certainly stimulated by contact with the several intellectual, sophisticated congregations in the Boston-Cambridge area to which his father ministered. The children had good academic records and won scholarships and other aid, permitting them all to complete college despite the family's modest finances. The eldest son, Ashley, became a professor of English; Lynn, the third son, a historian; and Mildred, the youngest child, a high school English teacher. At one time or another, all three Thorndike brothers were professors at Columbia University. During Thorndike's boyhood the family moved frequently, propelled by the regulation that a. Methodist minister must change congregations every few years. Thorndike attended elementary schools in several Massachusetts towns, and high schools in Lowell, Boston, and Providence, R. I. Although his schooling did not suffer because of these frequent moves, the discontinuity in social contacts may have contributed to a certain reticence, extreme self-reliance, and lack of easy sociability apparent in the mature Thorndike. He came to prefer a small circle of cherished friends and disliked routine gatherings, whether they were faculty meetings or national scientific conventions. His work consumed his time and attention, wherever he was, and he found personal contention, competition, and the effort to influence others distasteful, viewing such activities as distractions from the research to which he had devoted himself. Thorndike entered Wesleyan University in Connecticut in 1891 without having chosen a career. As a boy he had had no interest in science; rather, his early bent had been toward English, a field to which he indirectly returned much later via word counts, semantic and phonetic studies, the authorship of dictionaries, and a theory of speech origins. He pursued the standard classical curriculum at
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Wesleyan, graduating in 1895 with honors, including membership in Phi Beta Kappa, but still without a commitment to any field. However, he had read William James's The Principles of Psychology and found its ideas and erudition extremely impressive. A scholarship to Harvard University permitted him to sample several disciplines, and after study under James, Thorndike decided upon psychology. He earned another bachelor's degree in 1896 and an M.A. in 1897. Although he had no intention of specializing in comparative psychology, Thorndike began experimental studies of animal learning, convinced that the existing research was impoverished and unsound. A substantial fellowship at Columbia University took him to New York City in 1897 to complete his doctoral study. Columbia offered additional training in biology and statistics, and James McKeen Cattell provided him with laboratory space. The next year Thorndike published his doctoral dissertation, Animal Intelligence (1898-1901). Rarely has a doctoral thesis earned the appellation "classic"; yet Thorndike's study was just that—a classic in comparative psychology, in learning theory, and in psychological methodology. Academic career. In 1898 Thorndike began teaching at the college for women at Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. On the recommendation of William James he returned to New York City in 1899 for a one-year trial as instructor in psychology and child study at Teachers College, Columbia University; thus began a forty-year association with that school. In 1901 he became adjunct professor and, in 1904, professor of educational psychology. He took on additional duties in 1922 as director of the division of psychology at the new Institute of Educational Research connected with Teachers College. He retired in 1940 but continued writing and published Selected Writings From a Connectionist's Psychology in 1949. He died in the early morning of August 9, 1949, at Montrose, New York, a few days short of his 75th birthday. He was survived by his wife, Elizabeth Moulton, whom he had married in 1900, and their four children: Elizabeth Frances, born in 1902, a mathematician; Edward Moulton, born in 1905, and Alan, 1918, both physicists; and Robert Ladd, 1910, a psychologist. Thorndike was awarded numerous honors during his lifetime: the presidencies of several scientific societies and honorary degrees from American and foreign universities. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Foreign recognition brought him
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honorary membership in the British Psychological Society, the Comenius Educational Association of Czechoslovakia, and the Leningrad Scientific-Medical Pedological Society. In 1925, for his contributions to psychological measurement and its applications to education, Columbia University awarded Thorndike the Butler medal in gold, granted once every five years for the most distinguished contribution made anywhere in the world to philosophy or to educational theory, practice, or administration. He served on various committees and commissions and was head of the comparative psychology department at the marine biology laboratory at Woods Hole, Massachusetts, from 1900 to 1902. A theory of learning. For Thorndike's generation of experimental psychologists, the study of mental processes had the greatest attraction. In Animal Intelligence Thorndike set down what proved to be a lasting framework for his theory of mind and the laws of learning. He brought into the twentieth century the British tradition of "associationism"; his own learning theory came to be called "connectionism," or sometimes "stimulusresponse theory." The experiment that provided him with the empirical basis of his theory was the following: Observing the behavior of kittens as they tried to escape from simple boxes he had built, Thorndike concluded that it was random trial-and-error behavior that led to the animals' striking the latch that would open the cage. The desirable consequence was then gradually associated with the one correct movement that would bring it about, and the unrewarded errors were eliminated. According to Thorndike, mind has no separate identity as such, being merely a collective name for the brain cells, nerve cells, and chemicoelectric operations by which man reacts to internal and external stimulation. Thorndike had an unremitting bias in favor of physiological and biological explanations. In 1940 he reiterated this prejudice when he wrote that doctrines about processes such as learning, instinct, and suggestion—processes that can be translated into terms of conductivity, connection, facilitation, and other "known" neural actions—are "preferable to doctrines which rely upon fields of force, tensions, equilibria, valences, barriers, libido, specialized energies," all yet undemonstrated in the neurons (1940, p. 189). Mind, said Thorndike, is man's "connection system," forming a bond between some stimulus— Thorndike preferred the word "situation," recognizing the complexity of many stimuli—and some response made to it by the learner. All that a man knows, feels, "wants," or does is dependent upon
his having formed a connection between some situation and some response. The term "habit" is equally useful in accounting for a routine motor act or for a lofty abstraction; there are no qualitative differences between simple learning and the so-called higher mental processes. Thorndike's "laws of learning" explain the connection processes. His "law of exercise" recalls the principle of "frequency," or "use," found in nineteenth-century association theory: a response made is likely to be made again, merely as a result of having been made before. The "law of effect" states that the consequences (satisfying or not satisfying) of a response will increase or decrease the probability that the connection was formed and that the response will be repeated. Vaguely implied in the writings of Alexander Bain and the British animal psychologist C. Lloyd Morgan, the law of effect was made an articulate and heuristic principle of learning by Thorndike. Although the law confirmed common-sense observations, Thorndike's proposition that consequences can work back upon a stimulus-response connection neurologically has provoked considerable debate and experimentation. Thorndike's work on the amount and explanation of the transfer of training, beginning with the landmark Thorndike-Woodworth experiments published as "The Influence of Improvement in One Mental Function Upon the Efficiency of Other Functions" (Thorndike & Woodworth 1901), also sparked controversy. His research showed that learning any one skill has little effect upon the rate or ease of learning another, even for quite similar tasks. Furthermore, the small amount of transfer that does occur, he maintained, can be credited to the presence of "identical elements" in the two tasks or situations; it is not the result of insight or reason or conscious application of principles. Since educators argued that school subjects as disparate as the classical languages, mathematics, and manual training should all be included in the curriculum because of their "formal discipline" powers—their ability to train the memory, sharpen perceptions, and improve attention—considerable opposition was aroused. On the other hand, those educators who pleaded for a curriculum embodying content and activities that were highly specific, practical, and obviously relevant to daily life were encouraged by Thorndike's results. Determinants of human abilities. Thorndike believed that intellectual and achievement differences between people are quantitative, not qualitative. Individuals differ in the number and complexity of the connections that they possess and, beyond that, in their capacity to form connections. He held
THORNDIKE, EDWARD L. heredity to be primarily responsible for human equality. He scorned environmental explanations and was interested in eugenics as a means of improving human beings and society, thus perpetuating the views of Galton, for one. Furthermore, Thorndike supported an established American belief: expressed in common-sense terms, it asserted the triumph of character over circumstances, the faith that the ingredients of success are in a man and not around him. The cultural ethos had emphasized character, perseverance, intuition, and good judgment; Thorndike added a high order of intelligence as a basic ingredient in the American success story. With refinements in measures of individual variation and their more extensive use, the heredityenvironment debate became more heated.The validity of political, educational, welfare, and religious policies was at stake, and social science research was called upon to justify opposing views. All through the years when environmental theories were dominant—owing partly to social reform movements and partly to the cogency of Pavlovian conditioning theories and of Watson's brand of behaviorism—Thorndike held his ground. While his later writings acknowledged the importance of chance factors, such as opportunity, in determining whether innate potentialities would be realized, he consistently believed that heredity was prepotent and that the egalitarian vision of a true parity— whether attempted through education or a welfare state—was indeed just a dream. Practical applications. In 1917-1918 Thorndike served on the Committee on Classification of Personnel for the United States Army, traveling between Washington, D.C., and his teaching duties in New York. The committee was responsible for the "Army Alpha" project, which was the first mass testing of intelligence, and which subsequently stimulated testing in schools, colleges, and industry. (The ultimate result of his and others' efforts was the Army General Classification Test used in World War n.) Large numbers of people were trained in test construction and administration. The terms "intelligence quotient" (IQ) and "mental age" entered popular language. Furthermore, public attention was called to the great and inborn physical, intellectual, and educational differences found in the population and to the inequalities resulting from regional isolation and inadequate local schooling, which failed to develop the natural abilities of thousands of people. Adult education programs were invigorated when Thorndike's investigations of adult learning in the 1920s showed that innate and individual factors and not age are the determinants
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of the amount and quality of achievement and the ability to continue learning. Thorndike contributed both directly and indirectly to the development of efficient, scientifically based schooling, the desire for which had begun late in the nineteenth century. He was influential as a teacher of psychology to teachers: early books like Notes on Child Study (1901), The Principles of Teaching Based on Psychology (1906), and Education: A First Book (1912) turned teachers toward a concern for human nature and the learning process and enlisted their support for the scientific movement in education. Thorndike's numerous articles reporting studies using schoolchildren, school subjects, and various testing approaches were published between 1900 and 1925. The 1907 Annual Report of the U.S. Bureau of Education disclosed the statistics on pupils leaving school before graduation, dramatizing the inadequacies of existing programs and the extent of school retardation and thus giving aid to reformers of curriculum and teaching methods. Thorndike contributed much to the growing awareness of individual differences and to plans for educating the whole range of American children. The main divisions of modern educational psychology—measurement, learning, and individual differences—correspond to Thorndike's own major interests. Thorndike was active in the preparation of school materials and tools; various achievement scales, especially for handwriting and drawing, were one result. The psychology of school subjects became a preoccupation of some educational psychologists, and the Thorndike arithmetic and algebra texts were in widespread use. He also prepared college entrance examinations, a test for selecting students for the Columbia School of Law, and one of the best regarded of intelligence tests, the CAVD scale. (The acronym stands for sentence completion, arithmetical reasoning, vocabulary, and the ability to follow directions.) His counts of word usage established the basic vocabulary now used in virtually all school reading books, spellers, and spelling lists, and on achievement tests. The Teachers College program of training in statistics and measurement as applied to education inspired other attempts to create a scientific approach to curriculum selection and to school administration. Experimental schools multiplied and research on city schools increased. Thorndike would have taken great exception to the poor controls, naivete, and pretentious pseudoscientism that often prevailed; nevertheless, the sponsors of these activities looked to Thorndike and to his institution for stimulation.
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Theoretical work. There is much evidence to confirm the psychologist Irving Lorge's description of Thorndike, his teacher and close friend, as a great eclectic. This can partly be attributed to Thorndike's responsiveness to opportunities and requests to conduct studies. It is also related to the fact that the direction of Thorndike's interests was determined not exclusively by the logic of inquiry but also by the nature of the criticisms that were made of his work: when his work was challenged, he sought new evidence to support his theories, and this search for new evidence often led him in unexpected directions. It was a challenge to the "law of effect" that led to Thorndike's discovery of the "spread," or "scatter," phenomenon. He devised numerous experiments: for example, subjects were asked to supply missing words in a long series of statements, the experimenter rewarding certain answers by saying "right" and punishing others by saying "wrong," according to a predetermined key. Each series was repeated two or three times in succession. Predictably, the studies revealed that words that were rewarded were repeated—the connection was strengthened; they were "learned." Surprisingly, however, some words called "wrong" were also repeated, the more so the nearer in distance they were to the "right" words; words in the series just before and just after the rewarded words received the maximum scatter effect from the reward's power in strengthening responses, while those four or five words removed from the rewarded word were barely affected. Such findings tended to corroborate Thorndike's contention that the law of effect operates irrespective of reason, in a mechanical or automatic fashion. The repetition of an action called "right" can be considered evidence that reason guides learning. But repetition of erroneous responses as a result of symbolic rewards, and irrespective of the subject's understanding or insight, seriously challenges the cognitive psychologist's basic thesis. Thorndike regarded this as his most important contribution to scientific advancement. Further evidence of Thorndike's continued growth was his reversal of his early views on reward and punishment in learning. He first believed these to be simple opposites within the law of effect. Later investigation showed that reward is the more effective and stable "confirming" agent; punishment may sometimes strengthen a connection rather than consistently weaken it. He also showed that belief in a simple hedonism was unwarranted; small satisfactions usually work as well as large rewards. The implications of his findings about reward and punishment were neglected, Thorndike complained, by
educational, governmental, and penal institutions and by welfare agencies. In 1929 Thorndike surprised the Ninth International Congress of Psychology, meeting at Yale University, by announcing that he had long erred in maintaining that "exercise" and "effect" were companion laws of equal potency. He had come to believe instead that exercise—mere repetition of a response—was of minor importance in explaining the formation and strengthening of connections. As a result of this new conviction, he began a massive experimental program. A series of books published in the 1930s, Human Learning (1931), The Fundamentals of Learning (1932), and The Psychology of Wants, Interests, and Attitudes (1935), reveal a theory trying to come to terms with data. As Leo Postman has observed, Thorndike clearly did not consider connectionism a finished product (Postman 1962, pp. 340, 349). It was in the 1920s and 1930s that psychology became most highly fragmented into conflicting schools, each differing in its research methods, problems studied, and in its experimental results. New principles—like "belongingness," an explanation of the way certain things are connected by the learner because they "seem to go together"—were used by Thorndike merely to account for variations in the operations of his basic and still mechanistic principles of learning. Similarly, he considered "mental set"—the observed tendency to respond to some things in an environment of possible stimuli and to disregard other things—to be the residue of established stimulus-response bonds still operating to condition the making of new connections. He continued to concede little to gestaltist criticism and what he called the "possibly sound elements of Freudianism" (1940, pp. 336 ff.). His theoretical pre-eminence in the 1930s was unquestioned; as Edward C. Tolman observed: The psychology of animal learning—not to mention that of child learning—has been and still is primarily a matter of agreeing or disagreeing with Thorndike, or trying in minor ways to improve upon him. Gestalt psychologists, conditioned-reflex psychologists, signgestalt psychologists—all of us here in America seem to have taken Thorndike, overtly or covertly, as our starting point. And we have felt very smart and pleased with ourselves if we could show that we have, even in some very minor way, developed new little wrinkles of our own. (1938, p. 11) Interest in other social sciences. The economic and social conditions of the 1930s stimulated the social sciences. The Carnegie Corporation, for example, offered Thorndike a large grant, which enabled him to apply his methods and theories to a
THORNDIKE, EDWARD L. study of various social problems. While he was not interested in direct political activity, he had strong conservative and individualistic views, which emerged clearly in his writings of this period. At this time he was no longer primarily concerned with psychological theory. For instance, using census data and other statistics, he tried to analyze cities as he had earlier studied individuals. In Your City (1939) he presented the results and concluded that "good" cities are the result of good people whom they attract; good cities do not create good people. This was yet another expression of his hereditarian position; it had no discernible influence upon urban sociology. His massive Human Nature and the Social Order (1940) was a compendium of information about human abilities, behavior, and wants, general psychological principles, and the facts of individuality. He contended that the social sciences require such knowledge of how humans behave, what people can be and do, and what they want to be and do, and he suggested applications of this knowledge to many fields: economics, government, philanthropy, religion, law, ethics. In 1943 he wrote Man and His Works, which was similar in conception but on a far smaller scale. Thorndike's direct influence upon the social sciences other than psychology was probably small. However, the rapid growth of psychology may have indirectly favored development of the other behavioral fields. Some social psychologists now use Hullian principles, a synthesis of Thorndike and Pavlov; but they often take learning theory largely for granted. Thorndike himself always made motivation secondary to learning: men act the way they do because such behavior has previously been reinforced. Thorndike's influence on later work with attitude scales is doubtful. Statistical training has only lately become a common part of the sociologist's education. And anthropologists and sociologists have studied intelligence testing primarily for what it reveals about cultural bias. Major differences in points of departure between the several social sciences and the kind of psychology that interested Thorndike help explain this independent development. According to Thorndike, individual behavior, with all its variations, takes precedence over language, customs, and laws as a determinant of social action. This view of man contrasts with that of the sociologists, namely, that men are members of social groups and that although all men are not basically the same, their similarities are more crucial than their differences. Another important distinction between psychology and the other social sciences is the differential
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emphasis given to environmental factors. Many social scientists have concluded, as a result of comparative cultural studies, that psychologists have exaggerated the importance of inherited qualities. The hereditarian Thorndike, however, continually saw all environments as the product of the genetic equipment of their inhabitants. On one issue—the future possibilities of social science—there was common, widespread agreement among social scientists; it is reflected in Thorndike's reiteration in 1940 of his lifelong certainty that "the welfare of mankind now depends upon the sciences of man . . ." (1940, preface). GERALDINE JONCICH [For the historical context and subsequent development of Thorndike's ideas, see INTELLIGENCE AND INTELLIGENCE TESTING; LEARNING; and the biographies of many of the psychologists mentioned in the text.] WORKS BY THORNDIKE
(1898-1901) 1911 Animal Intelligence: Experimental Studies. New York: Macmillan. (1901) 1903 Notes on Child Study. 2d ed. New York: Macmillan. 1901 THORNDIKE, EDWARD L.; and WOODWORTH, ROBERT S. The Influence of Improvement in One Mental Function Upon the Efficiency of Other Functions. Psychological Review 8:247-261, 384-395, 553-564. (1904) 1913 An Introduction to the Theory of Mental and Social Measurements. 2d ed. New York: Columbia Univ., Teachers College. 1906 The Principles of Teaching Based on Psychology. New York: Seller. 1912 Education: A First Book. New York: Macmillan. (1913-1914) 1921 Educational Psychology. 3 vols. New York: Columbia Univ., Teachers College. -> Volume 1: The Original Nature of Man. Volume 2: The Psychology of Learning. Volume 3: Mental Work and Fatigue and Individual Differences and Their Causes. Part 2 of Volume 3 first appeared in 1903 as Educational Psychology. 1931 Human Learning. New York: Appleton. 1932 The Fundamentals of Learning. New York: Columbia Univ., Teachers College. 1933 An Experimental Study of Rewards. Teachers College Contributions to Education, No. 580. New York: Columbia Univ., Teachers College. 1935 The Psychology of Wants, Interests, and Attitudes. New York: Appleton. 1936 Autobiography. Volume 3, pages 263-270 in A History of Psychology in Autobiography. Edited by Carl Murchison. Worcester, Mass.: Clark Univ. Press. 1939 Your City. New York: Harcourt. 1940 Human Nature and the Social Order. New York: Macmillan. 1943 Man and His Works. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. Psychology and the Science of Education: Selected Writings. Edited by Geraldine M. Joncich. New York: Columbia Univ., Teachers College, 1962. ->• Published posthumously. Contains writings first published between 1901 and 1939.
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Selected Writings From a Connectionist's Psychology. New York: Appleton, 1949. -» Contains writings first published between 1913 and 1946. WORKS ABOUT
THORNDIKE
CURTI, MERLE E. (1935) 1959 Edward Lee Thorndike, Scientist: 1874-1949. Pages 459-498 in Merle E. Curti, The Social Ideas of American Educators. New ed., rev. Paterson, N.J.: Littlefield. Edward L. Thorndike: 1874-1949. 1949 Teachers College Record 51:26-45. -> See especially pages 42-45 for a bibliography of Thorndike's publications from 1940-1949. GARRETT, HENRY E. (1930) 1951 Great Experiments in Psychology. 3d ed. New York: Appleton. -> See especially "Thorndike's Law of Learning," pages 40-62. GOODENOUGH, FLORENCE L. 1950 Edward Lee Thorndike. American Journal of Psychology 63:291-301. HULLFISH, H. GORDON 1926 Aspects of Thorndike's Psychology in Their Relation to Educational Theory and Practice. Columbus: Ohio State Univ. Press. In Honor of Edward Lee Thorndike. 1926 Teachers College Record 27:457-586. -> An annotated, chronological bibliography of Thorndike's publications appears on pages 466-515. In Honor of E. L. Thorndike. 1940 Teachers College Record 41:695-788. H> See especially pages 699-725 for a bibliography of Thorndike's publications from 1898-1940. WOODWORTH, ROBERT S. 1952 Edward Lee Thorndike, 1874-1949. Volume 27, pages 209-237 in National Academy of Sciences, Washington, B.C., Biographical Memoirs. Washington: The Academy. SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY
BORING, EDWIN G. (1929) 1950 A History of Experimental Psychology. 2d ed. New York: Appleton. HILGARD, ERNEST R.; and BOWER, GORDON H. (1948) 1966 Theories of Learning. 3d ed. New York: Appleton. GRATA, PEDRO T. 1928 The Theory of Identical Elements. Columbus: Ohio State Univ. Press. POSTMAN, LEO 1962 Rewards and Punishments in Human Learning. Pages 331-401 in Leo Postman (editor), Psychology in the Making: Histories of Selected Research Problems. New York: Knopf. TOLMAN, EDWARD C. 1938 The Determiners of Behavior at a Choice Point. Psychological Review 45:1—41.
THORNTON, HENRY Henry Thornton (1760-1815), banker, philanthropist, and member of Parliament, is celebrated among economists as the author of An Enquiry Into the Nature and Effects of the Paper Credit of Great Britain, published in 1802, one of the most important and original contributions to monetary theory ever written. He was born at Clapham of a pious and prosperous city family which had moved from Yorkshire earlier in the century. Both his father and grandfather had been in the Russian trade and had been directors of the Bank of Eng-
land. After a schooling of which he himself was subsequently very critical, Thornton duly became a banker, joining the house of Down, Thornton, and Frere in 1784. Two years previously he had been elected member of Parliament for Southwark, and he retained the seat for the rest of his life. In 1792 he bought a house at Battersea Rise on Clapham Common, which, after his marriage in 1796, he populated with nine children. Before that, he had shared his house with William Wilberforce, the antislavery leader, his second cousin and very close friend, and around them there grew up what came to be known as the Clapham sect, an austerely evangelical wing of the Church of England. The group included John Venn, Hannah More, James Stephen, and Zachary Macaulay, father of the historian (none of them except Thornton stayed in Clapham for very long). Thornton himself was the author of a collection of family prayers, published in 1834, and it is said of him that before his marriage he devoted six-sevenths of his income to charity; after it, one-third. He served as president of the Sunday School Society and treasurer of the Religious Tract Society, the Church Missionary Society, and the British and Foreign Bible Society, all of which were founded by the Clapham sect. These societies left their mark not only in nineteenth-century Britain but also in other parts of the world. In Parliament Thornton rejected any party connection but tended to side with the Whigs. He supported parliamentary reform, Catholic emancipation, and the progressive income tax. But it was in dealing with problems of currency and banking that he made his great reputation, first in 1797 with his lucid and expert evidence to the committees of the House of Commons and the House of Lords inquiring into the suspension of cash payments by the Bank of England. He was a member of the committee on the Irish currency in 1804, and in 1810 he was a leading member of, and apparently part author of the famous report by, the "Bullion Committee, appointed to inquire into the cause of the high price of Gold Bullion, and to take into consideration the state of the Circulating Medium, and of the Exchanges between Great Britain and Foreign Parts." Thornton was also a member of the committee which inquired into the corn trade in 1813, and one of his last parliamentary speeches was in the important debate on the corn laws in the following year. Monetary theory. His contributions to monetary theory are contained mainly in his Enquiry on paper credit, although they are also to be found in his evidence to the committees of 1797 on the sus-
THORNTON, HENRY pension of cash payments and in his parliamentary speeches of 1811 on the bullion report. In the introduction to the Enquiry Thornton stated that his original intention had been "merely to expose some popular errors" regarding the suspension of cash payments in 1797, the policy of the Bank of England, and the effects of paper currency on prices. But there existed at the time little in the way of an accepted corpus of doctrine on monetary theory and policy on which he could build; Thornton does refer to the previous writings of Smith, Hume, Steuart, Locke, and Montesquieu, which must have constituted all, or nearly all, that existed in the way of monetary theory. Moreover, banking institutions and practices had been changing and developing considerably in the closing decades of the eighteenth century, particularly with regard to the rapid growth of country banking. In order to support and elucidate his diagnosis of the current problem, therefore—which he presented in masterly fashion—Thornton not only had to elucidate the basic concepts and hypotheses of a theory of money, but also had to explain the recent developments and workings of the British banking system. Perhaps the comprehensive character of his task, which no doubt did not emerge until his work was under way, made for a certain lack of clear-cut, systematic arrangement. His contribution to monetary theory has to be extricated from its setting amid the topical diagnosis and the expert institutional description. In part, Thornton's Enquiry seems to have been intended as a defense of the Bank of England against the attack by Walter Boyd in his pamphlet of 1801 ("A Letter to the Right Honourable William Pitt, on the Influence of Stoppage of Issues of Specie at the Bank of England; on the Prices of Provisions and Other Commodities"), the most prominent of a number of pamphlets attacking the Bank of England on the ground that its excessive issue of paper money had been responsible for a general rise in prices. In Chapter 4 of the Enquiry, Thornton stressed the bank's freedom from governmental "dictation" and its devotion to "the support of commercial as well as of public credit in general" (Enquiry, p. 109). Against the charge of over-issue Thornton was particularly concerned to emphasize that it is "merely theoretic" to suppose that it is always "a paramount duty of the Bank of England to diminish its notes, in some sort of regular proportion to that diminution which it experiences in its gold" (p. 116). He stressed the danger that sudden deflationary measures could lead to falling production and unemployment (or "an intermission in manufacturing labour"). Thornton insisted that "it
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may be hoped, however, that at least one point has now been fully and completely established, namely, that there may be an error on the side of too much diminishing bank notes, as well as on the side of too much increasing them" (p. 124). Although Thornton was, in 1802, prepared to defend the Bank of England's position with regard to the suspension of cash payments in 1797 and the slight degree of inflation in the ensuing five years, by 1810, as a member of the Bullion Committee, he had become thoroughly critical of the bank and in favor of a contraction of the note issue. Thornton's contributions to monetary theory may be summarized under four main heads: money; rapidity of circulation; interest, prices, and employment; international economic relations. Money. He elucidated the concept of money and the range of types of money, near money, and money substitutes. He emphasized that although legally the distinction between what is "legal tender" and what is not is, of course, clear-cut, in fact, each type of money or near money is certainly a close and easy (if not a perfect) substitute for its nextdoor neighbor in the spectrum, so that if the supply of one type were tightened or cut off, other types could and would be resorted to: . . . if bank paper were abolished, a substitute for it would be likely to be found, to a certain degree, in bills of exchange. . . . But further; if bills and bank notes were extinguished, other substitutes than gold would unquestionably be found. Recourse would be had to devices of various kinds. . . . Merely by the transfer of the debts of one merchant to another, in the books of the banker, a large portion of what are termed cash payments is effected at this time without the use of any bank paper, and a much larger sum would be thus transferred, if guineas were the only circulating medium of the country. Credit would still exist. . . . (Enquiry, pp. 100-101) In fact Thornton saw that although the different means of payment may differ in legal respects, they may, as Schumpeter said, "on a certain level of abstraction be treated as essentially alike" ([1954] 1960, p. 719). Rapidity of circulation. Thornton analyzed "the rapidity of circulation" and its variations and how these depend on the state of confidence and business conditions. A "high state of confidence" quickens the circulation of bank notes. [It] contributes to make men provide less amply against contingencies. At such a time, they trust, that if the demand upon them for a payment, which is now doubtful and contingent, should actually be made, they shall be able to provide for it at the moment. . . . When, on the contrary, a season of distrust arises, prudence suggests, that the loss of interest arising
16
THORNTON, HENRY
from a detention of notes for a few additional days should not be regarded. (Enquiry, pp. 96-97) Later Thornton referred to the fact that Bank of England paper bears no interest and emphasized the "loss sustained by keeping it" (p. 234). Here, without being aware of it, Thornton was developing ideas about "the rapidity of circulation" to be found earlier in Cantillon, while, of course, also pointing forward to the Keynesian analysis of liquidity preference. Interest, prices, and employment. Thornton made three very important theoretical contributions to the understanding of the relationships between money, interest, and the level of prices and employment. (1) In the first of his parliamentary speeches of 1811 on the Bullion Report, Thornton analyzed the distinction between the "real" and the "nominal" rates of interest, namely, the distinction between the actual "nominal" rate and this rate corrected into "real" terms for changes in the value of money —a distinction subsequently developed by Irving Fisher (in his Appreciation and Interest, 1896) and by Marshall. He showed the significance of this distinction in a period in which rising prices are more or less anticipated by borrowers, pointing out how the unexpected gains from previous borrowings will provide "so much additional temptation to borrow" (pp. 335-336). (2) More important than this analysis was Thornton's anticipation of Wicksell's distinction between the "natural" and the market rates of interest, that is, between the (expected) rate of return on investment and the market rate at which funds may be borrowed. When developing this distinction Thornton had been concerned to refute the argument that the canons of sound banking practice—with regard to lending only on good security, or discounting only "real" commercial bills—are sufficient to contain or prevent inflationary rises in prices. (He pointed out, also, how a rate of interest of 5 per cent, then the highest the Bank of England was, under the usury laws, even in time of war, statutorily permitted to charge, might be quite insufficient when the expected rate of return on borrowing might be much higher.) He showed that it is pointless to argue that "a liberal extension of loans would soon satisfy all demands" in conditions where the generally expected rate of profit on investment exceeds the market rate of interest: In order to ascertain how far the desire of obtaining loans at the bank may be expected at any time to be carried, we must enquire into the subject of the quantum of profit likely to be derived from borrowing there under the existing circumstances. This is to be judged
of by considering two points: the amount, first of interest to be paid on the sum borrowed; and, secondly, of the mercantile or other gain to be obtained by the employment of the borrowed capital, (p. 253) (3) Thornton analyzed the effects of credit expansion on the level of output, employment, and savings. He certainly made no general assumption of full employment, arguing that if there are "antecedently idle persons," an increase in "new capital" will first bring these into employment, but as it continues "it will set to work labourers, of whom a part will be drawn from other, and, perhaps, no less useful occupations" (p. 236). Thus, "although additional industry will be one effect of an extraordinary emission of paper, a rise in the cost of articles will be another" (p. 237). Thornton then showed how, if the rise in prices proceeds, with money wages remaining the same, "some augmentation of stock will be the consequence; for the labourer, according to this supposition, may be forced by his necessity to consume fewer articles" (p. 239). This is the process explained almost simultaneously by Bentham as "forced frugality" and by subsequent writers as "forced saving." It is interesting to note that Ricardo, in his comments on Bentham, holding firmly to the Turgot-Smith "saving is investing" doctrine, completely rejected this analysis with the question: "Why should the mere increase of money have any other effect than to lower its value? How would it cause any increase in the production of commodities? . . . Money cannot call forth goods—but goods can call forth money" (see Ricardo [1811] 1951, pp. 298, 301). International economic relations. Thornton contributed some important ideas about the monetary aspects of international economic relations. He anticipated what later came to be known as the purchasing power parity theory by showing how gold will tend to move between countries toward equilibrium, a distribution in which no profits will be possible from any further gold transfers. He went on to trace out, on the lines of Hume and others, how the mechanism of adjustment works through changes in relative prices to restore equilibrium, for example if equilibrium were disturbed by a bad harvest and were followed by an expansion of imports. Thornton's ideas were influential in his day; a brilliant review article by Francis Homer in the first number of the Edinburgh Review (1802) enhanced that influence. But his subtler insights came to be overshadowed by the simpler (and perhaps cruder) formulas of Ricardo, and over the decades the influence of his book receded. J. S. Mill in his Principles of Political Economy of 1848
THUNEN, JOHANN HEINRICH VON hailed Thornton's work as the clearest exposition of its subject, and some of Mill's contributions to the theory of international trade may show the influence of Thornton. But after Mill, Thornton's name almost disappeared until scholars in this century, notably Jacob H. Hollander and Jacob Viner, rediscovered his work. With the development of modern monetary theory from Wicksell to Keynes it came to be realized how much had been anticipated by Thornton, and Hayek's valuable 1939 edition of Thornton's work restored to him the eminent place in the history of monetary theory which is his due. T. W. HUTCHISON [For discussion of the subsequent development of Thornton's ideas, see BANKING, CENTRAL; INCOME AND EMPLOYMENT
THEORY;
INTEREST;
LIQUIDITY
PREFERENCE; MONEY; and the biographies of FISHER, IRVING; MARSHALL; WICKSELL.] WORKS BY THORNTON An Enquiry Into the Nature and Effects of the Paper Credit of Great Britain (1802); Evidence Given Before the Committees of Secrecy of the Two Houses of Parliament on the Bank of England, March and April 1797; Some Manuscript Notes; and Speeches on the Bullion Report, May 1811. Edited with an introducton by F. A. von Hayek. New York: Farrar & Rinehart; London: Allen & Unwin, 1939. SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY
FORSTER, E. M. 1956 Marianne Thornton: A Domestic Biography: 1797-1887. New York: Harcourt. HORNER, FRANCIS (1802) 1957 [A Book Review of] An Enquiry Into the Nature and Effects of the Paper Credit of Great Britain, by Henry Thornton. Pages 28-56 in Francis Horner, The Economic Writings of Francis Horner in The Edinburgh Review, 1802-1806. Edited with an introduction by Frank Whitson Fetter. London School of Economics and Political Science. MEACHAM, STANDISH 1964 Henry Thornton of Clapham: 1760-1815. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. -» Contains a bibliography of Thornton's works on pages 163-168. RICARDO, DAVID (1811) 1951 Notes on Bentham's "Sur les Prix," 1810-1811. Pages 259-341 in David Ricardo, Works and Correspondence. Volume 3: Pamphlets and Papers, 1809-1811. Cambridge Univ. Press. SCHUMPETER, JOSEPH A. (1954) 1960 History of Economic Analysis. Edited by E. B. Schumpeter. New York: Oxford Univ. Press. -> See especially pages 688-750, "Money, Credit and Cycles."
THUNEN, JOHANN HEINRICH VON Johann Heinrich von Thiinen (1783-1850) was a German economist of great originality who contributed highly significant concepts and techniques to economic theory. He was the first to develop an
17
exact definition of marginal productivity in the modern sense (although he did not use the term) and to apply the principle generally in the theory of production and distribution. He was a founder of mathematical economics and of econometrics, combining systematic empirical research with a genius for abstract reasoning and generalization. Most of his economic theory is based upon models of general static equilibrium, often expressed in terms of systems of equations, but he also contributed to the theory of capital formation and economic growth. Other areas in which he pioneered include theories of economic location, rent, and enterprise profit and some of the more practical aspects of agricultural economics. He emphasized far more than did his English contemporaries the central economic problem of allocating scarce resources so as to maximize the achievement of defined goals. Von Thiinen was born on his father's estate in the Grand Duchy of Oldenburg. His education included training in practical agriculture as well as in the academic disciplines, particularly mathematics. He attended the Agricultural College at Gross-Flottbeck near Hamburg and spent two semesters at the University of Gottingen. In 1810 he purchased Tellow, an estate in Mecklenburg, where he carried on the extensive experiments and systematic data-gathering that became the empirical basis for his great work, Der isolierte Staat. Von Thiinen's book won him considerable recognition during his lifetime. According to Schumacher (1868), Rodbertus credited von Thiinen with bringing to economics the rare combination of a most exact method and a humane heart, and the British Parliament used von Thiinen's calculations of the grain production of the European continent in its deliberations on the corn laws. But the voluminous proportions of the work, its seemingly formidable mathematics, and its unusual originality appear to have prevented it from being either widely read or understood until the rediscovery of marginal analysis and the introduction of mathematical formulation into the mainstream of economic theory more than twenty years after von Thiinen's death. Alfred Marshall acknowledged a major debt to von Thiinen. Rent, profit, and the "isolated state." For theoretical purposes, von Thiinen set up a model economy which he called the "isolated state," consisting of a single city in the center of a large plain of uniformly fertile land. The inhabitants of the city exchange manufactured goods for the agricultural products of the plain, with the wagon as the sole means of transportation. Various agricultural prod-
18
THUNEN, JOHANN HEINRICH VON
ucts are grown in concentric circles around the city. The location at which each crop is grown is determined by the cost of transportation to the city, in accordance with what we would call the principle of "opportunity cost." Land use ranges from the growing of garden vegetables nearest the city to grazing in the most distant circle, with the land beyond that occupied by forest which can be cleared if the economy expands. Von Thiinen changed the conditions of the model from time to time, to facilitate comparison and to illustrate various principles, always in full awareness of its abstract character. Von Thiinen's theory of land rent is based upon the same fundamental principles as that of Ricardo. In the "isolated state" the rent of each unit of land is determined exclusively by the difference between the cost of transporting the crop of that unit to the market city and the cost of transporting there an equal quantity of produce from the most distant land in use that yields no rent. Estate revenue consists of interest on the transferable capital invested in improvements, which must be paid at the current rate if the improvements are to be maintained, and payment for the land itself, which is the only true rent. If total estate revenue falls below the interest on transferable capital, payment for the land may for a time be negative, but under these circumstances the estate will sooner or later be abandoned. Von Thiinen's distinction between enterprise profit and interest on capital is modern, and it contrasts with the then prevailing concept of "profit" as both enterprise profit and interest. The entrepreneur's profit consists only of that part of revenue which remains after he has deducted interest on his capital, an insurance premium against all insurable risks, and his own salary for management. This profit remains to the entrepreneur despite competition, because there is no insurance against such uncertainties as adverse price movements. Although the chances of gain are often as great as the chances of loss, the former do not compensate wholly for the latter, since the entrepreneur's pleasure from doubling his fortune is less intense than his suffering from its complete loss. Wages, interest, and marginal analysis. Von Thiinen's application of marginal analysis to the theories of wages, interest, and resource allocation —the most important of his contributions to economic theory—appears in Volume 2 of Der isolierte Staat and was worked out during the period 1826 to 1848. He used a number of mutually corroborating approaches to the problem, with verbal, nu-
merical, and algebraic modes of expression. A few brief examples follow. Using his model of the "isolated state," he assumed free, homogeneous, mobile laborers, who receive wages in excess of minimum subsistence and who are capable of producing products either for current consumption or for capital formation. In his analysis of capital formation essentially independent of the capitalist-laborer relationship, the workers either accumulate the excess of their wages over subsistence until they can devote a year's labor to capital formation while living on their accumulated stocks, or they form groups of workers, some of which produce capital while the rest simultaneously produce subsistence for the entire group, all members then sharing equally in the ownership of the new capital. Von Thiinen demonstrated that in competitive equilibrium the interest per unit of capital equals the increment of product value resulting from an increment of capital, all other inputs remaining constant. The same principle is then applied to labor. Both labor and capital are shown to be subject to diminishing incremental returns, but the marginal product of labor increases as the quantity of capital per worker increases. Von Thiinen emphasized the importance of using infinitesimal increments in the formal analysis. He also pointed out that the natural rates of wages and interest prevail only under conditions of ideal competition and resource mobility that unfortunately do not prevail in the real world. He demonstrated by verbal and algebraic statement and by numerous examples the principles of cost minimization (Marshall's "principle of substitution") and net revenue maximization, with emphatic assertions of their general applicability and their fundamental economic importance. Productive agents can be substituted for one another, and an optimum is reached when the ratio of their respective marginal products equals the ratio of their respective unit costs. Net revenue is maximized when the value-product of the last added unit of each agent just equals its cost. An appreciation of von Thiinen's method of analysis and an understanding of his interesting blunders can be achieved only by sampling his mathematical reasoning. Let a + y be the annual wage, in commodity units, of a working family, where a is one family's annual subsistence and y is surplus over subsistence available for capital accumulation. Let q be the average quantity of capital per working family, measured in units equal to the annual wage of one working family, a + y; p be the average annual product of one working
THUNEN, JOHANN HEINRICH VON family when assisted by q units of capital; and z be the rate of interest in percentage per annum. Then on no-rent land at the boundary of the isolated state, a + y + q(a + y}z = p, and with perfect competition and free mobility of labor and capital the rate of interest throughout the state is z = [p — (a + y}]/q(a + y). VonThiinen assumed that each working family converts its annual surplus, y, into capital and that each wishes to maximize the annual revenue on that capital, expressed as zy = y[p — (a + y~)]/q(a + y*), which is maximized when
dy\ q(a + y) Solving this equation for the "natural wage," he obtained a + y = \/~ap. Von Thiinen applied the marginal productivity principle as follows. One worker with q units of capital produces p units of product, and with q + l/n units of capital he produces p + /3 units of product, where n is some large number. Then l/n units of capital yield an annual revenue of f3 units of product, and one unit of capital yields n(3 or a units. The annual wage is then p — aq, and the value of the capital used by one worker is q(p — aq). The interest rate is then given by z = aq/q(p — aq) — a/(p — aq), a worker's annual surplus by y — p — aq — a, and the revenue by zy = a(p — aq — a)/(p — aq). Since o: = f ( q ) , von Thiinen differentiated this expression for zy with respect to a to find the value for q which maximizes zy, thus: _d / a ( p ~ aq — da\ p — aq
= 0,
and solved for the wage p — aq = V a p . Here the wage is determined as the remainder of the product p after interest (determined as the marginal product of capital) has been paid. To determine the wage on the basis of the marginal product of labor, he assumed an enterprise hiring n workers at a wage A and using nq units of capital. Revenue is n(p — A). With one less worker, each remaining worker uses nq/(n — 1) units of capital and produces p + v units of product. Total product is now (n — 1) (p + v), the wage bill is (n — 1)A, and the revenue of the enterprise is (n — 1) (p + i>) — (n — 1)A. If in equilibrium the wage equals the marginal product of labor, the discharge of a worker should leave the revenue unchanged, or np — nA - (n — I) (p + v) - (n — I )A. Solving for the wage, A = p— (n — l)i>. If n is very large, this expression approximates p ~ nv, and the cap-
19
ital per worker approximates q + q/n. Thus, each remaining worker has additional capital of q/n and produces additional product of v. By the previous example, when a worker has additional capital of l/n units, his product increases by ft. Therefore, v — (3q, and since n(3 = a, nv ~ aq. Substituting in the expression for the wage, A = p — nv = p — aq, which agrees with previous results and in equilibrium equals \/ap. Although von Thiinen was so impressed with his "natural wage" as the geometric mean of a worker's subsistence and the average product of labor that he had "\/ ap" engraved upon his tombstone, it is today no more than an intellectual curiosity. Neither a nor p can be analytically defined. There is no reason to suppose that a rational worker would want to maximize the annual interest on one year's savings. Measurement of a unit of capital by its wage cost alone is inconsistent with the assumption that each worker must use q units of capital, interest on which is part of the cost of the unit of capital. The importance of the work lies in its method of analysis and in the kinds of problems to which that method is applied.
ARTHUR H. LEIGH [See also RENT and SPATIAL ECONOMICS. Other relevant material may be found in the biographies of BOHM-BAWERK;
LAUNHARDT;
MARSHALL;
MOORE,
HENRY L.] WORKS BY THUNEN
Der isolierte Staat in Beziehung auf Landwirthschaft und Nationalokonomie. 3 vols. Jena (Germany): Fischer, 1930. -> Volume 1: Untersuchungen uber den Einfiuss, den die Getreidepreise, der Reichtum des Bodens und die Abgaben auf den Ackerbau ausiiben (1826). Volume 2: Der naturgemdsse Arbeitslohn und dessen Verhdltnis zum Zinsfuss und zur Landrente (18501863). Volume 3: Grundsdtze zur Bestimmung der Bodenrente, der vorteilhaftesten Umtriebszeit und des Wertes der Holzbestdnde von verschiedenem Alter fur Kieferwaldungen (1863). A partial translation of Volume 2 as "The Natural Wage and Its Relation to the Rate of Interest and to Economic Rent" is included in B. W. Dempsey, The Frontier Wage: The Economic Organization of Free Agents, published by the Loyola University Press, Chicago, 1960. SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY
ACKERMANN, KONRAD P. 1954 Der ethisch-okonomische Erkldrungsdualismus in der Lehre vom naturgemdssen Arbeitslohn und Kapitalzins bei Joh. H. v. Thiinen unter Berucksichtigung des Grenzproduktivitdtsgedankens: Mit einem Anhang uber das Thiinen-Archiv und die neuere Thunen-Forschung. Winterthur (Switzerland): Keller. BOHM-BAWERK, EUGEN VON (1884-1912) 1959 Capital and Interest. 3 vols. South Holland, 111.: Libertarian Press. -» First published as Kapital und Kapitalzins.
20
THURNWALD, RICHARD
BULOW, FRIEDRICH 1950 Thiinen als Raumdenker. Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv 65:1-24. BULOW, FRIEDRICH 1958 Johann Heinrich von Thiinen als forstwirtschaftlicher Denker. Weltwirtschaftlich.es Archiv 80:183-234. CLARK, JOHN B. (1899) 1902 The Distribution of Wealth: A Theory of Wages, Interest and Profits. New York and London: Macmillan. -> Reprinted by Kelley in the "Reprints of Economic Classics." ENGELHARDT, WERNER 1953 Die Theorien der Produktion, des Preises und der Verteilung bei J. H. v. Thiinen: Analyse seines Werkes unter verandertem Blickpunkt. Schmollers Jahrbuch fur Gesetzgebung, Verwaltung und Volkswirtschaft im Deutschen Reiche 73:1-33. HOFFMAN, FRIEDRICH 1950 J. H. v. Thiinen im Blickfeld des deutschen Kameralismus. Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv 65:25-40. Johann Heinrich von Thiinen. 1958 Zeitschrift fur Agrargeschichte und Agrarsoziologie 6 (Special Issue). -> The entire issue is devoted to von Thiinen. KRZYMOWSK, RICHARD 1928 Graphical Presentation of Thiinen's Theory of Intensity. Journal of Farm Economics 10:461-482. LEIGH, ARTHUR H. 1946 Von Thiinen's Theory of Distribution and the Advent of Marginal Analysis. Journal of Political Economy 54:481-502. MARSHALL, ALFRED (1925) 1956 Memorials of Alfred Marshall. New York and London: Macmillan. -» Reprinted by Kelley in the "Reprints of Economic Classics." MELAMID, ALEXANDER 1955 Some Applications of Thiinen's Model in Regional Analysis of Economic Growth. Regional Science Association, Proceedings 1:L1—L5. MOORE, HENRY L. 1895 Von Thiinen's Theory of Natural Wages. Quarterly Journal of Economics 9:291304, 388-408. OHLIN, BERTIL G. 1935 Some Aspects of the Theory of Rent: Von Thiinen vs. Ricardo. Pages 171-183 in Economics, Sociology and the Modern World: Essays in Honor of T. N. Carver. Edited by Norman E. Himes. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. PETERSEN, ASMUS 1944 Thiinens isolierter Staat: Die Landwirtschaft als died der Volkswirtschaft. Berlin: Parey. PETERSEN, ASMUS 1959 Johann Heinrich v. Thiinen, Volume 10, pages 386-392 in Handworterbuch der Sozialwissenschaften. Stuttgart (Germany): Fischer. SCHNEIDER, ERICH 1934 Johann Heinrich von Thiinen. Econometrica 2:1-12. SCHUMACHER, H. 1868 Johann Heinrich von Thiinen: Ein Forscherleben. Rostock (Germany): Leopold. WICKSELL, KNUT (1901) 1951 Lectures on Political Economy. Volume 1: General Theory. London: Routledge. -» Translated from the third Swedish edition. See especially pages 216-217 on von Thiinen's theory of capital accumulation.
THURNWALD, RICHARD Richard Thurnwald (1869-1954), sociologist and anthropologist, was born in Vienna, the only son of a Viennese industrialist who came from a well-to-do farmer's family. After finishing the classical course at the Gymnasium and his required
military service, Thurnwald attended the University of Vienna. In the late nineteenth century, aspects of the social sciences were taught only in the faculty of law, so Thurnwald studied law, receiving his law degree and his state lawyer's certificate in 1894. Concurrently with his legal studies, he learned Turkish, Arabic, Russian, and Serbian. Also, he became acquainted with scholars in a variety of academic disciplines, among them the economic historian Max Schwiedland, the physical anthropologists R. Poch and A. Plotz, and several psychiatrists of the Zurich school. Perhaps most important for his scientific development were his contacts with the psychologist Karl Stumpf and with J. Kohler, a representative of the school of comparative law. While in Berlin from 1901 to 1905, he studied Egyptian under A. Erman and Assyrian under Fr. Delitzsch. Thurnwald's first and last field studies were conducted in Europe: the first in Bosnia in 1896, and the last in Berlin in 1946-1947. In between, he worked in Micronesia and the Solomon Islands, 1906-1909; New Guinea, 1912-1915; east Africa, 1930; and again in the Solomon Islands in 1932. From 1924 on, he held a position at the University of Berlin, mainly in anthropology and sociology, but he also taught at various American universities: the University of California, 1915-1917; Yale and Harvard, 1931-1932; and Syracuse University, 1949. He was the founder and editor of the Zeitschrift fur Volkerpsychologie und Soziologie (later Sociologus^) from 1925 on; one of the editors of the Archiv fur Anthropologie; and coeditor of the Zeitschrift fur vergleichende Rechtswissenschaft. Thurnwald's wide range of training and experience, combined with a lifelong interest in the natural sciences, made him critical of Wundt's Volkerpsychologie, the dominant anthropological theory in the first two decades of the twentieth century. In the late 1920s, he also became critical of Levy-Bruhl. Both these authors, he felt, lacked experience with non-Western societies, and their approach was nothing more than speculative. The French school of sociology, represented by Durkheim, suffered from the same fault, especially in their theories of the function of religion. In spite of his profound interest in comparative psychology, Thurnwald became a follower neither of Freud nor of Jung; and in spite of his commitment to comparative sociology, he rejected the Marxian school that was important in Berlin in the 1920s. In both cases, the paucity of supporting factual data made the theories unacceptable: Thurnwald regarded these unilinear schemes of development as a priori speculation. His line of
thinking did not fit, therefore, into the main stream of theory-oriented German social anthropology, and this explains the failure of the University of Berlin to create a regular chair for him despite his many years of successful teaching there. His own theories were based on the intimate knowledge of different societies that he gained on his many and long field trips. He may best be regarded as a functionalist who was fairly close to the British school of Malinowski, with the important difference that he never became antihistorical and that he always paid more attention to individual psychology than did the British school. His main functionalist ideas were formulated before those of the British school, but the British school appears to have developed the same ideas independently. Thurnwald did not develop a complete system or general theory of human development. He encouraged the comparison of social institutions in different societies; the differences that emerged would contribute to the understanding of the varying functions of a particular institution. He also compared the functional structure of societies, in order ultimately to establish historical developmental sequences. In explicit opposition to Max Weber's concept of "ideal types," which he regarded as purely speculative, Thurnwald tried in "Reprasentative Lebensbilder" (1931-1935, vol. 1) to identify specific societies as representative of types of societies. He complemented this "static" approach with the study of the dynamics of sociopsychological "situations," again trying to establish typical solutions to specific social problems, and typical sequences of situations. The individual's solution to a specific situation remained for Thurnwald the principal source of all social change. But although he was preoccupied with change, the idea of an equilibrium does lie behind his idea of a "typical society." Thurnwald regarded the prevailing level of technology as the main determinant of societal type. Technological change is a process involving the accumulation of objects and ideas, an irreversible process with respect to mankind, but not with respect to an individual social group. Technology and social structure are interdependent, yet the correlation between them is only one determinant of social development: the same technology can be used in different types of societies, and a new technology does not always change a society immediately, nor does it necessarily change different societies in the same way. The effect of technology on the type of economy is more nearly determinate;
indeed, a given technology largely determines the contemporaneous economy. Furthermore, the economic system has a high degree of influence on social organization. But since the economic system is also influenced by the social structure and since economic behavior is not entirely rational, the beginnings of social change, according to Thurnwald, lie primarily in the economic attitudes (Wirtschaftsgeist) of individuals rather than in the economic system. Thurnwald's idea of "superstratification" was a fruitful contribution to the field of political sociology. Processes of superstratification are typically different from those of stratification, for while stratification may be caused either by factors inside a society or by the conquest (military or other) of one society by another, superstratification results either from conquest or from the immigration into a stratified society of a new group which then occupies the lowest status positions (Unterwanderung'). The study of processes of superstratification led Thurnwald to examine the feudal system as well as states, cities, and kingship in their early stages of development. Another instance of superstratification is the colonial expansion of the West in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and Thurnwald was the first German sociologist and one of the first in Europe to make special studies of processes of acculturation and adjustment in Africa. These studies, which he made with his wife, Hilde Thurnwald, avoided the "colonial ethnological" approach that influenced British anthropological thinking for some time. WOLFRAM EBERHARD [See
ANTHROPOLOGY, article on THE COMPARATIVE
METHOD IN ANTHROPOLOGY; ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY; and the biography of MALINOWSKI.] WORKS BY THURNWALD
1916
Bdnaro Society: Social Organization and Kinship System of a Tribe in the Interior of New Guinea. American Anthropological Association, Memoirs, Vol. 3, No. 4. Lancaster, Pa.: New Era. 1931-1935 Die menschliche Gesellschaft in ihren ethnosoziologischen Grundlagen. 5 vols. Berlin and Leipzig: de Gruyter. 1932& THURNWALD, RICHARD (editor) Soziologie von heute: Ein Symposion der Zeitschrift fur Volkerpsychologie und Soziologie. Leipzig: Hirschfeld. 1932& Economics in Primitive Communities. London: Oxford Univ. Press. 1935 Black and White in East Africa; The Fabric of a New Civilization: A Study of Social Contact and Adaptation of Life in East Africa. With a chapter on women by Hilde Thurnwald. London: Routledge. 1948 Aufbau und Sinn der Volkerwissenschaft. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Grundfragen menschlicher Gesellung: Ausgewdhlte Schriften. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1957.
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THURSTONE, L. L. SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY
Beitrdge zur Gesellungs- und Volkerwissenschaft: Professor Dr. Richard Thurnwald zu seinem achtzigsten Geburtstag. 1950 Berlin: Mann. -» Contains a bibliography on pages 469-477. LOWIE, ROBERT H. 1937 The History of Ethnological Theory. New York: Farrar & Rinehart. -> See especially pages 242-249 on "Thurnwald." LOWIE, ROBERT H. 1954 Richard Thurnwald: 18691954. American Anthropologist New Series 56:863867.
THURSTONE, L. L. Louis Leon Thurstone (1887-1955), American psychometrician and psychologist, was born in Chicago. Both of his parents had been born in Sweden, and for a period Thurstone himself attended school in Stockholm. At Cornell University, which he entered in 1908, he first studied civil engineering but changed to electrical engineering. Even before graduating from college he patented a model motion-picture projector; it attracted the attention of Thomas A. Edison, who offered him an assistantship in his laboratory in East Orange, New Jersey. However, Thurstone did not remain long in Edison's laboratory, leaving in the fall of 1912 to teach descriptive geometry and drafting in the College of Engineering at the University of Minnesota. Thurstone's interest shifted to the experimental study of learning, and in the summer of 1914 he enrolled for graduate study in psychology at the University of Chicago. While still a graduate student he accepted an assistantship in Walter V. Bingham's newly established division of applied psychology at the Carnegie Institute of Technology. Thurstone continued at Carnegie after receiving his doctorate from Chicago, eventually becoming professor and chairman of the department of psychology. Early in 1923 Thurstone left Carnegie for Washington, to work for the foundation-supported Institute for Government Research and specifically to prepare instructional manuals and specimen materials that would assist civil-service agencies in using objective examinations. With the assistance of Thelma Gwinn, who became his wife in 1924, he prepared a psychological test for selecting or classifying college students; he and his wife were responsible for 24 successive annual editions of the American Council on Education Psychological Examinations. Thurstone returned to the University of Chicago in 1924, as associate professor of psychology, and taught courses in descriptive statistics and mentaltest theory. Three years later he became a full pro-
fessor, and in 1938 he was named Charles F. Grey distinguished service professor. He established the Psychometric Laboratory at Chicago, and after his retirement in 1952 he re-established his laboratory at the University of North Carolina, where he went as a research professor of psychology and as director of this laboratory. Although Thurstone credited others with the founding of the Psychometric Society and of its journal, Psychometrika, he was close to the nucleus of 10 or 12 persons who brought these into being in 1936 in order to foster the development of psychology as a quantitative rational science. Only a few of the many honors that Thurstone received can be mentioned here. He served as president of the American Psychological Association in 1932 and was the first president of the Psychometric Society (in 1936). He was elected honorary fellow of the British Psychological Society, the Spanish Psychological Society, and the Swedish Psychological Society. The University of Gb'teborg awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1954. Contributions to psychology Throughout his career in psychology, Thurstone was primarily concerned with the problem of measurement. He sought to establish valid principles of measurement in such areas as mental abilities, intelligence, attitudes, social judgment, psychophysics, and personality. Intelligence. Thurstone advanced the thesis that "Intelligence, considered as a mental trait, is the capacity to make impulses focal at their early, unfinished stage of formation" (1924, p. 159); that is, intelligence is "the capacity to live a trialand-error existence with alternatives that are as yet only incomplete conduct" (ibid., p. xv). In his early approaches, he regarded intelligence as an ability to abstract that involves the inhibition of immediate impulsive behavior and that opens up a number of alternate paths toward impulse satisfaction (need reduction or goal attainment). When abstraction does not occur, when awareness of impulse-driven behavior is limited, the organism is more likely to engage in behavior that is inappropriate to real impulse satisfaction (ibid., especially pp. 123-169). The area of mental abilities continued to absorb Thurstone. He took issue with the mental-age concept that had become so important to psychologists and educators. In 1926 he pointed out incisively that two different definitions of mental age were being used: one that infers mental age from the chronological age for which a specified test performance is average; and a second that infers
THURSTONE, L. L. mental age from the average chronological age of persons performing at a specific level. Thurstone demonstrated the inadequacy of both definitions for dealing with adult intelligence and suggested that test performance of children as well as of adults should be represented in terms of either percentile ranks or standard scores. Thurstone's later work on factor analysis (discussed below) bears directly on the study of mental abilities. In the late 1920s he began an analysis of the correlations between various types of aptitude tests. This area had already been investigated by both C. E. Spearman and E. L. Thorndike, who had come to quite different conclusions. Spearman claimed, as a result of his method of factor analysis, that there is a general factor "g" that characterizes all mental functioning, even though there are many additional specific, unique abilities (Spearman 1904; 1927). Thorndike took issue with Spearman's position and argued that intelligence is composed of a large number of separate factors or elements and that there is no general intelligence. Thurstone, using improved statistical techniques, arrived at a position somewhere between these two extremes. He claimed that performance on tests of cognitive abilities results from several factors rather than from one common general factor. After making several factor analyses, he identified a number of factors that he referred to as "primary mental abilities": spatial visualization, perceptual ability, verbal comprehension, numerical ability, memory, word fluency, and reasoning. He saw that some of these could be separated into two or more factors, depending upon the number of tests of the original factors introduced in new analyses and the nature of the specific variations incorporated in the tests. Thus when a number of tests of, for example, the spatial factor, first identified as a primary factor, are included in an analysis, additional or partitioned factors in the realm of space may be identified, as Thurstone was well aware. Noting that the primary factors are positively correlated, Thurstone suggested that a factor analysis of these correlations might reveal a "second-order factor," similar to Spearman's "g" (1948). Measurement theory and psychophysics. Various psychological scales then in use seemed to Thurstone to imply that distributions of scores for various age groups differ only with respect to the mean, and his first paper on measurement theory presented a scaling method that permits both the mean and the dispersion to vary (1925a). Thurstone approached the area of measurement vigorously. In one year, 1927, he published several
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articles dealing with various problems of subjective measurement, introducing the concept of discriminal dispersion and the law of comparative judgment, and relating the law of comparative judgment to the classical psychophysics of Weber and Fechner (see 1927; Measurement of Values, pp. 19-81). He also issued a lithoprinted work, "The Reliability and Validity of Tests" (1931a). Further papers, first published between 1928 and 1932, dealt with the inconsistency of the phigamma hypothesis with Weber's law (Measurement of Values, pp. 82-91), the limitations of the method of equal-appearing intervals (ibid., pp. 9299), the method of rank order as a substitute for paired comparisons (ibid., pp. 100-111), and the numerical evaluation of the dispersions of stimuli presented by the constant method (ibid., pp. 112122). In 1931 Thurstone wrote an article that was based upon the postulate that motivation toward accumulation of a commodity is inversely proportional to the amount already possessed (ibid., pp. 123-144). At the University of North Carolina, where he went in 1952, he worked with Lyle V. Jones, with whom he had collaborated earlier, on the experimental determination of the zero point on a scale of utility; they demonstrated that subjective values are additive (ibid., pp. 195-210). In a 1945 paper, Thurstone had shown that the dispersion of affective values, as well as the average affective value of a proposal, is significant in the measurement of the social attitudes of a group (ibid., pp. 145-160). Even in the last years of his life Thurstone continued to investigate approaches to the measurement of subjective attributes. He developed a new scaling method that avoided the assumption of the normality of the subjective distribution for each stimulus. He also explored the less restrictive assumption that repeated judgments by the same individual will be normally distributed on the subjective continuum. A 1954 paper, "The Measurement of Values," reviewed fundamental concepts of subjective measurement (ibid., pp. 182-194). The measurement of attitudes. Perhaps the most popular application of Thurstone's work in subjective measurement is his contribution to the scaling of social attitudes. Although he recognized the inadequacy of methods of attitude measurement current in the 1920s, he held that, in principle, attitudes were subject to measurement. Thurstone had earlier, in 1928, advanced the notion of equal-appearing intervals for subjective measurement, and later he extended it to development of an attitude scale. "The scale is so constructed that
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THURSTONE, L. L.
two opinions separated by a unit distance on the base line seem to differ as much in the attitude variable involved as any other two opinions . . . also separated by a unit distance" (Thurstone & Chave 1929, pp. xi-xii). Thurstone and Chave presented a series of 130 opinions about the church to 300 "judges" who were asked to arrange them in 11 piles ranging from extremely unfavorable to extremely favorable. An analysis of these judges' arrangements produced a final set of 45 items that had been rated relatively unambiguously and consistently and, most important, that represented a more or less uniformly graduated series of scale values. Subsequently, individual responses to this final opinion scale could be converted into meaningful scores and could be treated mathematically. The scale had internal reliability. Furthermore, on the basis of its ability to discriminate particular groups whose attitudes toward the church were assumed to be different, its validity was demonstrated. The uniqueness and importance of Thurstone's contribution to attitude scaling are still appreciated, as others continue to extend psychophysical methods to social phenomena that lack the simple scalable dimensions of physical stimuli. Multiple-factor analysis. Despite widespread interest in the application of attitude-measurement techniques to all sorts of issues and groups, Thurstone abandoned this field in the early 1930s to work on the development of multiple-factor analysis. Although later psychologists may place more emphasis upon Thurstone's contributions to psychophysics, his contemporaries probably paid more attention to his work in factor analysis. Thurstone was impatient with the debate on the merit of Spearman's single-factor method, the universality of a general factor, and the role of group factors. Instead of asking whether correlation coefficients support a general factor, he wondered how many factors must be postulated in order to account for observed correlations. The power of this approach lay in its ability to establish in the case of any particular study whether or not one factor should be regarded as general. Thurstone's excursions into multiple-factor analysis also embraced the concepts of communalities, rotation of the reference frame, oblique reference axes, and factorial invariance. The concept of simple structure—his solution to the problem presented by the infinite number of positions of reference axes—may well be his most noteworthy contribution to factor analysis. He was also concerned with second-order factors and with the effects of selection upon factorial structure.
Multiple-factor analysis was the subject of Thurstone's 1933 presidential address to the American Psychological Association, "The Vectors of Mind" (1934); he also wrote two major books on the subject (1935; 1947). He continued his work on factor analysis after he moved to North Carolina, and at about the same time that others began to work on this problem, he devised an analytical method of rotating the reference axes (1954). He also developed a new method of factor analysis designed to avoid the communality problem (1955). At the same time that he was refining the methodology of factor analysis, he was making important applications of the approach. His first large study entailed 57 tests of cognitive functions, administered to 240 subjects (1938). This research was followed by other studies, several of which were completed in his laboratory as student dissertations. An experimental battery of tests of primary mental abilities for use in schools was made available in 1938. In these and many other efforts, Thurstone was fortunate in having the collaboration of his wife. The study of personality. A recurrent interest of Thurstone's was the elusive realm of personality. He and his wife at one time developed a personality schedule patterned after Woodworth's questionnaire (1930). Returning to this earlier interest after World War n, he identified the psychological hypotheses implicit in such tests as the Rorschach and assembled more than sixty tests representing hypotheses concerning the manifestation of personality traits in performance on objective tests. A fairly short temperament schedule for use with normal persons resulted from factorial studies of personality questionnaires (1951). Although he himself did not pursue work in this field to its limits, Thurstone regarded objective laboratory tests of temperament as one of the most challenging areas of research. Thurstone not only contributed abundantly to the development of psychology but also exhibited a rare ability to capture the imagination of university colleagues and administrators, students, military leaders, industrialists, and the representatives of foundations. He had infinite skill in imparting ideas to others and inspiring them, too, to creative accomplishmen t. DOROTHY C. ADKINS [For the historical context of Thurstone's work, see the biographies of SPEARMAN; THORNDIKE; for discussion of the subsequent development of Thurstone's ideas, see APTITUDE TESTING; FACTOR ANALYSIS;
TIME: Psychological Aspects INTELLIGENCE AND INTELLIGENCE TESTING; PSYCHOMETRICS; PSYCHOPHYSICS; SCALING; and the biography of KELLEY.] WORKS BY THURSTONE The Nature of Intelligence. London: Routledge; New York: Harcourt. -» A paperback edition was published in 1960 by Littlefield. 1925a A Method of Scaling Psychological and Educational Tests. Journal of Educational Psychology 16: 433-451. (1925b) 1930 The Fundamentals of Statistics. New York: Macmillan. 1926 The Mental Age Concept. Psychological Review 33: 268-278. 1927 The Unit of Measurement in Educational Scales. Journal of Educational Psychology 18:505-524. 1928 The Absolute Zero in Intelligence Measurement. Psychological Review 35:175-197. (1929) 1937 THURSTONE, L. L.; and CHAVE, E. J. The Measurement of Attitude: A Psychophysical Method and Some Experiments With a Scale for Measuring Attitude Toward the Church. Univ. of Chicago Press. 1930 THURSTONE, L. L.; and THURSTONE, T. G. A Neurotic Inventory. Journal of Social Psychology 1:3—30. 1931a The Reliability and Validity of Tests. Unpublished manuscript, Ann Arbor, Mich. 1931b Multiple Factor Analysis. Psychological Review 38: 406-427. 1931c A Multiple Factor Study of Vocational Interests. Personnel Journal 10:198-205. 1934 The Vectors of Mind. Psychological Review 41:1-32. 1935 The Vectors of Mind: Multiple-factor Analysis for the Isolation of Primary Traits. Univ. of Chicago Press. 1938 Primary Mental Abilities. Psychomatic Monographs, No. 1. Univ. of Chicago Press. 1947 Multiple-factor Analysis: A Development and Expansion of The Vectors of Mind. Univ. of Chicago Press. 1948 Psychological Implications of Factor Analysis. American Psychologist 3:402-408. 1951 The Dimensions of Temperament. Psychometrika 16:11-20. 1954 An Analytical Method for Simple Structure. Psychometrika 19:173-182. 1955 A Method of Factoring Without Communalities. Pages 59-62 in Invitational Conference on Testing Problems, 1954, Proceedings. Princeton, N.J.: Educational Testing Service. The Measurement of Values. Univ. of Chicago Press, 1959. -» All the papers but one were first published between 1927 and 1955; the remaining one was completed by Lyle V. Jones and first published in this volume.
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TIME i. PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECTS n. SOCIAL ORGANIZATION
Paul Fraisse Jack Goody
1924
SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY ADKINS, DOROTHY C. 1964 Louis Leon Thurstone: Creative Thinker, Dedicated Teacher, Eminent Psychologist. Pages 1—39 in Norman Frederiksen and Harold Gulliksen (editors), Contributions to Mathematical Psychology. New York: Holt. SPEARMAN, C. E. 1904 "General Intelligence" Objectively Determined and Measured. American Journal of Psychology 15:201-293. SPEARMAN, C. E. 1927 The Abilities of Man: Their Nature and Measurement. London: Macmillan.
PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECTS
Time is a dimension of our experience and our activity, but this dimension does not correspond to a simple physical reality. The concept of time is imposed on us by our experience of changes: the physicist and the biologist must introduce a parameter t to account for the evolution of natural phenomena. Analysis of our experience and the requirements of science show that two fundamental aspects must be distinguished in the concept of time: (a) the sequence, and more precisely, the order of the changes; (b) the duration of the changes or of the period between them. The interlocking of order and duration defines the process of the change. We experience a great number of series of changes that are apparently autonomous—time of the seasons, time of day and night, time of human life, time of activities, and so forth. History of the psychology of time. The psychology of time begins with Kant. Prior to him, the reality of time had not been questioned, even though philosophers disputed its nature. Kant declared that our notion of time is not imposed by a noumenal reality but by the activity of the mind: it is one of the forms of our sensibility. In the nineteenth century, in a departure from Kant's essentially rationalistic approach, men became concerned with the actual study of the sense of time and with perception of time, and no longer merely with the time of phenomena. A psychophysics of time was developed by comparing estimates of duration with the measurements given by chronometers. Henri Pieron, in 1923, was the first to define the psychology of time in a behaviorist framework, through the objective study of human behavior in relation to time. This point of view was developed by Pierre Janet (1928), who raised the question of our adaptation to time. Jean Piaget (1946) studied the development of the notion of time in the infant. Paul Fraisse (1957) provided a general analysis of temporal behavior. Temporal behavior. The psychology of time is defined by studying temporal behavior, i.e., by our adaptations, at first to the sequence and duration of changes and later to the multiplicity of changing series in which we live. These adaptations take place on two levels. The
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TIME: Psychological Aspects
first is common to animals and man; through learning, activities become synchronous with series of changes. The second is peculiar to man, who is able to make symbols correspond to the various aspects of the changes. Society teaches these symbols to man, who uses them to represent the changes to himself, to orient himself within them, and also to control them. Adaptation to sequence and order Adaptation to sequence in conditioning. From the moment of their birth, organisms are subject to changes, and in particular, to their own internal changes. Stimuli precede the recurrence of needs and the means for satisfying them, which are reinforced by their reduction. Those stimuli that regularly precede need reduction become conditioned "signals." The organism then adapts to the sequence. The signals orient his activity toward the future. The infant smiles at the bottle at first, then at his mother preparing the bottle, and so forth. Some months later, he will cooperate in getting dressed, his movement anticipating the subsequent action. This Pavlovian type of conditioning is accompanied by an instrumental type of conditioning. The newborn child cries at annoyances in his first days, but he soon learns to make use of his crying to call for and evoke the action of others: he anticipates. At the age of about one year, the child adds to this behavior the act of designating what he wants by means of gestures and then by words. [See LEARNING, articles on CLASSICAL CONDITIONING and INSTRUMENTAL LEARNING.] Perception of sequence. To the physical sequence there corresponds a perceived sequence. The process of learning language reveals that the child is very soon able to repeat longer and longer ordered series of phonemes. This perception of an ordered sequence is spontaneous; it does not correspond to any superimposed contruction. Thus, it is always harder to repeat a series of digits in reversed order or in any order other than the one in which it was perceived. [See LANGUAGE, article on LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT.]
The natural organization of the sequence is facilitated if the stimuli are of the same nature. For example, if we are presented visually with three digits in succession and if at the same time we are presented audibly with three other digits, we can only reproduce these stimuli by first repeating the visual series and then the auditory one, or vice versa (Broadbent 1958). [See GESTALT THEORY.]
The lower limit for the perception of sequence depends on the inertia of the sensory receptors: it is 10 ms. for hearing and touch and 100 ms. for sight, if the stimulations occur at the same site (Pieron 1945). Trained subjects can perceive two sensations of the same or different natures (sound and light, for example) as a sequence when they are separated by an interval of only 20 ms. (Hirsh & Sherrick 1961); an interval of 60 ms. is necessary for untrained subjects (Hirsh & Fraisse 1964). [See HEARING; SENSES; SKIN SENSES AND KINESTHESIS; VISION.]
The upper limit of the perception of sequence in the case of two stimuli has been determined by using rhythmic forms. This limit is about two seconds (Fraisse 1956). Beyond that, the sequence is no more perceived but is constructed. Between these limits lies an optimum for the perception of sequence: an interval of about 600 ms. to 800 ms. This interval corresponds to that for spontaneous motor activity, to that for word association (Wundt [1873-1874] 1886, p. 322), to the spacing of the conditioned and unconditioned stimuli for optimal learning, to the time for which a series of two stimuli appears most natural, i.e., not too slow or too fast (Frischeisen-Kohler 1933), and to the time for which counting permits the most precise evaluation of the duration (Davis 1962). Complex sequences. Perception of sequence is easy when the stimuli belong to a single series of changes. It is no longer so when two orders of succession have to be discriminated. For example, if two runners stop successively but the one that stops first in time is the one that goes the shortest distance spatially, a child of five will confuse the spatial order and the temporal order of the stops (Piaget 1946, p. 90). Likewise, a child of five cannot organize two series of sequences experienced simultaneously, as for example the successive levels of liquid in a vase that is being emptied and the successive levels in another vase that is being filled at the same time (Piaget 1946, p. 7). The coordination of complex sequences implies logical constructions and operations, to use Piaget's vocabulary, that are possible for children only from age seven, approximately. [See DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY, especially the article on A THEORY OF DEVELOPMENT; INFANCY.]
Estimating duration Delayed conditioning. If a time interval separates the conditioned stimulus from the uncondi-
TIME: Psychological Aspects tioned stimulus, the conditioned reaction tends gradually to take place after an interval that is nearly equal to the interval between the two stimuli, as Pavlov showed as early as 1907. The conditioned reaction adapts to the duration, which acts as a second conditioned stimulus. The activity of the animal can also take duration into account in operant conditioning. A rat that is reinforced at regular intervals only begins to respond toward the end of the interval (Skinner 1938). He can even be trained to space two responses at a given interval (Sidman 1956). It should be emphasized, however, that delayed conditioning of a defensive reaction is hard to obtain, no doubt because the animal cannot control his reaction spontaneously except in the case of double avoidance (Ruch 1931). The relative length of a confinement in the first branch of a T maze can also be a signal for taking the left or the right path (Cowles & Finan 1941). Perception and estimation of duration. Man is able to estimate directly the duration of an event, with a precision that can be checked either by comparing two intervals or by reproducing the period. If perception is an immediate discrimination reaction to a present stimulus, it may be asked whether it is possible to speak of perception of a duration. The answer is positive. Within the limits of the psychological present (Fraisse 1957), we may assume that the duration of an event is "present" for several seconds. Within these limits there is an interval of indifference of 700 ms., corresponding to the optimum sequence. Shorter intervals are overestimated, longer intervals underestimated. Beyond a few seconds it is better to speak of estimation of time rather than of perception of it, since more complex processes, of which not too much is known, then enter into the picture. While there are certainly physiological recordings, e.g., from delayed conditionings, it is out of the question that the frequency of the heartbeat or the respiration should be direct factors, since no author has been able to find a correlation between these variables and the estimated duration. Undoubtedly, a central process is involved. This biological estimation depends on the general level of biological activity. Thus, in experiments with sensory deprivation, duration is greatly underestimated (Vernon & McGill 1963). Michel Siffre (1963), who lived in a completely dark cave, isolated from the world and without any timepiece, estimated his stay of 58 days as having lasted 33 days. Recent research on animals and human subjects
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(Fraisse 1963) shows that in general, stimulants (mescaline, thyroxine, caffeine, amphetamine) cause an overestimation of time, and inhibitors (quinine, barbiturates) an underestimation. On this point, however, our knowledge is still rudimentary. Thus, many psychological variables alter the estimation of time. For durations of less than two seconds, the variability of reproduction is of the order of 10 per cent; for periods of several minutes, it rises to 20 to 30 per cent. Using the method of absolute judgments of duration, it is hardly possible to discriminate more than three stimuli, and the amount of information transmitted is less than two bits (Hawkes 1961). Psychological factors in estimating time. We know that we can make major errors in estimating durations. Two sets of variables have been studied in particular. The nature of the activity. Convergent results (Fraisse 1963) show that the more complex an activity is and the more it requires the attention of the subject, the shorter the time seems to be. Thus, copying a text or taking it down from dictation seems shorter than reading or listening (for equal objective durations of the activities). In the limiting case, during periods of inactivity duration seems very long. A complex activity appears to be short because in the course of it we note fewer changes than during a simpler activity. Again, a more complex activity is generally more interesting, and this brings up the influence of motivation. The influence of motivation. Whatever interests us seems to have a short duration, while what bores us seems interminable. Everybody has observed this law, which many experiments have confirmed. The best explanation of the phenomenon has been proposed by Katz (1906), who suggested that whenever attention is paid to the passage of time, the time seems to get longer. When we are bored, or waiting, or in a great hurry, time seems to go very slowly, because our attention is fixed on a number of changes, whereas an interesting activity absorbs us and puts us in a way "outside of time." [See ATTENTION.] Quantification and measurement of duration. The quantification, and, more precisely, the measurement of duration, must be distinguished from the over-all estimation of it. The units of these measurements are regular and "calibrated" changes —the ticks of a clock or metronome, the rotation of the earth, atomic clocks, and so forth. But man also makes use of the duration of changes whose
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TIME: Psychological Aspects
durations are less regular and less precise—the length of the distance covered, the number of pieces produced, and so forth. Employing these units is not possible for the child until he has become able to perform intellectual operations, and not until adolescence is the duration of unit changes understood as independent of the concrete nature of the changes (Piaget 1946). Orientation in time Nychthemeral rhythm. We experience many changes simultaneously, some of them being periodic. The latter serve as points of reference, by means of which the others can be located. The nychthemeral rhythm is the most important for living organisms. It is a remarkable fact that this originally exogenous rhythm becomes endogenous. The entire rhythm of the organism—the rhythms of alimentary activity, of sleep, of the body temperature, and of all physiological functioning—has a cycle of 24 hours that persists for several weeks even if the animal or the man's ecological conditions change. We need only recall how tired we are made by an airplane trip that takes us across several time zones. This rhythmic activity turns our organism into a regular clock and gives us points of reference by which we can orient ourselves to the time of day. Thus Siffre, who lived 58 days in a cavern, had 57 periods of sleep and waking during that period, whereas he estimated the duration at 33 days. His physiological clock had been more accurate than his estimates. This transformation of exogenous rhythms into endogenous rhythms is an established fact, and Pavlovian conditioning provides an explanation of it. If a dog is fed every 30 minutes, it gradually reaches the point of starting to salivate only at the end of the 30-minute period (Feokritova 1912). Temporal orientation of man. Man spontaneously makes use of the temporal points of reference provided by his organism. We are conditioned to the rhythm of meals, sleep, and so forth. Even a mental defective is able to demand his meal at a set hour (James 1890, vol. 1, p. 623). But in addition, the infant and then the adult learn to orient themselves to other periodic changes, the most important of which are the changes of nature (the solar day, the year). Man also learns to employ more conventional points of reference, such as clocks, calendars, and so forth. The principle is always the same: to make
the experienced moment correspond to the phase of a periodic change that serves as the system of reference. The temporal horizon The temporal horizon of action. Merely as the result of conditioning due to the repetition of cycles of activity, present signals make reference to a future action. The present stimulus has a previously acquired significance, and it triggers an activity that anticipates some aspect of the future. These cycles are present in animals as well as in man, but because of second-order and higher-order conditioning their period is longer the higher the place that the organism occupies in the phylogenetic scale. The temporal horizon of man. Man too is conditioned by the cycles of his activity, and his temporal horizon always depends on them. The horizon of the day laborer is one thing, that of the professor is another. But, in addition, man is able to distinguish the present moment from what has been (the past) and what will be (the future). This ability is manifest from the youngest age at which the child is able to make adequate use of the adverbs of time (yesterday, tomorrow, and so forth) and the verb forms that refer to the past and the future. Thus we see the child's temporal horizon develop: from the age of 18 months on, he is situated between a recent past and a very immediate future. Little by little this horizon expands, as can be seen from the adequate use of adverbs of time and the localization of memories in the past and projects in the future. From the age of seven or eight on, this horizon extends beyond personal experiences. The child becomes interested in the background of his parents and in his country's history, and he becomes able to imagine future events that have not formed a part of previous cycles of his activity (his own marriage, for example). This development is to a very great extent a function of intelligence, which makes possible, in particular, better organization of the past and better anticipation of the future (Kastenbaum 1961). Temporal horizon and society. Past and future are made more precise by the learning of the society's language. Along with language, society transmits its representations of the past and the future. Some of these representations, linked to the great philosophies, are of great generality. Among the Greeks, for example, a circular representation of time predominated. The Christians
TIME: Psychological Aspects formed a continuous representation, starting from a creation ex nihilo down to the end of time. All men, in different degrees, use cyclical conceptions with respect to years, generations, civilization, or economic plans. More specifically, each social framework (family, profession, church, nation, and so forth) has its own way of seeing time, and, with Gurvitch (1958), we may speak of the multiplicity of social times. Certain societies, such as the Hopi Indians, hardly have a temporal horizon, if we are able to judge by their language, for their verbs have no tenses and they are said to be content with distinguishing "the earlier from the later" (Whorf 1950). In a given society, the temporal horizon appears to be fairly closely bound up with the cycle of experienced expectations and satisfactions. Every man has the capacity to evoke very distant pasts or futures, but in practice the horizon that has solidity and reality for him is narrowly linked to his way of life. The time of the peasant is one thing, and the time of the city dweller another. For example, it has been found that workers' children make up stories covering a shorter period of time than middle-class children (Leshan 1952). Finally, it should be kept in mind that every man belonging to several social groups has multiple temporal perspectives. He has to pass from one to the other—from family time to office time, for example—and try to bring them into accord (Halbwachs 1947). Thus, every man, depending on his temperament, his intelligence, and the forms of socialization that formed him, comes to have his own temporal horizon, defined in its extent and polarity, assigning value to either the past or the future, or even just the present (Fraisse 1957, p. 174). Individual differences in temporal horizons, of which little is as yet known, are clearly present in mental pathology and have been emphasized in studies of juvenile delinquents (Barndt & Johnson 1955). Mastery of time Tolerance of delay. It is possible to set up delayed conditioning in animals when the unconditioned stimulus provides positive reinforcement. It seems impossible to obtain this result in rats when the reinforcement is negative (avoiding an electric shock); but it does seem possible to obtain conditioning to time in dogs to whom an electric stimulus on the paw is given every five minutes [see Dmitriev & Kochigina 1955; see also LEARNING, article on AVOIDANCE LEARNING].
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Children are greatly put out by the frustrations arising from the postponement of satisfaction. They are noticeably better able to stand delays as they grow older (Orsini & Fraisse 1957) and thus become able to prefer a reward that is greater, but delayed, to one that is smaller but immediate (Mischel & Metzner 1962). This progress appears to be linked on the one hand to development, education, and intelligence, and on the other, to emotional stability (Fraisse & Orsini 1955). Adolescents with emotional troubles react more impulsively to the stresses of the environment (Levine & Spivack 1959). Culture and the socioeconomic level (for the two are often linked) lead to the development of an appreciation of distant but valuable objectives and thereby of plans for organizing the future (Doob 1960). Maturity and culture make it possible to break free of the domination of the pleasure principle and to adjust better to the reality of time. The notion of time. Even when man is able to tolerate delays, he is enraged by irreversible changes. He finds relative security in conforming to the demands of society, whose pressure increases in proportion to the complexity of the network of social relations ("La pression temporelle" 1953); this is why the city dweller uses a watch more often than a farmer does. However, men seek to escape from the irreversibility of time by developing a notion of time that enables them to put the past and the future into the present. Cultivated men and societies like to set up memorials of their past in the forms of museums and archives and seek to survive their deaths by work that is as imperishable as possible. PAUL FRAISSE [See also DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY, article on A THEORY OF DEVELOPMENT; SLEEP. Other relevant material may be found in LANGUAGE, article on LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT; PERCEPTION; PsYCHOPHYSICS;
SENSORY AND MOTOR DEVELOPMENT.] BIBLIOGRAPHY ASCHOFF, JURGEN 1965 Circadian Rhythms in Man. Science 148:1427-1432. BARNDT, ROBERT J.; and JOHNSON, DONALD M. 1955 Time Orientation in Delinquents. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 51:343-345. BROADBENT, DONALD E. 1958 Perception and Communication. Oxford: Pergamon. COWLES, J. T.; and FIN AN, J. L. 1941 An Improved Method for Establishing Temporal Discrimination in White Rats. Journal of Psychology 11:335-342. DAVIS, R. 1962 Time Uncertainty and the Estimation of Time-intervals. Nature 195:311-312.
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DMITRIEV, A. S.; and KOCHIGINA, A. M. (1955) 1959 The Importance of Time as a Stimulus of Conditioned Reflex Activity. Psychological Bulletin 56:106-132. -> First published in Russian. DOOB, LEONARD W. 1960 Becoming More Civilized: A Psychological Exploration. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press. FEOKRITOVA, IULIIA P. 1912 Vremia kak uslovnyi vozbuditel' sliunnoi zhelezy (Time as a Conditioned Stimulus to the Salivary Gland). St. Petersburg: Tipografiia Shtaba Otdiel'nago Korpusa Zhandarmov. FRAISSE, PAUL, 1956 Les structures rhythmiques: Etude psychologique. Brussels: Erasmus; Univ. of Louvain. FRAISSE, PAUL (1957) 1963 The Psychology of Time. New York: Harper. -» First published in French. FRAISSE, PAUL 1963 Perception et estimation du temps. Pages 59-95 in Paul Fraisse (editor), Traite de psychologie experimental. Volume 6: La perception. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. FRAISSE, PAUL; and ORSINI, FRANCINE 1955 Etude experimentale des conduites temporelles. I: L'attente. Annee psychologique 55:27-39. FRANKENHAEUSER, MARIANNE 1959 Estimation of Time: An Experimental Study. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell. FRISCHEISEN-KOHLER, I. 1933 Feststellung des weder langsamen noch schnellen (mittelmassigen) Tempos. Psychologische Forschung 18:291-298. GURVITCH, GEORGES 1958 Structures sociales et multiplicite des temps. Societe Francaise de Philosophie, Bulletin 52:99-142. -» Includes 26 pages of discussion and comments. HALBWACHS, MAURICE 1947 La memoire collective et le temps. Cahiers internationaux de sociologie 2:3-31. -» Published posthumously. HAWKES, GLENN R. 1961 Information Transmitted Via Electrical Cutaneous Stimulus Duration. Journal of Psychology 51:293-298. HIRSH, I.; and FRAISSE, PAUL 1964 Simultaneite et succession de stimuli heterogenes. Annee psychologique 64:1-19. HIRSH, IRA J.; and SHERRICK, CARL E., JR. 1961 Perceived Order in Different Sense Modalities. Journal of Experimental Psychology 62:423-432. JAMES, WILLIAM (1890) 1962 The Principles of Psychology. 2 vols. New York: Smith. JANET, PIERRE 1928 L'evolution de la memoire et la notion du temps. Paris: Chahine. KASTENBAUM, ROBERT 1961 The Dimensions of Future Time Perspective: An Experimental Analysis. Journal of General Psychology 65:203-218. KATZ, DAVID 1906 Experimentelle Beitrage zur Psychologie des Vergleichs im Gebiete des Zeitsinns. Zeitschrift filr Psychologic und Physiologie der Sinnesorgane. 1. Abteilung. Zeitschrift fur Psychologic 42: 302-340; 414-450. LESHAN, LAWRENCE L. 1952 Time Orientation and Social Class. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 47:589-592. LEVINE, MURRAY,- and SPIVACK, GEORGE 1959 Incentive, Time Conception and Self Control in a Group of Emotionally Disturbed Boys. Journal of Clinical Psychology 15:110-113. MISCHEL, WALTER; and METZNER, RALPH 1962 Preference for Delayed Reward as a Function of Age, Intelligence, and Length of Delay Interval. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 64:425-431.
ORSINI, FRANCINE; and FRAISSE, PAUL 1957 Etudes des conduites temporelles. II: Etude genetique de 1'attente. Annee psychologique 57:359-365. PIAGET, JEAN 1946 Le developpement de la notion de temps chez I'enfant. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. PIERON, HENRI 1923 Les problemes psychophysiologiques de la perception du temps. Annee psychologique 24:1-25. PIERON, HENRI (1945) 1952 The Sensations: Their Functions, Processes, and Mechanisms. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press; London: Miiller. -» First published as Aux sources de la connaissance: La sensation, guide de vie. La pression temporelle. 1953 Sondages 15, no. 3:1123. RUCH, FLOYD L. 1931 L'appreciation du temps chez le rat blanc. Annee psychologique 32:118-130. SIDMAN, MURRAY 1956 Time Discrimination and Behavioral Interaction in a Free Operant Situation. Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology 49:469473. SIFFRE, MICHEL 1963 Ears du temps. Paris: Juillard. SKINNER, B. F. 1938 The Behavior of Organisms: An Experimental Analysis. New York: Appleton. VERNON, JACK A.; and McGiLL, THOMAS E. 1963 Time Estimations During Sensory Deprivation. Journal of General Psychology 69:11-18. WALLACE, M.; and RABIN, A. I. 1960 Temporal Experience. Psychological Bulletin 57:213-236. WHORF, BENJAMIN L. 1950 An American Indian Model of the Universe. International Journal of American Linguistics 16:67-72. WUNDT, WILHELM (1873-1874)1886 Elements de psychologic physiologique. 2 vols. Paris: Alcan. -> First published in German as Grundziige der physiologischen Psychologic. Volume 1 was translated into English in 1905 as Principles of Physiological Psychology. II SOCIAL ORGANIZATION
Since all human activities occur in time, the existence of a social system necessitates some or ganization of time. Such organization entails : (1) systems of time measurement, based upor cosmic and human cycles; (2) the allocation and scheduling of time fr individuals; and (3) a set of attitudes toward time past, tirrn present, and time future. While many thinkers have been interested i] the basic categories of the understanding—time space, and so on—it was Durkheim's discussio: of this subject (1912) that laid the basis for moc ern social scientific treatments. Durkheim arguec developing Kant's view that the basic categorie of the understanding exist in the mind, that thes categories are not given a priori but are soci; constructs. It was Durkheim's observations th; encouraged other social scientists to study the w£
TIME: Social Organization in which cultural variations in concepts such as time and space are related to other aspects of social life (see, for example, Granet on China [1934]; Mauss on the Eskimo [1906]; EvansPritchard on the Nuer [1940]) as well as to the way children acquire concepts about time (see, for example, Piaget 1946). Not all societies have the equivalent of the category "time." Writing of the Nuer of the southern Sudan, Evans-Pritchard pointed out that for them the notion that we call "time" is not a separate idea but an integral part of social activities and of ecological and meteorological phenomena ([1940] 1963, pp. 104-108). Similarly, Bohannan has written of the Tiv of northern Nigeria: "Time is implicit in Tiv thought and speech, but it is not a category of it" (1953, p. 262). But if time is not necessarily an explicit category, it is always an aspect of experience, implicit in thought and speech. The experience of time takes two major forms—sequence and duration. From the standpoint of sequence, events are seen as located in a particular order along a moving continuum. The experience of duration derives from the relative span of events and of the intervals between them. The experience of time as a continuum is often compared metaphorically to the movement of water, sometimes the linear flow of a river, sometimes the cyclical ebb and flow of the ocean; indeed, the English word "time" has the same root as "tide." Although all societies have some system of time reckoning, some idea of sequence and duration, the mode of reckoning clearly varies with the economy, ecology, and technical equipment; with the ritual system; and with the political organization. A peasant system has little need of elaborate scheduling, nor does it always possess the mechanical devices that permit accurate measurement. In nonindustrial societies the repetitive patterns of human life and the world of nature provide the basic measures of time reckoning, the counters for verbalizing the experience of duration. These measures can be thought of in terms of two main cycles, the human and the cosmic. In each cycle the main points of significant change are marked by rites of passage. Sequence and duration, cyclical and linear patterns, and systems of reckoning occur in all human societies, but the emphases differ. The measurement of long periods of time (the chronology °f the historian) could hardly begin before the urban revolution, which brought with it writing a nd the possibility of elaborate calculations concerning the movement of the heavens. Strict chro-
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nology began, according to Cumont (1912), with the establishment by the Chaldeans of a fixed era, the Era of Nabonassar, in 747 B.C. The introduction of such a base point for the calculation of years was essential to the prediction (and to some extent the recording) of long-term periodic phenomena, such as eclipses. The use of a base point represents a partial disengagement from cyclical concepts: years now pass irretrievably, never to return; time accumulates and no longer just ebbs and flows. This idea of irreversible time, much stressed in Judaeo-Christian thought, is central to the development of science and history alike. But such general changes in ideas as the shift from "the myth of the eternal recurrence" to the concept of linear, irreversible time are matters of degree rather than kind. Sacred (or liturgical) time, as distinct from profane time, continues to be largely dependent upon cyclical concepts; even the apocalypse, a thoroughly linear belief, is followed by rebirth into a timeless universe. We experience the events of our lives and the succession of the natural seasons in terms of both concepts; indeed, the attempt to erect long-term cycles continues to be a feature of the work of historians such as Spengler and Toynbee (although they tend to confuse the persistence of certain mechanisms with the repetition of specific events). The same is true of the concepts of sequence and duration: they do not change radically. In simple societies the beginning of a ceremony is often determined by a natural event, or, as in the Tallensi ritual chain, it follows the performance of a similar ceremony by a neighboring group (Fortes 1936). Time indications tend to give way to time measurement with the invention of new mechanical devices; but even modern man, reviewing his own experience, often thinks in terms of the sequence of events rather than attempting to locate them in an absolute chronology. The subjective time of the "inner dialogue" (what Meyerhoff calls "human time"), which forms one of the great concerns of Proust, Joyce, Mann, and Virginia Woolf, stands in contrast to the more rigid time reckoning required either by the social intercourse of urban society or by scientific endeavor; in the latter, I include the establishment of a chronology for historical reconstruction, as distinct from the personal recollection of past experience. Since concepts of time and its social organization are basic to the development of modern science and technology, which, in turn, underlies the rise of modern industrial society, to what extent do the variations in these concepts account
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for differences in technological and industrial development? From the Chinese evidence, Needham has concluded (1965, p. 52) that differences in development cannot be attributed to concepts of time. These concepts vary only in degree and are not in themselves capable of preventing technological advance. Thus, in addition to the discrete cycles, the discontinuous "packaged" time of their general world outlook (Granet 1934), the Chinese also used the linear reckoning appropriate for historical narrative; both models were potentially available. It would appear that major changes in the concepts and organization of time follow rather than precede technological innovations. Measurement of time—the cosmic cycle The passage of time is calculated by reference to a series of repetitive units that are measured with varying degrees of precision. Certain of these units are based upon the movements of nature—the daily rotation of the earth, the regular phases of the moon, and the annual movement of the earth around the sun. The reckoning of days, months, and years occurs universally. But such units are not necessarily organized into an interlocking series, with one unit representing a specific fraction (or multiple) of another; instead, they may constitute a set of discontinuous time-indications. Night and day. Time reckoning begins with the recurrent division into night and day that commonly regulates activity levels in most forms of animal life. The division of human life into light and dark, movement and rest, and waking and sleeping often provides a symbolic framework for many other social activities. Night is generally seen as linked with evil, with witchcraft, and with illicit behavior of all kinds. It is the time for supernatural agencies to reveal themselves in dreams and for spirits of varied shapes and sizes to roam the earth. Night is also the time for sleep and sex, for dreaming and for thievery. To daytime belong the productive activities. In all societies, some division of the day is made according to the position of the sun in the sky; hence, concepts of dawn, forenoon, afternoon, and sunset, and the reckoning of time by the movement of light and shadow appear universally. Frequently, the periods of dawn and dusk, the times that call for a reorientation of activities from those of night to those of day, are further subdivided, and the terminology is refined. With the use of the sundial, the variation in the position of shadows can be formalized. Time reckoning thus moves in the direction of regular divisions of the night and the day into seconds, minutes, and hours, a
systematization that runs counter to the experience of the inhabitants of lands where there are seasonal differences in the length of daylight. Only with the development of mechanical devices can one divide night and day into equal units calculated against the rotation of the earth rather than on the basis of the length of sunlight. The precise divisions made by the clock are, of course, essential to any elaborate scheduling of the kind demanded by large-scale organizations like factories, offices, or communication systems. But the desire for more accurate time measurement long antedates the industrial revolution and relates to economic, ritual, military, and political needs. The sundial (or gnomon), the sandglass, and the clepsydra (or dripping water clock) were invented in Babylonia and Egypt, from whence they spread throughout the Old World. The oldest Egyptian water clock, graduated to show the lengths of hours at different seasons, dated from about 1500 B.C., and such instruments were further developed in Alexandria, in the Arabic world, and in Europe. The duties of the keeper of the clock are frequently mentioned in the rule books of monastic orders such as the Cistercians and included nightly adjustments according to observations of the stars. From the Fertile Crescent, sundials and watei clocks also spread to China. Lacking Euclidear deductive geometry, the Chinese never achievec the complexity of Arabic and western gnomonics But the water clock evolved much further into i complex hydromechanical instrument, and by 721: the Chinese had succeeded in controlling the rota tion of the water wheel by means of an "escape ment" of linkwork, which operated a kind of gate "Steady motion was thus secured by intersectin the progress of a powered machine into interval of equal duration—an invention of genius" (Neec ham 1965, p. 18). Whether or not this invention was the forerui ner of the purely mechanical clock is uncertaii But by the mid-fourteenth century the techniciar of western Europe had produced a weight-drive chronometer that depended upon a verge-and-foli< escapement to regulate its movement. From tf time of Archimedes, men had constructed m chanical models of the planetary orbits, and mo of the first clocks were "less chronometers tht exhibitions of the pattern of the cosmos"; the origin lay "in a complex realm of monument planetaria, equatoria, and geared astrolabe (White 1962, pp. 122-123). Indeed, the clock h been described as a machine to emulate the rotati of the earth.
TIME: Social Organization Coincident with the invention of such a clock, the temporary, or variable, hour, which had been favored for liturgical purposes, finally gave way to the system of equal hours. The division of the day into 12 hours, based upon the duodecimal system of the zodiac, was established in ancient Greece. About the middle of the fourteenth century it became usual to divide the hour into 60 minutes and the minute into 60 seconds. The measurement of time was now removed from the context of events; its divisions were given an abstract framework, and its reckoning became increasingly dissociated from immediate human experiences, shifting from the sun or tides to the formal divisions engraved on the face of a mechanical device. The next century saw the adaptation and use of the spring mechanism in clocks and later in watches. The new instrument was quickly taken up by the rich, particularly by the merchants, who had discovered, as Benjamin Franklin later said, that "time is money." "To become 'as regular as clockwork' was the bourgeois ideal, and to own a watch was for long a definite symbol of success" (Mumford 1934, p. 16). About the middle of the nineteenth century, the production of the cheap standardized watch, first in Geneva and then in America, made possible the wide use by individuals of devices for accurate, precise, and continuous time scheduling, as distinct from the communal (and less flexible) timekeeping of the muezzin's call, the village drum, the church bell, and the town-hall clock. In itself the clock is a technological achievement, but it also underlies four major aspects of modern life. First, it has made possible the precise measurement of time, which is perhaps the most fundamental operation in modern physics. Second, its manufacture has helped to train the craftsmen needed for further scientific endeavor, pure and applied. Third, it has provided a mechanical model for the operation of the universe. Fourth, it has permitted the detailed organization of time that an industrial system requires. In these ways, it has changed man's attitudes and his categories of time, and, therefore, it has been called the key machine of the modern world, surpassing in importance the steam engine itself. While accurate time measurement is a prerequisite of the complex social systems that mark industrial economies and of the scientific research on which they are based, earlier methods of timekeeping seem to have been stimulated by magical and religious concern as much as by pragmatic interests. Knowledge of the movements of the stars, although used for predicting seasonal changes and
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for determining direction, was often required for divinatory purposes. The Chaldean-derived horoscope consisted of observations of the configuration of the planets at a certain moment; the chosen time for the calculation was usually the moment of birth, which was believed to shape the individual's whole destiny. Astrology represents the most elaborate form of divinatory technique; it exists only in conjunction with writing, but it is based also upon a widespread belief, apparent in the giving of day-names and similar practices, that men's character and destiny are determined by the date of their birth. The measurement of hours, by sundial and by sand, by candle and by clock, was an ecclesiastical demand, and so too were ideas of punctuality. Members of the "regular" clergy of the medieval monastery were enjoined to organize their lives "by rule," that is, by a specific allocation of time for work, for sleep, and for worship. The ringing of the prayer bell seven times a day established time by recourse to instruments that divided the day into regular intervals. It was this rigid organization of time, combined with the intense devotion to work, that has led scholars to include the Benedictine order among the founders of modern capitalism. Other world religions developed their own diurnal ordering of time. Followers of Islam, for example, are required to offer the five canonical prayers (saldt) at fixed times during the course of the day. In practice, working people tend to restrict their devotions, leaving the full observances to clerics and to the retired, who are able to give their whole lives to the accumulation of religious grace. The working population concentrates upon the evening prayer, which carries the greatest weight; as in Judaism, it is the setting rather than the rising of the sun that initiates the daily cycle. The week. The week lacks any definite basis in the external environment. It is an entirely social construct, varying in length from society to society: seven days in the Judaeo-Christian world and three, four, five, or six days in certain parts of west Africa, southeast Asia, and Central America. In early Rome it was eight days; in China it was ten. However, the weekly cycle always consists of a relatively small number of days (usually named) and is used to regulate short-term, recurrent activities, especially those of the market place. In Mesopotamia the seven-day period was linked to the five planets, together with the sun and the moon, in a planetary or astrological week. The seven-day week spread through Europe, north Africa, India, and the Malay Peninsula and is used
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more or less universally today; present names continue to indicate the pre-Christian origin. The LoDagaa, a primarily agricultural society of northern Ghana, designate the six days of the week by the name of the village where a market takes place on the day in question. The very terms for "day" and "market" are the same (daa), and the weekly cycle is simply daar, "a plurality of markets," so that the names of the days not only record the pattern of market gatherings but also serve as a measuring rod for other short-range activities. The importance of market time is again illustrated in early medieval England, where each neighboring town held its market, or cheaping (hence "cheap"), on a different day of the week. The inhabitants of outlying districts would come in for the local trade and also for the opportunity of meeting together, so that disputes could be settled, marriages arranged, and leisure enjoyed. Thus, in many peasant societies the market week is a way of organizing social time as well as economic exchange. The weekly cycle of markets differentiates one day from another and serves to break up the continuity of agricultural activities by providing some change of pace—substituting rest for work, exchange for production. In the Judaeo-Christian tradition, there is also a weekly shift from the profane to the sacred, for a special day is allocated for religious activity. In Islam this day is Friday, in Judaism Saturday, and in Christianity Sunday. These calendrical differences reflect distinctions of theology and organization. In Islam, Friday is the day for worship at the town's main mosque, often with elaborate processions, but it is not a rest day in the full sense of the word; indeed, there is a maxim to the effect that it is blameworthy to abstain from work on Friday in imitation of the sabbath practices of Christians and Jews (Trimingham 1959, p. 73). The polytheistic religions of west Africa also have their day of rest, which sometimes coincides with the market day. Thomas suggested (1924, p. 199) that in west Africa, while the basis of the week is economic, the rest day is religious in origin; the days are usually named after markets, but sometimes after the gods worshiped on those days. Among the LoDagaa, one day each week is set aside as a "day of not using the hoe," when iron implements are forbidden. It is on this day that important sacrifices are made to the Earth shrine, under whose aegis all major uses of the soil, housebuilding, farming, burial, and ironwork are undertaken. Although modern industrial systems place a
great premium upon the continuous use of industrial facilities, the day of rest is found even in those societies where its role as a day of worship has been abandoned. In the Soviet Union a continuous workweek was introduced in 1929, and each worker was given one day off in five. The result was considerable chaos, in the home as well as at work. Two years later a six-day week with a common day of rest was instituted on the grounds that the shifting five-day schedule encouraged irresponsibility with respect to jobs and employment (Moore 1963, p. 122). In 1940 the seven-day week was restored, with Sunday as the day of rest. The double functions of the week of providing discontinuity in work and time for leisure seem to be even more necessary in an industrialized society than in a purely agricultural one, where seasonal changes impress their rhythms on the productive process. Moreover, there are strong pressures for the weekly break to be held in common: since individuals spend the bulk of their day in specialized work groups, family and neighborhood groups would be of only peripheral importance if they did not have the week end as a focus for joint activities. In the absence of effective crosscutting ties, overwhelming stress would be placed upon the monolithic economic institutions, and this could result in both emotional and cultural impoverishment. The month and the year. While itself consisting of a specified number of days, the week is rarely a subdivision of larger units of time measurement. The next unit in size, and one which is given universal recognition in some form or other, is the month, based upon the lunar cycle of 29.5 days. In nonliterate societies the month is calculated by direct reference to the waxing and waning of the moon, and special attention is paid to the three days of its death and rebirth, which are often seen as having a profound meaning for human life, being linked to ideas of immortality, death, and resurrection. Unlike weeks, months are usually thought of as organized segments of a seasonal cycle, although some societies use names only for certain of the lunar divisions. Nevertheless, all societies recognize some kind of yearly cycle, since this is required by both agriculture and hunting. Agriculture in particular demands an annual scheduling that determines the allocation of work and of food as well as the setting aside of seed at harvest time to be preserved until the next planting season. No society can avoid some long-term budgeting of this kind; the tropical paradise where wild fruits offer a natural superabundance of food and drink is a figment of the imagination of urban Europeans.
TIME: Social Organization Nobody, in fact, just passes the time, although it often seems so to those dependent upon more demanding schedules. There are, of course, outstanding differences in the degree of accuracy required by different schedules. While the weekly markets of medieval England catered to the local trade, there also existed the yearly fairs, or gearmarkets, to which traders came from far afield. The tolls for these fairs were often allocated to various eccelesiastical foundations, and the specific day on which the market took place was sometimes the saint's day of the religious house, so that the fair doubled as a fete and the traders as pilgrims. An activity of this kind that brings people together from widely separated places at a specific time of the year clearly requires a more accurate calculus than is provided by a simple count of moons, loosely linked to a seasonal cycle. It demands a calendar (or natural occurrence) that is accurate, regular, and widely known, so that precise coordination on an annual basis is possible. One difficulty in constructing such a system is that no sum of lunar months adds up to a yearly cycle. Intercalation is necessary in order to reconcile the year of 12 lunar months with the solar year on which the growth of crops depends. In the usual practice, no fixed number of days is assigned to the lunar month (in Islamic practice, for example, it begins when the new moon is seen), and likewise the year is considered to begin when the appropriate season comes round, the length of the months being adjusted accordingly. Thus, the harvest moon comes when the harvest is ready, and the planting moon is set by some biological clock, some natural phenomena, or what Linnaeus called the Horologe or "Watch of Flora." The abandonment of the lunar cycle results in a nonlunar month, or mense, under which term can be included any unit greater than ten days and less than a year (Thomas 1924, p. 188). For example, the Ashanti have the adae, a period of 42 days that is formed by the intersection of a six-day and seven-day weekly cycle, the first of local origin, the second probably of Muslim derivation. Both the great adae, which occurs after 18 days, and the little adae, which takes place after a further 24 days, were occasions for important sacrifices to the royal ancestors. As with the lunar reckoning of Islam, the adae (although unnamed) provides a continuous-chain type of calendar, divorced from the seasonal cycle but linked to a complex series of politico—religious festivals. The necessity for a closer "fit" between lunar months and solar years came only with the introduction of written calendars, which eventually
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led to the abandonment of the lunar month, as in the Julian calendar, or to the relinquishing of the solar year, as in the Islamic system established by Muhammad (where the year of 12 lunar months is ten days shorter than the solar year). Historically, the first breakthrough toward the Western system appears to have been made in Egypt, which established a year of 12 nonlunar months, each with 30 days. Writing permitted a further important formalization of the calendar. In nonliterate societies the accumulation of years takes place, if at all, against a background of regular ceremonies, which may occur every three, seven, or ten years (or occasionally more, as in the case of the 60-year cycle of the Dogon festivals). In early literate societies there was sometimes a set of names for the years, for example, the Year of the Mouse (China) and the Year of Moses (Islam). In ancient Greece, with its annual transfer of power, the years were known by the name of the particular archon. But monarchic systems often reckoned years from the beginning of a reign, and such regnal counts could also be made by the cutting of tallies, the counting of pebbles, or the tying of knots. In Sumeria (as elsewhere), the regnal system of reckoning years was associated with the idea that a new ruler brings with him a new dispensation, a theme of renewal that serves, like regular elections, to reconcile individuals to the gap between expectation and actuality. Similarly, the revolutionary regimes of eighteenth-century France and fascist Italy reckoned the beginning of a new era from the date of their coming to power. Time itself is seen as making a fresh start, the social order as being reborn. The idea of an era depends upon the introduction of a fixed point at which numbering may start. Large-scale time is then no longer reckoned only by cycles or by recurrent series of occurrences; it acquires a more linear character. The fixed point used by the Chaldeans was arbitrary, but later such fixed points were calculated with reference to a unique event—the creation of the world or the birth of the prophet. Time is no longer experienced as largely repetitive (Gluckman 1963) but is seen as flowing in a single line (called variously "progress," "evolution," or "change") and, at the beginning of this shift in viewpoint, often in a chiliastic direction, toward an earthly millennium, the coming of a messiah; thus, certain years of the era, such as 1000, are invested with mystical properties. The early formalization and elaboration of written calendars took place under a variety of pressures: the demands of agricultural planning.
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particularly in complex irrigation societies; the organization of trade, especially long-distance trade; and the coordination of the military and administrative activities of centralized polities. But as in nonliterate societies, magico-religious factors continued to be of prime importance in the arrangement and elaboration of the calendar, which mapped out the liturgical year as well as the economic year. Writing also made possible the recording of star positions and the development of mathematics, which were essential for the development of the horoscope as a means of forecasting future events and ascertaining divine will. Astrological and astronomical calculation always had much in common, and the mapping of the heavenly universe was important not only for divination but also for the development of chronometers and for navigation. One factor that inhibited navigation was the existence of purely local systems of time reckoning, and the development of a world-wide network of communications has inevitably led to the adoption of a unified calculus. Sun time, which varies by one minute every eight miles, had to give way to conventional time belts, which were established in the United States around 1880 at the instigation of the transcontinental railroads. Some years later a world congress completed the standardization of time that had begun with the founding of the Greenwich observatory two hundred years before and that led to the coordination of ships' chronometers with Greenwich mean time. Human action could now be synchronized on a world-wide scale. Systems of time reckoning have developed from concrete time indications of a discontinuous kind to increasingly abstract, numerical, and regular divisions linked to a continuous calendar based primarily on diurnal and annual movements. Through the means of writing, astronomy, and mechanics, there occurs an increasing dissociation of time measurement from commonplace events —the movement of animals, the growth of crops, and the human activities to which they are directly linked. Thus, there emerges a formal framework of objective divisions that are as applicable in Delhi as they are in Dallas. But the development of more abstract time scales tends to supplement rather than replace more concrete ideas of time, which often continue to be the measure for much subjective experience. Rites of passage in the cosmic cycle. For many social purposes, time is reckoned not by regular units of measurement but by the major festivals that break up the continuity of its passage ("Only 42 more shopping days to Christmas"). Such hol-
idays and festivals may be linked to any of the major time divisions—to days, weeks, months, or years. In England, the week revolves around its "holy day" and has its regular days for pay, sport, and rest. These regular days dominate patterns of food consumption (the Sunday roast) and of family interaction, as well as the whole industrial system; however, I am here concerned with the annual festivals that have a marked influence on the longrange planning of human activities. In agricultural communities, where productive activity is periodic, the major festivals of local religions tend to mark the beginning and end of the productive season. At the time of planting a rogation ceremony is often performed to obtain supernatural blessing for the growing crops; at harvest time a thanksgiving festival is held to acknowledge divine intervention in the productive process. In northern climes, where agriculture is much affected by the changing length of days and is influenced more by variations in sunshine than by the coming of the rains, ceremonies often cluster around the times of solstice and equinox, the major turning points of the solar year. Annual festivals, although mainly religious in orientation, have other consequences, intended and unintended. In tribal societies annual gatherings, such as the Australian corroboree, are important for the initiation of adolescents, the re-enactment of myths, and the restatement of cultural values. In addition, they provide a meeting point for persons of neighboring social groups, who not only participate in communal rituals but also use the occasion for settling disputes, getting brides, repaying debts, and generally regulating their affairs. Such events are often marked by a limited expression of tensions between groups, although the likelihood of overt conflict is inhibited by ritual peace, supported by special sanctions against the outbreak of violence (Fortes 1936). In Islamic countries the month of the pilgrimage (Dhu 'l-hijja) is sandwiched between two months during which raiding is prohibited, thus encouraging a ritual peace for the business and religious activities of the pilgrims. In state systems, festivals such as the Ashanti Odwira, the Hausa Gani, or the damba of northern Ghana are used to affirm political allegiance; on these occasions subordinate chiefs come to the capital to do public obeisance to their liege lords. Again, these occasions may also allow for the limited expression of conflict in rituals of rebellion directed against those in authority (Gluckman 1954). As religious festivals, these ceremonies are ob
TIME: Social Organization viously affected by changes in the beliefs of the participants. But often new cults that arise are forced to incorporate features from earlier rituals into their own because of the powerful hold of the traditional rites; indeed, the early Christians adopted Roman rituals to such an extent that Faustus, the Manichaean bishop, tried to convince the young Augustine that they were nothing better than idolaters. Whereas the major ceremonies of local religions usually celebrate the birth and death of the year (sometimes represented by the life cycle of a god), the main rituals of the prophetic religions enact the life and death of their founder, whose life cycle is encapsulated in the yearly calendar. The freedom from particular seasonal rhythms makes such calendars more appropriate for the world religions, whose adherents span many environments, and more appropriate also for urban communities, whose way of life is not governed by climatic changes. Such a liturgical calendar represents a further step in the dissociation of objective time reckoning from immediate human activities. Increasing secularism has meant that the political value of regular festivals has been openly acknowledged; the anniversaries of a nation's birth are celebrated with the same pomp and circumstance found in public demonstrations of loyalty to leader, state, and party. But while most ceremonies have a particular religious or national significance, the increased interaction between nations is producing a basic standardization of ceremonial time, a universal ritual calendar. The seven-day week is now world-wide, and, with the exception of a few Arab states of the Middle East, so too is the Sunday break; the post-Independence changes in Ceylon, which introduced a shifting weekly holiday (poya*) based upon the lunar calculation of the Buddhists, were inspired by political motives and seem unlikely to last. The most widespread public holiday is the first of January, the beginning of the Gregorian year, closely followed in popularity by Christmas and May Day. Despite the predominantly secularized character of the modern festival, a few groups reject the celebration of Christmas on religious grounds, but gift giving is often shifted to a nearby occasion—to Hanukkah among Jewish minorities and to New Year's Day in the European communist states. In some countries the first of May, the day on which the labor movement traditionally shows its strength, is celebrated as a holiday, but under certain right-wing regimes, as in Spain, all public manifestations of the holiday are banned, although this very denial has added to its value as a day
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of protest. In most of the new nations the day is celebrated as one of solidarity and exhortation to increased national effort. In this case, the element of protest has been transferred from inside the social system to external targets, especially to the "neocolonial" activities of the major European powers. The number of bank holidays provides a rough scale of the degree of national "puritanism": Roman Catholic countries have the most, Protestant ones fewer, and the communist states fewest of all; Brazil has 18, Britain 6, and Bulgaria 5. New nations display an eclectic choice that reflects their political situation, ideological tenets, and religious composition: Ceylon, for example, recognizes Christian, Muslim, and Buddhist festivals, together with May Day, Independence Day, and a few other holidays, making a total of 15. Measurement of time—the human cycle Objectively, the passage of time in both the cosmic and human cycles is measured by the units already described—days, weeks, months, and years. But just as the year is divided into seasons that broadly characterize its main phases, so too the life span of human beings is divided into such categories as infancy, adolescence, and adulthood. The movement of an individual from one age grade to another is often celebrated by a rite of passage. In some societies these stages of growth form the basis of social groups of coevals, and in others a continuing series of such groups (age sets) is linked in an over-all age organization, which may serve important political and military functions. In modern nation-states, age-determined groups are the basis of educational organization, of informal associations of adolescents, and often of military recruitment, but they are of little importance in later phases of the life cycle. The position of an individual in the life cycle not only influences the role he plays and the groups to which he belongs but also has a number of less obvious effects on his behavior. The composition of the unit around which his domestic life revolves inevitably changes radically over time. One consequence of this fact for sociologists is that the "average family" can never be directly derived from a synchronic census but must be seen in dynamic perspective, that is, in terms of the developmental cycle (Fortes 1958). This approach not only illuminates residential patterns and divorce statistics but also is important in analyzing changing attitudes and beliefs. Durkheim, for example, demonstrated the inverse correlation between suicide rates and family integration, while Argyle (1958)
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showed the link between age and religious commitment, the latter being highest at 18, dropping to a nadir at 30, and gradually increasing in strength the nearer the prospect of death. Clearly, an individual's perception of the social universe changes as his relationships with the living shift: the child defers to his elders, while the adult is deferred to. Rites of passage in the human cycle. The major changes in an individual's life are marked by rites of passage which announce and enact the acquisition of a new role, of new rights and duties. Thus, birth is usually followed by baptism, marriage rites celebrate the establishment of an enduring sexual union, and death is accompanied by elaborate funeral ceremonies that serve to dissociate an individual from his network of mundane relations and dispatch him to the world of the dead. In preindustrial societies funerals are usually the most important of the life-cycle ceremonies, since they have to accomplish the transfer of a man's rights and duties, especially over property, women, and office, to other members of the community; this process is necessarily gradual and hence often marked by a double funeral, the first stage of which is a burial service and the second a kind of memorial (Hertz 1907; Goody 1962). Ceremonies accompanying such distributions are particularly important in agricultural societies, where the volume of fixed and enduring property transmitted by kinship succession is high and where the ceremonies themselves often have integrative and cathartic functions for the local group. In urban industrial communities, where neighborhood and kinship ties are weak, where property inheritance is of more limited significance (since most people cannot bequeath the means of production), such ceremonies tend to become more perfunctory, especially as literacy permits the witnessing function of these rites to be accomplished by the issuing of licenses. But marriage, which involves the expression of intent by the participants, is still a significant public display in many industrial communities; birth continues to be the focus of important ceremonies among people of property; and the funeral complex (including published obituaries) often takes a highly elaborate form in the case of those who have done the state some service. The burial of great men performs an integrative function on a national level, restating the values the society holds dear and recalling the specific contributions made by other former citizens. The allocation of time Members of all societies have to make some allocation of the time to be spent on any one activ-
ity as against any other. In simple economies the basic allocation is closely linked to nature, being dominated by diurnal and seasonal rhythms. More accurate and more complex scheduling goes hand in hand with an increasing complexity of organization. It is made possible first by the development of writing, then by the invention of mechanical time keeping, and finally by the democratization of literacy through paper and the printing press. Time allocation, like other bureaucratic operations, can be removed from the uncertain sphere of memory and attached to objects in the outside world—"Make a note of that," "Put that in writing." But it is above all the watch that dominates the organization of time in modern societies. While radio signals, the factory siren, and the town-hall clock establish public time, the increasingly complex schedules of contemporary life are made possible by the mass-produced watch, a personal time keeper that individuals consult with the obsessive regularity of the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland. The coordination of joint activities, whether over large distances or within complex organizations, requires that each individual make precise measurements: army orders for the movement of troops may end with the synchronization of watches, and civilians display the same concern about being "on time." The watch is often a man's first major gift to his adolescent son, a stimulus to adopt the adult virtue of punctuality, an emblem of approaching responsibilities. Since many of the operations of industrial life occur at regular intervals, people are able to routinize their behavior and so reduce the strain of organizing schedules and making decisions. In the commuter's life (the epitome of routinized time allocation), the pattern is largely imposed from the outside, by factory, train, and office. However, elaborate scheduling also spills over into leisure hours; many individuals have regular times for washing the car, for going on walks, and for entertaining guests, and in this way themselves impose an order on these potentially less structured situations. As Mumford has pointed out, such regimentation was both essential to and the product of the rise of capitalism: "The new bourgeoisie, in counting house and shop, reduced life to a careful, uninterrupted routine: so long for business: so long for dinner: so long for pleasure—all carefully measured out, as methodical as the sexual intercourse of Tristram Shandy's father, which coincided, symbolically, with the monthly winding of the clock. Timed payments: timed contracts: timed
TIME: Social Organization work: timed meals: from this period on nothing was quite free from the stamp of the calendar or the clock. Waste of time became for protestant religious preachers, like Richard Baxter, one of the most heinous sins" ([1934] 1964, p. 42). Mechanical devices (like writing) can make for easier manipulation of time categories; when schedules are linked with natural events such as the budding of trees, they are less easy to adapt to innovations such as new crops. At the same time, these devices enabled man to accelerate the pace of life to fit more activities into the day. A major development in late medieval technology was the control of power, and increasing power quickened the tempo of social life. Production and transport were speeded up, and in this century the concern with speed has even affected sport; the stop watch became the tool of the athletic coach as well as of the time-motion study experts. Because the diversity of an individual's roles is so often tied to particular places, such as shop, clinic, or office, it demands very specific allotments of time. A man or woman at work has to meet a more exacting schedule than does a housewife, whose routine turns upon the husband's employment and the children's school. Economic and domestic roles are segregated in time and space; and to take on any additional ("voluntary") roles, such as that of local councilor, party chairman, or committee member, means a further careful allocation of this scarce commodity, since each one necessitates a whole set of timed appearances. In societies that lack a complex division of labor, the role structure is more homogeneous in that during their lives most people fill most roles and in that the activities themselves rarely involve so great a separation in space and time. The more elaborate the division of labor and the less ascriptive the recruitment to roles, the greater are the number of possible role opportunities open to the individual. Selection among these alternatives is a matter of allocating time over the whole span of a person's life, and adults speak feelingly of "the wasted years" or of "having their time over again," sentiments likely to be less important in undifferentiated communities, where a new life would tend to be much like the old. In Hindu society, which, although differentiated, is still based on the ascription of roles, movement through the role structure is left to future incarnations and depends upon an individual's performance in his existing status. Such an eschatology provides the possibility of future mobility as a compensation for the unchangeable present. "Career scheduling" involves choices on the part
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of both the senior and junior generations that often entail consideration of comparative rewards over the long term. Lengthy career training means the postponement of gratification in money, sex, and independence. The ability to carry out such a program derives from professional interest, the attraction of greater rewards, and the pressures of parents and peers; it is also supported by moral factors, such as the commitment to the Protestant ethic. The higher the desired status and the more complex the economy, the longer the time perspective needed to attain one's ends. On a national scale, there is a parallel problem concerning the restriction of immediate spending in the interests of investment. The running of any economy, whether socialist, capitalist, or mixed, requires a deliberate consideration of present action in the light of future needs. Attitudes toward time The past. In nonliterate cultures ideas and attitudes concerning the past tend to reflect present concerns. To some extent this happens in all societies, especially in those situations where we rely upon memory. But where the transmission of culture is entirely dependent upon oral communication, upon an interlocking series of conversations, the past is inevitably swallowed up in the present (Goody & Watt 1963). In the strictest sense, history begins with writing. Before (and partly after) the widespread use of writing, the past is a backward projection of the present, going straight back to the mythical age that saw the emergence of humanity and its present way of life. While stories of migration and genealogies contain much in the way of historical fact, they often constitute collective representations of contemporary relationships and act as the "charters" of existing institutions. For example, the variations in the average depth of genealogies are to be related not to intrinsic differences in short-term and long-term memories of the people concerned but to differences in the social groups that these genealogies help to tie together. However, in many centralized societies, accounts of dynastic events are often passed down by various mnemonic devices that partly shield their contents from the transmuting effects of oral tradition. It is only when writing gives a material embodiment to speech that the distant past can represent more than a backward extension of the present. Although each age still rewrites its own history, the past begins to acquire an independent existence of its own. Today an individual's cultural equipment is no longer limited to what is handed
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down orally from one generation to the next but includes, potentially at least, the entire contents of the libraries, the written records of the past ages and dead societies, and the thoughts of distant scholars. The cultural heritage is vastly extended and with it the whole conceptualization of space and time. Change and duration become a more concrete part of one's existence. With the extension of writing into the personal and the ephemeral, by means of letters, newspapers, and diaries, even one's own past can achieve a modicum of objectivity, providing memory with an individual check list. Recording the speech of people over time and over space widens human experience and increases the likelihood of further change by making skepticism and disagreement articulate and therefore cumulative; literate traditions of dissent open up vistas of alternative forms of human organization. With the articulated calendar, the passage of time takes on a measured regularity. Old men can no longer look back unchallenged upon a past of 200 summers; with the registration of births and deaths, the specification of exact age becomes an intrinsic part of life and death. The reckoning of annual birthdays, whether for customary celebration or for astrological calculation, is a literate device. The Akan of west Africa named their children according to the weekday of birth (for example, Kwame is Saturday's child), which was seen as determining a child's character and sometimes functioned as a self-fulfilling prophecy; however, the system specified only the name of the day, not the day of the month or the year. The recognition of age differences and age order is a feature of all societies, but people in Western societies are preoccupied with specific age. An adult's first question to a child, after hearing his name, is about his age, and age will be the first entry in a man's obituary and the main feature on his tombstone. Numerical age rather than physical condition determines adult status; the patterned ages of 7, 14, and 21, so important in medieval law, have been largely replaced by new numbers that define an individual's ability to marry, to fight, and even to work, for bureaucratic organizations increasingly enforce compulsory retirement by age rather than by capacity. But characteristically this restriction applies to the employee more than to the director, to civil servants more than to politicians. The present. Literacy influences attitudes not only to the past but to the present and future as well. The permanency of written records makes a radical difference in the accumulation and storage
of knowledge and opinions and thus creates the possibility of more rapid change. But literacy brings with it an often troublesome inability to forget the past, so that the present has to engage in a deliberate struggle with older modes of thought and action. Individuals, groups, and governments strive to repeal laws which in nonliterate societies would have quite simply been forgotten or else would have undergone imperceptible changes to bring them into line with the new conditions. Unlike statutes, the Bible, the Koran, and other books of God cannot be amended, but their contents are reinterpreted over time and what was once intended literally is later seen as allegory and symbol, as metaphor and myth. But above all, attitudes toward time present focus upon the alternative uses of time that are offered by an elaborate division of labor, the minute scheduling that this division of labor entails, and the continual presence of a watch upon the wrist, which makes man ever conscious of the fleeting moment. In most literary traditions, writers express their regret at the passing of pleasure and the shortness of human life, but it is the perpetual concern with the passage of time that is characteristic of industrial man. Made aware that time is his scarcest resource, he learns to "spend" and "save" it like money. The ideology that stands at the center of industrial society stresses the full and productive use of time, a commodity that requires the most careful husbanding. This concern is as characteristic of socialist systems as of capitalist systems; during the industrialization of the Soviet Union an association was formed to encourage the carrying of watches and to expound the benefits of punctuality. Managers often find that the behavior of newly industrialized workers in developing countries deviates sharply from these enunciated values. The peasant is not used to "watching the clock" or to the demanding (and desiccating) routine of much of factory life. "Slaves?" I was once asked by an African visitor when he first saw rows of women working on an assembly line, their exits and entrances timed by "the clock," their every move organized by time and motion studies. For the peasant, time has been nature's time, and the organization of his activities largely his own affair. The future. The factors that bear upon attitudes toward the present are also relevant to attitudes toward the future; indeed, the difference simply turns on the question of scheduling over the longer term, as compared to the shorter term. In peasant communities the scheduling of production operates on an annual basis, but it is largely
TIME: Social Organization repetitive and future activity is mainly a continuation of the present. With the development of centralized political systems planning became more elaborate and included the storage of grain against famine, the construction of capital works, the build-up of supplies for military campaigns, and the organization of long-distance trade. But while the future may be visualized in terms of the success or failure of such undertakings, which are recognized as responsive to human foresight and control, deliberate social change is at first organizational rather than structural; even changes in the political order are a matter of rebellion rather than revolution, of replacing the officeholder rather than changing the over-all distribution of power. The possibility of long-range planning is vastly increased by the existence of writing. Literacy not only makes it technically possible to follow a complex plan but also to project and publicize a variety of alternative worlds (and the programs for their attainment) that vary along a continuum ranging from the pragmatic to the Utopian. And by the process of "ideological feedback," these programs often influence, and sometimes dominate, the direction of change. Plans, the projected organization of future time, are as much a requisite of the personal sphere as of the national and industrial domains. The maintenance of a yearly balance between production and consumption is not in itself enough: in most professional and managerial groups there is the necessity of planning for a surplus throughout a man's total career, a surplus that is required for heavy expenses such as house purchases and educational fees; and since the dominant attitudes favor providing for individual security rather than familial dependence, there is the problem of making provision for old age. A man's total perspective of time future extends beyond the end of this life to an afterlife. Beliefs in the continuity of some element of the human personality after death characterize all cultures, with the possible exception of communist societies and minority groups in secularized Western states. In most societies the distant past and future tend to be of peripheral interest. However, the idea of an earlier golden age, a Garden of Eden, is not an uncommon way of dealing with the universal "problem of evil," of explaining the actual imperfections and potential perfectibility of man. And when a culture of the less complex kind is hard pressed, typically by contact with European society, there is a tendency to seek comfort in ritual designed to bend time backward to an earlier paradise or to leapfrog time and hurry on the advent
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of the Messiah, the coming of the millennium [Worsley 1957; Thrupp 1962; see also MILLENARISM]. By and large, the "other world" of agricultural societies is visualized as a continuation of this world, although there is usually some distribution of rewards and punishments for behavior on earth, so that those who have escaped from mundane punishments get their due in the afterlife. Societies with elaborate status hierarchies may redress the balance of this world by a reversal of status in the next; it is the rich rather than the poor who are told that it is difficult to enter the Christian heaven. The afterlife may be seen either as the final destination of humanity or as a stage in the continuous flow of life which leads back again into this world by some process of reincarnation or transmigration. Here again, the element of status reversal may be present; the relative lack of social mobility in Hindu society is partially offset by the fact that the worthy fulfillment of a man's present role may qualify him for a higher status in his next incarnation. The increasing pace of social change and individual mobility in industrial societies, combined with an increasing skepticism and secularization, makes such eschatologies of decreasing importance to society. Millennial dreams are replaced by political Utopias, the idea of a fixed destiny by a concern with educational mobility, and the belief in immortality by a concept of social progress and continuity. Nevertheless, few men, as they advance in age, do not feel the urge to extend the limits of their tenure, by church attendance, public activities, the written word, or identification with their progeny. It is difficult, if not impossible, for men to envisage a final end to time, on either a cosmic or an individual level, and the continuous chain of familial living helps to mitigate the prospect of complete finality. JACK GOODY [See also PERIODIZATION.] BIBLIOGRAPHY
ARGYLE, MICHAEL 1958 Religious Behaviour. London: Routledge. BAILLIE, G. H. 1929 Watches: Their History, Decoration and Mechanism. London: Methuen. BICKERMAN, ELIAS (1933) 1963 Chronologic. 2d ed. Leipzig: Teubner. BOHANNAN, PAUL J. 1953 Concepts of Time Among the Tiv of Nigeria. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 9:251-262. BOLTON, LYNDON 1924 Time Measurement. Princeton, N.J.: Van Nostrand. CIPOLLA, CARLO M. 1967 Clocks and Culture: 13001700. London: Collins.
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CUMONT, FRANZ 1912 Astrology and Religion Among the Greeks and Romans. New York: Putnam. -> A paperback edition was published in 1960 by Dover. DE GRAZIA, SEBASTIAN 1962 Of Time, Work and Leisure. New York: Twentieth Century Fund. DURKHEIM, EMILE (1912) 1954 The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. London: Allen & Unwin; New York: Macmillan. -»• First published as Les formes elementaires de la vie religieuse, le systems totemique en Australie. A paperback edition was published in 1961 by Collier. EVANS-PRITCHARD, E. E. (1940) 1963 The Nuer: A Description of the Modes of Livelihood and Political Institutions of a Nilotic People. Oxford: Clarendon. FORTES, MEYER 1936 Ritual Festivals and Social Cohesion in the Hinterland of the Gold Coast. American Anthropologist New Series 38:590-604. FORTES, MEYER (1949)1963 Time and Social Structure: An Ashanti Case Study. Pages 54-84 in Meyer Fortes (editor), Social Structure: Studies Presented to A. R. Radcliffe-Brown. New York: Russell. FORTES, MEYER 1958 Introduction. Pages 1-14 in Jack Goody (editor), The Developmental Cycle in Domestic Groups. Cambridge Papers in Social Anthropology, No. 1. Cambridge Univ. Press. GENNEP, ARNOLD VAN (1909) 1960 The Rites of Passage. London: Routledge; Univ. of Chicago Press. -> First published in French. GLUCKMAN, MAX 1954 Rituals of Rebellion in South-east Africa. Manchester Univ. Press. GLUCKMAN, MAX 1963 Order and Rebellion in Tribal Africa. New York: Free Press. GOODY, JACK 1962 Death, Property and the Ancestors: A Study of the Mortuary Customs of the LoDagaa of West Africa. Stanford Univ. Press. GOODY, JACK; and WATT, IAN 1963 The Consequences of Literacy. Comparative Studies in Society and History 5:304-345. GRANET, MARCEL (1934) 1950 La pensee chinoise. Paris: Michel. HALBWACHS, MAURICE 1925 Les cadres sociaux de la memoire. Paris: Alcan. HALLOWELL, A. IRVING 1937 Temporal Orientation in Western Civilization and in a Preliterate Society. American Anthropologist New Series 39:647-670. HERTZ, R. 1907 Contribution a une etude sur la representation collective de la mort. Annee sociologique 10:48-137. MAUSS, MARCEL (1906) 1960 Essai sur les variations saisonnieres des societes eskimos: Etude de morphologie sociale. Pages 389-477 in Marcel Mauss, Sociologie et anthropologie. 2d ed. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. -» Written in collaboration with H. Beuchat; first published in Volume 9 of Annee sociologique. MEYERHOFF, HANS 1955 Time in Literature. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press. MILHAM, WILLIS L. (1923) 1945 Time and Timekeepers. New York: Macmillan. MOORE, WILBERT E. 1963 Man, Time and Society. New York: Wiley. MORGAN GUARANTY TRUST COMPANY OF NEW YORK 1965 Bank and Public Holidays Throughout the World. New York: The Company. MUMFORD, LEWIS (1934) 1964 Technics and Civilization. New York: Harcourt.
NEEDHAM, JOSEPH 1965 Time and Eastern Man. Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Occasional Paper No. 21. London: The Institute. NEEDHAM, JOSEPH; LING, WANG; and PRICE, DEREK J. DE SOLLA 1960 Heavenly Clockwork: The Great Astronomical Clocks of Medieval China. Cambridge Univ. Press. NILSSON, MARTIN P. 1920 Primitive Time-reckoning. Oxford Univ. Press. PIAGET, JEAN 1946 Le developpement de la notion de temps chez I'enfant. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. THOMAS, NORTHCOTE W. 1924 The Week in West Africa. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 54:183-209. THRUPP, SYLVIA L. (editor) 1962 Millennial Dreams in Action: Essays in Comparative Study. Comparative Studies in Society and History, Supplement No. 2. The Hague: Mouton. TOULMIN, STEPHEN; and GOODFIELD, JUNE 1965 The Discovery of Time. New York: Harper. TRIMINGHAM, JOHN S. 1959 Islam in West Africa. Oxford: Clarendon. USHER, A. P. (1929) 1954 A History of Mechanical Inventions. Rev. ed. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. -» A paperback edition was published in 1959 by Beacon. WHITE, LYNN 1962 Medieval Technology and Social Change. Oxford: Clarendon. WORSLEY, PETER 1957 The Trumpet Shall Sound: A Study of "Cargo" Cults in Melanesia. London: MacGibbon & Kee.
TIME BUDGETS A time budget is a log or diary of the sequence and duration of activities engaged in by an individual over a specified period, most typically the 24hour day. Time-budget research involves the collection of numerous such protocols from members of a population to analyze main trends and subgroup differences in the allocation of time. While many social inquiries are concerned with the amount of time spent on a particular kind of activity (the journey to work or time given to television watching), the term "time budget" is generally reserved for an exhaustive accounting of a slice of time in individual experience, whatever the component activities happen to be. Such time budgets naturally yield information on the time consumed by any of the wide range of activities in which man engages. Yet at the same stroke, this information is given a context, since the protocols pose the question of, for example, what else it is that people who spend little time on television do with the time thereby saved or of where the time comes from for those who devote enormous quantities to it. One of the special assets of time-budget research is the immutable fact that no human
TIME BUDGETS being, however rich, poor, wise, or foolish, can dispose of more time than any other within the same period. Hence, variations in time allocations from person to person must depend on "trading off" time from some activities toward others. Indeed, the phrase "time budget" has arisen because time, like money, is a resource that is continually being allocated by the individual, although with varying degrees of consciousness and shortterm discretion. Like money, time is thought of as being spent, saved, invested, or wasted. It is presumed that analysis of the structure of time allocation gives behavioral evidence of a peculiarly "hard" kind concerning individual preferences and values, especially in the more optional forms of time use. The time budget as a research tool has been employed in such areas as the study of life styles, the sociology of leisure, and research on aging and other aspects of the life cycle. Collection of systematic time-budget data is a relatively recent activity. Such data also provide material for curiosity concerning long-term secular trends in the "quality of life," such as the division of time between work and play (de Grazia 1962) and the role of systemlevel work inputs in economic development. The history of time-budget research The systematic collection of family financial budgets represents one of the earliest forms of empirical research at a microsociological level, with examples dating back to seventeenth-century Europe and coming to flower in the celebrated work of Frederic Le Play in the nineteenth century. The extension of the paradigm to time expenditure arrived somewhat more slowly, however. Friedrich Engels' The Situation of the Working Class in England, first published in 1845, contains a wide variety of information on the daily round of industrial workers, with some quantitative estimates of time expenditures. Perhaps the first careful and exhaustive time budgets covering at least the period of work were represented in the time-andmotion studies of Frederick Taylor in his attempt, around the turn of the century, to institute "scientific management." The first large-scale study of exhaustive 24-hour time budgets was carried out in 1924 on Moscow workers by Stanislav G. Strumilin, as part of the postrevolutionary drive toward more rational economic planning [see LEISURE]. In the West, most comparable work during the same period was focused on leisure, ignoring the portions of the day that were defined in some sense as nonleisure.
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However, near the end of the 1920s the Bureau of Home Economics of the U.S. Department of Agriculture conducted five studies of time use among farm women that involved full time budgets in the now customary sense of the phrase. By the 1930s more studies were beginning to appear. Lundberg and his associates (1934) based their intensive examination of suburban life in Westchester County in part on nearly 5,000 time budgets drawn from about 2,500 respondents. Sorokin and Berger's Time-budgets of Human Behavior (1939) attempted to use such materials to investigate the structure of human motives and in so doing provided one of the more germinal surveys of the possibilities of the time budget as a research tool. Along with the rapid expansion of survey research after World War n, the generation of timebudget data has shown an enormous increase, although this trend is less prominent in the United States than in most other industrialized nations. Part of the impetus for this research has come from commercial and governmental enterprises concerned with the timing of activities in their mass populations. Perhaps the largest single timebudget survey, involving a sample of 170,000 persons, was carried out in Japan in 1960-1961 to aid in the scheduling of radio and television programming (Nakanishi 1963). One of the few nationwide time-budget surveys in the United States was conducted in 1954 for similar reasons by the Mutual Broadcasting Company, and comparable, although smaller, surveys for the mass media have been done in most countries of western Europe. Another impetus to such work has come from the economic-planning needs of governments. After a period in which social research of all kinds was neglected, the tradition of time-budget surveys established by Strumilin in the Soviet Union was resumed on a massive scale in the late 1950s. In addition to thorough methodological work, the monitoring of time budgets has become sufficiently institutionalized in the Soviet Union for national scientific conferences to have been held for the purpose of establishing uniform codes and standards, and several hundred thousand man-days' worth of time-budget material has been accumulated (Szalai 1966). In a similar vein, time-budget data were gathered in Hungary in 1963 by the Central Statistical Office, as part of the official microcensus. Quite generally speaking, timebudget work represents one of the most vigorous traditions of social research in eastern Europe. Western social scientists have used the technique
44
TIME BUDGETS
much more sparingly, although often with an eye toward broadening its utility. The most ambitious effort at a rigorously comparative cross-national time-budget study was launched in 1964 under the sponsorship of UNESCO and the International Social Science Council. Directed by Alexander Szalai, research institutes in Bulgaria, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, France, East and West Germany, Hungary, Peru, Poland, the Soviet Union, the United States, and Yugoslavia had by 1966 successfully collected timebudget information on probability samples of urban populations in their respective countries, following standardized methods of interviewing and coding. Extensions of the study design to Greece, Cuba, and Canada were also projected (United Nations . . . 1966). Time-budget methodology The first decision to be faced by the student of time use has to do with choice of time scale for his budget collection. Some time budgets are organized to cover time spent at the workplace; others span only "leisure hours." At the opposite extreme, it is possible to imagine time budgets covering an individual's life cycle, yielding information of totally different significance, although nothing but the most sketchy efforts of this kind exist at present [see LIFE CYCLE]. There are grounds for arguing that estimates of productive work time should be based on time budgets covering annual cycles, thereby including vacations and a reasonable sampling of illnesses. In point of fact, however, the vast majority of time-budget research is geared to the 24 hours of a single day in the life of a respondent. By the gathering of enough time diaries, dispersed over weekdays and weekends as well as across the seasons of a year, from various individuals of differing ages, a synthetic picture of weekly, annual, and life-cycle variations can be organized from single-day protocols. In those rare instances where individuals have kept diaries for much longer than a single day or two, results have been reassuring. For example, Lundberg and his associates (1934, appendix) reported, among other things, that time diaries showed high stability in activity allocations for respondents maintaining them for longer periods. At first glance, the collection of 24-hour time budgets would seem to be a relatively simple and straightforward task. Indeed, the time continuum itself offers a quantitative variable of a purity and precision rarely found in social research, and one readily understood by almost any respondent in
industrialized societies. Yet closer familiarity makes clear that the gathering of even day-length time-budget information poses an oppressive array of complexities. The method shares all of the common problems of reliable population sampling and data elicitation and adds many unique burdens as well. Though time may be a "clean" and "hard" variable, activity units are not. How finely should we slice in establishing an array of activities? Chronicles of "a day's activities" might be so grossly characterized as to show but six or seven activities; or again, they might reflect such a fine grain of movement and action as to number two hundred or more for the same day. Some activities, such as sleeping, are rather clearly demarcated. Others are punctuated by major spatial displacements ("drove to the drugstore"). For many activities, however, lines of demarcation blur, and the common guideposts become deceptive. Is "work at the office" simply to be left as an undifferentiated block of time, or is it to be thinly subdivided? "Shopping" often involves a sequence of spatial displacements. Is it one activity by itself or one for each shop visited, each purchase made, or what? And more pressing still, how is the researcher to handle simultaneous activities, such as cooking dinner while listening to the radio and keeping an eye on the children? Increasingly, investigators have tried to depend on the respondent himself to define what an activity is by the way he chooses to record the events of his day. Thus, one method of data collection— asking the subject to check activities from a predesignated list of possibilities—tends to be avoided as imposing too much outside structure on spontaneous perceptions. Nevertheless, when "raw," or volunteered, descriptions are accepted, some of the burden returns to the investigator in the form of decisions as to how the concrete acts are to be coded into more general classes. And whether the respondent is asked to "precede" or the coding is accomplished later, there is an intrusion on reality which can affect results in vital ways. There are undoubtedly real differences in activity levels between persons, from the bedridden invalid to the harassed professional, so that the sheer number of activities per day should in fact vary. But some of the recorded interpersonal variation can be due to different perceptions of the task instructions, and the whole texture of findings can be displaced by nearly arbitrary decisions on the part of the investigator in providing task instructions or in fixing the frequency with which activities should be recorded (for instance, should it be
TIME BUDGETS every five minutes, every hour, or four times a day?). In general, the more activities are recorded or coded in gross fashion, the more alike people of different social statuses appear to be. In order to keep the time chronicle totaling a tidy 24 hours, researchers have often decided to discard the "less important" of any activities carried on simultaneously, although any such decisions lead immediately to new problems concerning the definition of importance. More recently, however, secondary and tertiary activities are being maintained as separate parts of the record, and intriguing work on the incidence and structure of such simultaneous activities is under way (Guilbert et al. 1965). Similarly, while some analytic grouping (that is, coding) of activities is always required, the trend is toward increasingly detailed activity codes that hew more closely to concrete reality, at least in the first stage of analysis. Subsequently, such codes permit greater flexibility in regrouping elements for differing analytic purposes. The standardized code for time-budget research in the Soviet Union involves 99 categories; the UNESCO multination project proceeds at the same level of detail. Broadly speaking, there are three main methods of eliciting 24-hour time budgets from respondents. In the diary method, the respondent simply writes down his own log of activities and their durations, more or less synchronously, on the basis of instructions and forms provided. Drawbacks of such a straightforward approach include the fact that subjects show considerable variation in the diligence and care with which such diaries are maintained, and the protocols are thus very uneven in quality. Moreover, functionally illiterate persons can be frightened by such a task, and a distressingly large proportion of them refuse to cooperate. A second method, the "yesterday interview," requires the subject to reconstruct his previous day's sequence of activities orally, under probing from an interviewer, and to estimate times spent on each until the full period of 24 hours has been accounted for. The limitations of this approach are obvious: people forget. Experimental evidence as to differences between perceived time and physical time abound, and many details are completely lost to memory at only a day's remove. A third method involves observation and recording of the individual's activities by a second party. However, such an approach tends to have low feasibility for both cost and privacy reasons, and it has become apparent that the outside observer has much more difficulty deducing meaningful "activity units" than does the actor himself.
45
While most research in the past has depended on the unsupported diary method, the current trend is toward overcoming the liabilities of each method by a combined approach. Thus, for example, a subject may be asked to maintain a diary for 24 hours in the standard manner, but the log itself may be used as merely a refresher or initial skeleton for more detailed discussion in a "yesterday interview." Even a sketchy diary will put stringent limits on the respondent's imagination as far as time durations are concerned, yet the interviewing can serve to bring the account of activities on the part of a poorly educated subject to a level of detail that a well-educated subject may be able to capture by himself. Whenever a diary or an outside observer is involved, a burden is placed on the respondent which considerably exceeds that of a standard samplesurvey interview. Therefore, refusal rates mount from the normal insignificant levels to heights that daunt the most experienced researcher. An embarrassing proportion of the time-budget literature from the past has been generated from captive audiences like schoolchildren, or suffers refusal rates so high as to call the data into question at the outset, or has paid no attention whatever to representative sampling. One of the time-budget studies which is most challenging at a conceptual level (Sorokin & Berger 1939) is based on about 5 per cent returns of diary forms distributed to workers on relief and white-collar unemployed in the Boston area during the depression of the 1930s. More generally, it is obvious that potential respondents who refuse to participate because they are "too busy" strike to the very heart of the purposes of the study. Although it has been shown possible in recent years to approach a probability sample of a cross-section population with the 24-hour timebudget task and keep refusals within tolerable limits (20 per cent, for example), such success depends on elaborately planned approaches and inducements. The variety of complexities in time-budget methodology acts in turn to reduce the cumulative value of such data collections. In principle, some of the most exciting questions that such research can help to answer have to do with long-term, secular trends in time use. Yet while studies have been done in many national contexts for several decades, the comparability across most of these investigations is limited or, worse still, unknown. Activity codes are incompatible from study to study; precise interviewing and coding instructions that affect the data are lost; samples are haphazard and unrepresentative. The best that can be
46
TIME BUDGETS
said is that there has been rapid methodological improvement, although good time-budget work remains complicated and expensive. Uses and limitations of time-budget data Assuming that they are reliably executed, time budgets by themselves provide extensive but not intensive information: the data are broad but shallow. Their breadth is reflected in the astonishing variety of researchers who can find in them titillating bits of information relevant to their specialties, or useful, if simple, parameter estimates. At the same time, most specialists are dismayed that the relevant information goes no further than it does. Hence, much of recent timebudget work has been moving toward a more multidimensional treatment of the activity itself; it may even involve use of the time budget as a backdrop, or frame of reference, for more intensive inquiry into some theoretically interesting subset of the day's activities. Before going further, however, it should be noted that the simple time budget can itself be manipulated in a striking number of ways, each of which has value in one or another specific context. Many studies begin and end with examination of the summary duration of time allotted to the various activities in the code, expressed as an average across respondents. However, it is often useful to modify this information with indications of the prevalence of an activity. Thus, for example, the average duration of working time outside the home is greater in the Soviet Union than in the United States. However, most of the increment is due to a much higher proportion of working women, rather than to long work hours for individuals. Thus both the collective fact and the individual fact are of social significance. For other inquiries, the timing of activities across the 24 hours of the day is of prime importance. This is true of programmers for the mass media, who need to know when in the day various portions of the populations will be at home and ready to turn on their television or radio sets. Similarly, regional planners and traffic experts collect and use data on the time of day that commuting and other travel take place as well as data on the duration of the journey to work. Studies of shift work by time budgets show the great differences in offwork activity that occur when a person's work schedule is out of phase with the modal rhythm in the society. Or again, time budgets can be analyzed from the point of view of patterns in the sequence of activities, quite apart from their duration or timing. Finally, people with similar patterns of
activity duration may also differ markedly in the frequency with which the same activities are repeated in a day's time: some organize their days into relatively large blocks, while others pick up activities and drop them often, either by design or through interruptions from the environment. Despite the numerous ways in which unadorned time-budget data can be viewed, there is an increasing tendency toward expansion of the information about the activities themselves. It is becoming commonplace, for example, to collect information on where and with whom each activity took place. The locus of activities and their sequence are again of interest in regional planning and have led to conceptualization of the "household activity system" as a part of urban ecology (Chapin & Hightower 1966). Time-budget data designating the "partners" for various activities can be used to test hypotheses concerning variations in interpersonal contacts (Reiss 1959). Nelson Foote and Rolf Meyersohn have experimented with the collection of further information concerning the affect felt toward each activity reported, the desire for more or less time for it, whether it is seen as work or play, routine or unusual, and whether the activity was initiated by the subject or by others acting toward him. Similarly, they have collected time budgets reflecting more of the nexus of social behavior, by pairing diaries for husbands and wives covering the same day (Foote 1961, p. 171). Somewhat similar analyses attempt to draw in all of the significant social microcosm of the individual—family, neighborhood, and co-workers (Chombart de Lauwe 1956). While such expansions are helping to enrich time-budget studies, the fact remains that a wide gulf still exists between the manifest activity as it is recorded and the latent functions of the activity for the individual which give it ultimate meaning or significance. The act of repairing an appliance in one's home may reflect a desire to convert free time into money saved to piece out one's income, or an inability to secure sufficiently rapid service from outside, or a hobby of tinkering, or some combination of the three. More theoretically satisfying ways of grouping detailed activities into broader classes are often avoided because of just such difficulties. Where ingenious activity groupings are made, there lurks the inevitable suspicion that were the truth known, the same activities might fall in quite different classes for various subjects and that the substantive results may be artifacts of such "forcings" of the data. It is for reasons of this sort that time budgets seem to have been found less useful for investiga-
TIME SERIES: General tions of life style than might be expected on the surface. Activity designations tend to be more incisive about the forms of activities than about their contents. The fact of watching television or having a conversation with a neighbor is recorded, but the types of programs watched or the subjects of informal discourse are rarely catalogued. And variations in what is called "life style" seem thoroughly muted in the process, although some differences do linger on in the forms themselves. Thus, at one level time-budget data convey an unusual range of implications for practical policy planning and also hold at least some interest for social theory. At the same time they are costly to collect in reliable ways, and without considerable expansion of the texture of information gathered, they often seem disappointingly primitive. PHILIP E. CONVERSE [See also INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS, articles on INDUSTRIAL AND BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY and THE SOCIOLOGY OF WORK; LEISURE; PLANNING, SOCIAL, article on
47
lihood Time of the Japanese. Tokyo: NHK Radio & TV Culture Research Institute. REISS, ALBERT J. JR. 1959 Rural-Urban and Status Differences in Interpersonal Contacts. American Journal of Sociology 65:182-195. SOROKIN, PITIRIM A.; and BERGER, CLARENCE Q. 1939 Time-budgets of Human Behavior. Harvard Sociological Studies, Vol. 2. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. SZALAI, ALEXANDER 1966 Trends in Comparative Timebudget Research. American Behavioral Scientist 9, no. 9:3-8. UNITED NATIONS EDUCATIONAL, SCIENTIFIC AND CULTURAL ORGANIZATION 1966 The Multinational Comparative Time Budget Research Project. Report for the Sixth World Congress of Sociology, Evian, France. Vienna: European Coordination Center for Research and Documentation in Social Sciences.
TIME SERIES i. GENERAL n. ADVANCED PROBLEMS in. CYCLES iv. SEASONAL ADJUSTMENT
Gerhard Tintner P. Whittle Herman Wold Julius Shiskin
REGIONAL AND URBAN PLANNING; TlME, article OU
SOCIAL ORGANIZATION; and the biography of LUNDBERG.] BIBLIOGRAPHY 1961 Work and Leisure. New York:
ANDERSON, NELS Free Press. CHAPIN, F. STUART JR.; and HIGHTOWER, HENRY C. 1966 Household Activity Systems: A Pilot Investigation. Urban Studies Research Monograph. Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina, Institute for Research in Social Science, Center for Urban and Regional Studies. CHOMBART DE LAUWE, PAUL H. 1956 La vie quotidienne des families ouvrieres: Recherches sur les comportements sociaux de consommation. Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. DE GRAZIA, SEBASTIAN 1962 Of Time, Work and Leisure. New York: Twentieth Century Fund. FOOTE, NELSON N. 1961 Methods for Study of Meaning in Use of Time. Pages 155-176 in Robert W. Kleemeier (editor), Aging and Leisure: A Research Perspective Into the Meaningful Use of Time. New York: Oxford Univ. Press. GUILBERT, MADELINE; LOWIT, NICOLE; and CREUSEN, JOSEPH 1965 Problemes de methode pour une enquete de budgets-temps: Les cumuls d'occupations. Revue francaise de sociologie 6:325-335. KLEEMEIER, ROBERT W. (editor) 1961 Aging and Leisure: A Research Perspective Into the Meaningful Use of Time. New York: Oxford Univ. Press. LARRABEE, ERIC; and MEYERSOHN, ROLF (editors) (1958) 1960 Mass Leisure. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. LUNDBERG, GEORGE A. et al. 1934 Leisure: A Suburban Study. New York: Columbia Univ. Press. MEIER, RICHARD L. 1959 Human Time-allocation: A Basis for Social Accounts. Journal of the American Institute of Planners 25:27-33. NAKANISHI, NAOMICHI 1963 A Report on the How-DoPeople-Spend-Their-Time Survey: An Analysis of Live-
GENERAL
A time series is a set of data ordered in time, typically with observations made at regular intervals, for example, each census year, annually, quarterly, or monthly. This article focuses on the analysis of time series of economic data. The analytical methods used are also applied in other fields, for example, in psychological encephalography, in the analysis of sociological series from panel studies, and in the analysis of voting series in political science. Although data from sampling surveys have been used increasingly in recent years, most of the observations utilized in econometric studies still come from economic time series. This is especially true of econometric studies dealing with problems that are important from the point of view of economic policy, such as the nature of business cycles and the determinants of economic development. An area of growing theoretical and empirical interest is the pooling of time series and cross-section data [see CROSS-SECTION ANALYSIS]. Time series have provided an indispensable source of information for econometric analyses, but peculiar features of such data warrant special caution in their use. The difficulties that beset the use of time series in econometric studies have four different causes. The first is the simultaneity of economic relations. Observed values of economic variables are usually generated by a system of economic relations. It is now well known that it may be impos-
48
TIME SERIES: General
sible to estimate some of these relations; that is, some relations may be underidentified. Classical least squares estimation of a single relation, ignoring the others, is in general inconsistent. Since the pioneering efforts of Trygve Haavelmo, a substantial portion of the work of econometricians has been devoted to the development of consistent estimation methods for simultaneous economic relations [see SIMULTANEOUS EQUATION ESTIMATION]. The second cause of difficulty is errors in variables or errors in observations. Reported values of some economic variables are often subject to error resulting from techniques of collection or are only approximations to unobservable variables specified in the theoretical relation to be estimated. Methods have been advanced to deal with errors in variables in particular situations (see Johnston 1963, pp. 148-176), but there remains much to be done in this important area. Multicollinearity is the third cause of difficulty. Many economic time series are highly correlated with one another (are multicollinear), owing to common factors that influence all economic activity. Prior to estimating a particular economic relation, we are often led to specify a regression model containing a number of explanatory variables, and we are interested in isolating the independent influence of each of these variables on the variable to be explained. If the explanatory variables are multicollinear, it will be impossible, using the usual least squares regression procedure, to determine with any confidence the influence of each of them. Thus, multicollinearity of economic time series often impedes empirical testing of alternative hypotheses. The fourth cause of difficulty is autocorrelation. It is evident from our general knowledge of the economic system that the consecutive items of an economic time series will seldom be independent. The simplest case of this lack of independence is termed autocorrelation; it creates great problems in econometric studies, since the modern theory of statistical estimation and inference, as developed by R. A. Fisher, J. Neyman, A. Wald, and their disciples, is frequently designed for analysis of data that constitute random samples, i.e., where the assumption that items in the sample are statistically independent is justified or where the dependence has a simple character. Economic data, like the data of astronomy and meteorology, do not come from carefully designed experiments but are the result of complex and evolving empirical relationships. Autocorrelation typically increases with the decrease of the time interval of observations. Hence, if we could obtain daily instead of yearly observations (which is frequently impossible with
economic data), we would perhaps not increase the available number of degrees of freedom very substantially. Much effort has been expended in the development of methods for dealing with autocorrelation (more generally, lack of independence), but because of the great mathematical difficulties involved and the lack of simple, realistic theoretical models, the results have been less than spectacular. In practice, all four problems occur simultaneously. However, since it is so difficult to deal with all of them at once, much work focuses on only one problem and assumes that the others do not exist. Since this approach may be unrealistic when working with actual data, interpretations of empirical analyses are often most difficult, thus diminishing the value of such analyses for practical applications to economic policy. The traditional analysis of time series has dealt primarily with isolating the trend, the irregularcycle, the fairly regular periodic seasonal, and the random components of the series (Kuznets 1934). It is assumed that each component is independent of the others and can be analyzed separately, that each component is generated by a particular underlying process or model, and that the series is simply the sum of the components. This procedure is now considered somewhat obsolete, although it still provides a useful point of departure. It would be preferable to avoid these perhaps unrealistic assumptions, instead employing a procedure based upon the premise that a series is generated by a single model capable of producing trends and fluctuations and incorporating random elements. The mathematical model of a time series is a stochastic process (Bartlett 1955). A family of jointly distributed random variables linearly arranged according to a numerical index (often corresponding to time) is called a stochastic process. As it stands, this characterization is so inclusive as to be of little value; useful results can be obtained only by starting with restrictive assumptions on the random variables of the family. The theory of stochastic processes has been studied by many excellent mathematicians, and great progress has been made in recent years. Unfortunately, the study of statistical methods for observable stochastic processes is not nearly so well developed as studies of a more purely probabilistic nature. In part this stems from mathematical difficulties, but another factor is also important. Many of the outstanding and important applications of stochastic processes arise in physics, chemistry, and communications theory, where the samples involved are so large that purely statistical problems, involving statistical inference from the sample to the population, are perhaps not very important.
TIME SERIES: General Even where statistical results exist, as in the statistical treatment of stationary time series (Grenander & Rosenblatt 1957), i.e., time series that lack a trend and whose variances and higher moments are independent of time, the results are usually valid only for large samples. (Of course, the same is true for other branches of statistics as well.) Although development of a small-sample theory of stochastic processes faces formidable mathematical difficulties, it is just such a theory that is needed for the analysis of the relatively short economic time series commonly available. The mathematical problems can be made more tractable if we make highly unrealistic assumptions, for example, the so-called circular assumption—that samples are taken from the repetitive population Xj, X 2 , • • • , X^, X ± , X 2 , • • • . But lacking a small-sample theory, we are often forced to use large-sample methods as crude approximations to valid methods. It should also be remarked that many results in this field are still confined to tests of hypotheses; very few deal with the perhaps more important problems of estimation. Trend The trend is one of the most intractable features of economic time series. By "trend" we mean the long-term secular movement of a series, that is, the mathematical expectation of Xt, EXt, a function of time. It is, of course, difficult to distinguish the trend from cycles of long duration. Parametric tests for trend. One general procedure for estimating and testing for trend in a time series involves assuming a specific form for the trend function, estimating the function, and testing the significance of the estimated relation. Among the most commonly used functional forms are the polynomial and the logistic. Orthogonal polynomials. Suppose we have a set of observations, X ± , X 2 , • • • , Xt, • • •, XN, on the variable X for the equidistant points in time 1,2, • • • , N. We might assume that this series was generated by the polynomial function ut,
t=l,2, • • • , N,
where the a's are parameters to be estimated and Ut is a random error term that is normally distributed with constant variance. Also, the u's are independent. Rather than fit this ordinary polynomial, it is simpler to estimate the orthogonal polynomial i=l
t + ut,
where £it is an zth-degree polynomial in t such that ZXf < t = 0 for all i and Z?=1 £ « £ , « = 0 for all i
49
and j, i ^ j. Making use of orthogonal polynomials, we can easily estimate a polynomial of degree p, having once estimated a polynomial of degree p — 1. Application of the method of least squares yields
bt =
£
One method for determining the degree of the polynomial that best fits the data has been developed by R. A. Fisher (1925). Let Sp denote the sum of the squared residuals from an estimated polynomial of degree p. We fit polynomials of degree 1,2, • • • , until Sp+l — Sp is not statistically significant. This may be determined by an F-test, assuming the w's are normally distributed and independent. A recent method put forward by T. W. Anderson (1962) may turn out to have major advantages over Fisher's. However, application of Anderson's method requires that we decide a priori the highest degree of the polynomial that might possibly be used. The tests proposed by Anderson then enable us to decide whether we might adequately fit a polynomial of lower order. Although polynomial trends fitted by the method of orthogonal polynomials are often accurate representations of the past history of many time series, it is very dangerous to employ them for extrapolating these series, since polynomials tend to infinity with advancing time. The logistic function. The study of economic development focuses particular attention on long economic time series that can be used to characterize the nature of economic development. While the true form of long-term secular change is uncertain, the logistic function (Davis 1941, p. 247) recommends itself by its success, albeit limited, in animal and human population studies. Also, the logistic function, unlike the polynomial, has an upper asymptote—a desirable property. If we suppose once again that we have a time series Xt, t = 1, • • • , N, the stochastic form of the logistic function that we assume generated these observations can be written as
k 1 + be at
ut,
where k, a, and b are parameters to be estimated and ut is a random error term. Estimation of the parameters is difficult, since they enter the function in a nonlinear fashion. Hotelling (1927) proposed a method for fitting the logistic that sur-
50
TIME SERIES: General
mounts this difficulty. Working with the logistic in its nonstochastic form, he utilizes the time derivative of \ogKXt and forms the differential equation d(log e X,) dt
dXt dt
1
We can now obtain least squares or maximum likelihood estimators of a and a/k, and from these an estimator of k; b can then be estimated, using a method suggested by Rhodes (1940). Retelling's method has the disadvantage of requiring a discrete approximation to the derivative dXt/dt, since economic data are typically available only for discrete time intervals. Hence, it seems preferable to utilize an estimation procedure that relies on a difference equation rather than on a differential equation. Such a procedure has been developed by Tintner (1960, p. 273). Utilizing the transformation zt = l/Xt, a difference equation for zt can be derived from the logistic, namely, 1 -e-
+ e-azt
Application of least squares estimation methods, which are also maximum likelihood methods if the errors are normally distributed, will yield estimators of ( 1 — e~a}/k and e~a, from which estimators of a and k can be obtained; b may again be estimated by Rhodes's formula. Moving averages. In fitting polynomials or logistics to an economic time series in order to isolate trend, it is assumed that a simple function will accurately capture the trend throughout the series. An alternative method, which does not involve such a strong assumption, is the method of moving averages. Moving averages can most effectively be applied to time series containing seasonal or cyclical components of relatively constant period. Given a time series X t , t=l,---,N, the trend value of the series at t — m + 1 is found by taking an average of the first 2m + 1 elements of the series, where m is chosen so that 2m + 1 corresponds to the period of the seasonal or cyclical component. (The fact that the period of business cycles is irregular creates difficulties in the application of this method.) Similarly, the trend value at t — m + 2 is found by averaging the observations X,, • • • , X.2m+.,. In general, the trend value at t is an average of X,_ m , • • • , Xt+m. An immediately evident shortcoming of this procedure is that no trend values are obtained for the first and last m time periods covered by the original series unless special methods are adopted. The weights attached to the elements to be averaged in each set of 2m + 1 consecutive observa-
tions may be chosen in a variety of ways. Weighting each element by the constant l/(2m + 1 ) (taking a simple mean of the elements) is equivalent to fitting a linear relation to each set; more complex weighting schemes can be used, so that the procedure is equivalent to fitting a polynomial of any given degree to each set. The degree of the polynomial to be fitted may be found by the variate difference method proposed by Tintner (1940, p. 100). The method of moving averages is thus seen to be similar to the fitting of polynomial functions to time series, but rather than fitting one polynomial to the entire series, a polynomial is fitted to subsets of 2m + 1 consecutive observations. Caution must be exercised in the use of moving averages, since the application of such averages will introduce autocorrelation into even a pure random series and modify any existing autocorrelation. (Of course, the fitting of linear or polynomial trends may have similar effects.) Also, the use of moving averages will diminish the amplitude of existing periodic movements (Tintner 1952, pp. 203-207; see also Slutsky 1927). For example, if we use moving averages to eliminate the seasonal component, this will diminish the amplitude of other cyclical fluctuations in the series. Nonparametric tests for trend. The methods for estimating the trend component of a time series discussed thus far all rely on our having some a priori knowledge of the form of the trend function. As is frequently the case in economics, we may feel very uncertain about the form of the function and would like a statistical test for trend that does not depend on such knowledge, i.e., a nonparametric test. Such a test has been devised by Mann (1945) on the basis of earlier work by Kendall (1938). Given the series X,, t = 1, • • • , N, we assign ranks pl, • • • , pN to each of the observations. For example, if X, is the fourth largest item in the series, then pl ~ 4. We then compute a coefficient of disarray, T
2S N(N-l)'
where S, called the total score, is defined as S = 2 P - i N ( N - 1). Here P, the positive score, is the sum ICfr^rii, where n^ is the number of elements X i+1 , • • • , XA* with ranks larger than Pi. The coefficient T may take on values from — 1 to +1, large negative values indicating a downward trend in the series and large positive values an upward trend. If there is no trend, r should be in the neighborhood of zero. The significance of T may be determined by a sig-
TIME SERIES: General nificance test for S, for which tables have been provided by Kendall (1948) for small N. For larger values of N, S can be considered normally distributed, with mean zero and variance equal to N(N — 1)(2N + 5)/18. [Further discussions of nonparametric methods in trend analysis may be found in Foster & Stuart (1954) and Hemelrijk (1958). See also NONPARAMETRIC STATISTICS, article On RANKING METHODS.] Oscillatory and periodic movements The study of oscillatory and periodic movements in economic time series deals with seasonal fluctuations, the business cycle, and related matters. The procedures to be described have been developed to analyze series without trends or series from which trends have been eliminated. The primary concerns are discovering the statistical models that appear to have generated the oscillatory time series frequently observed and estimating the parameters of these models. (Useful methods for such analysis are to be found in Bruckmann & Pfanzagl 1960 and Hannan 1963.) Practically all economic time series display fluctuations of one sort or another. Before we embark on analysis of a particular series, it is desirable to determine whether the observed fluctuations represent anything beyond a purely random process. A nonparametric test for this purpose has been constructed by Walk's and Moore (1941). The test involves determining whether the number of completed runs of length 1, 2, and greater than 2 differs significantly from the expected number of such runs in a series of independent random observations. (A run is defined as the occurrence of consecutive first differences having the same sign.) The statistic comparing the actual with the expected number of such runs is used in an approximate x2 test, for which tables are provided by Wallis and Moore. They have also established a test employing the total number of completed runs as the test statistic, a statistic that is normally distributed in large samples. [See NONPARAMETRIC STATISTICS, article on RUNS.] Periodogram analysis. Periodogram analysis is based on the idea that a strictly periodic time series can be expressed as the sum of a number of harmonic waves, each represented by a sine or cosine term. Suppose the variable Y is a function of time, say, Y, = f ( t ) . If f(t + T) = f ( t ) for all values of t, then Yt can be expressed as a Fourier series, namely, tAJ
Y,
360jt , 360;A B, cos —~r— 1 > E'/ A, sin. —~r—ID
51
where T is referred to as the period of oscillation and Ao , AJ , and B, are constants. It can be shown that where R, is the amplitude (maximum value of Y) corresponding to the harmonic term with period of length T/j (Schuster 1906). In practical work we wish to determine the principal harmonic components of the time series X t , t = I , • • • , N. We assume that Xt is generated by a Fourier series plus a normally distributed nonautocorrelated random error term with zero mean and constant variance. We attempt to find the harmonic components corresponding to particular periods that are significant in explaining Xt . To accomplish this we compute the Fourier coefficients, ,
v
. 360nt f sln N
Bn =
COS
3QOnt N
corresponding to the harmonic component with period of length N/n. We can then compute the squared amplitude,
R 2n — ~
4 2 i DD2 n ^ n-
A
The graph of Rn against N/n for different values of n is called the periodogram of Xt. To determine whether the harmonic component with period N/n is significant, we test the significance of R2n. Three tests are available—Schuster's test, Walker's test, and Fisher's test. A complete discussion of these tests and tables for the test statistics are provided by Davis (1941). Although periodogram analysis has been used in the past, the results of empirical applications hardly justify much hope for its success in the future. The model on which it is based contains two unrealistic assumptions. First, it is assumed that apart from random disturbances, peaks and troughs occur with strict regularity in economic time series. Second, a random disturbance at a given date is assumed to have no effect on the future course of the time series. Spectral analysis. Many of the shortcomings of periodogram analysis can be overcome by employing a more general method known as spectral analysis. Spectral analysis has wider applicability, since it allows for random disturbances in the amplitudes, periods, and phase angles of the harmonic terms in the Fourier series representation of an economic time series. Both the periodogram and the spectrum of a time
52
TIME SERIES: General
series may be thought of as decompositions of the variance of the series at different frequencies (the frequency of a harmonic term is the reciprocal of the length of the period), but the periodogram is based on the assumption of strict periodicity. The periodogram of a series that is not strictly periodic is not a consistent estimator of the spectrum at given frequencies, although it is an unbiased estimator. Since most economic time series are not strictly periodic, statistical estimation of the spectrum is generally preferable to periodogram analysis. Rather than decompose the variance of the series into components at given frequencies ( as in periodogram analysis), we decompose the variance into components in the neighborhood of various frequencies, in order to obtain statistically consistent results. (Various methods have been proposed to estimate the theoretical spectral function, discussions of which may be found in Bartlett 1955; Blackman & Tukey 1958; Grenander & Rosenblatt 1957; Wilks 1962. For additional information on spectral analysis, see Hannan I960; 1963; Jenkins & Priestley 1957; Nerlove 1964; Parzen 1961; Symposium on Time Series Analysis 1963; Takacs I960; Whittle 1963.) Interdependence of observations The interdependence of successive observations, or autocorrelation, is the one outstanding feature that fundamentally distinguishes the methods appropriate for econometric analysis from statistical methods useful in fields where observations are independent. Tests for autocorrelation. Autocorrelation (sometimes called serial correlation) refers to correlation between Xs and Xt in a time series, where s ^ t. Correlation between Xt and Xt+l is often called firstorder autocorrelation. Autocorrelation may arise through different mechanisms and in different circumstances; hence, a variety of statistical tests for autocorrelation have been developed. The simpler procedures test for autocorrelation between Xt and X f _ ; - for a given value of ;". A very general test of this type is the nonparametric test suggested by Wald and Wolfowitz (1943). It is meant to test for correlation between Xt and X m , using the circular test statistic
test may be misleading for time series with strong trends, since R will then be too strongly influenced by the economically meaningless term X A -X T . A widely used parametric test for correlation between Xt and X,+1 involves the so-called von Neumann ratio as the test statistic and assumes joint normality of the observations of the sample. The ratio is defined as the mean square of first differences divided by the variance of the observations. Its distribution was established by von Neumann (1941), and tables for significance tests in small samples are given by Hart (1942). A parametric test, again based on a normal population, to determine whether X, is significantly correlated with Xt-} for any j is also available. The test statistic for j = L is the Lth noncircular autocorrelation coefficient computed from the sample, denoted by rL, that is, the simple correlation coefficient between the series X,, X,, • • • , X.V_L and the series XL+1, X L+2 , • • • , X y . Here rL is noncircular, since we do not identify XA>1 with X l , X v+2 with X 2 , etc. The Lth circular autocorrelation coefficient computed from the sample, r*L, is the simple correlation coefficient between the series Xl, X2, • • • , XN-i, XN a n d X L + 1 ,X L + 2 , - - ^ X ^ X ^ • • • , X L _ l 5 X L . T h e distribution of rL is not known, but the exact smallsample distribution of r*L has been derived by R. L. Anderson (1942) and can be used for an approximate test of the null hypothesis that X* and X,_ L are not correlated in the population. As a justification for approximating the distribution of rL with that of r*L, it can be argued that for large samples the influence of the circular terms becomes negligible. The relationship between the first autocorrelation coefficient and the von Neumann ratio (the von Neumann ratio equals 2N[1 — r*]/[N — 1]) has been investigated by T. W. Anderson (1948). More refined investigation of autocorrelation requires more refined statistical models. It was noted earlier that the general model of an economic time series is a stochastic process. An example of a stochastic process that is particularly useful in analyzing autocorrelation is the stochastic difference equation, or linear autoregressive process. The observed time series Xt,t=l, • • • , N, may have been generated by the pth-order linear autoregressive process: (1)
which for large N is normally distributed, with mean and variance as given by Wald and Wolfowitz. The null hypothesis tested is that the items of the series are independent. Unfortunately, the
Xt = a0
et,
the cii being constants and the et being nonautocorrelated random disturbances with zero mean and constant variance. Here Xt is seen to depend, in a complicated way, on its values for the previous p periods. Estimates of the parameters of (1) pro-
TIME SERIES: General vide information on the form of autocorrelation in the population from which the sample was obtained. Since (1) does define a stochastic process, the joint probability distribution of X t , • • • ,XM for any M can be found. If the joint probability distributions of X t , • • • , XM and Xt+i, • • • , XM+J are identical for all ; and for all choices of M, the process is said to be stationary. The values of the constants, at, i = 0, • • • , p, will determine whether or not (1) defines a stationary stochastic process. Should the process be stationary, maximum likelihood estimation of the parameters of (1) is equivalent to direct application of least squares to the equation. The estimators of the coefficients are consistent and normally distributed for large samples, but they are biased for small samples (Hurwicz 1950). The concept of weak stationarity is often useful when one is dealing primarily with first and second moments. If the variance of Xt exists for all t, the process Xt is said to be weakly stationary when (z) EXt does not depend on t and («) the covariance of Xt and Xs depends only on t - s. It follows from (ii) that for a weakly stationary process the variance of Xt does not depend on t. In practice the order of the stochastic difference equation to be fitted is unknown. However, Quenouille (1947) has provided a large-sample test for the goodness of fit of a linear autoregressive scheme. After the fitting of a pth-order difference equation, the Quenouille test determines whether a difference equation of higher order will better fit the sample. Correlation between autocorrelated series. Testing for correlation between two variables is often desired, but well-known tests for this purpose are generally based on the assumption that neither variable is autocorrelated. Since economic time series typically are autocorrelated, it is very important to have a test for correlation between two autocorrelated series. Orcutt and James (1948) have suggested a test based upon the idea that a set of N observations of two autocorrelated series is, in a certain sense, equivalent to a smaller number, n', of independent observations. Drawing upon earlier work by Bartlett (1935), they compute an approximation, valid in large samples, to the variance, V, of the sample correlation coefficient, r, between two autocorrelated series. If V < £, they show that n' is approximately equal to (V + 1)/V and that r approximately follows the t-distribution with n' — 2 degrees of freedom. The significance of r can then be tested, using this distribution. (For further discussion of and references to tests
53
for correlation between autocorrelated series, see Tintner 1952, pp. 247-250.) Autocorrelated residuals in regression. A special problem that frequently arises in regression studies of economic time series is the possibility of autocorrelation in the error term of a regression model. Once the regression function has been estimated by methods appropriate for a nonautocorrelated error term, it is desirable to test the residuals from the regression to determine whether or not the null hypothesis that there is in fact no autocorrelation in the disturbances can be accepted. The autocorrelation of residuals from fitted regression equations has been considered asymptotically by Moran (1948). Suppose the regression model relating variable X, to variable X2 is Xlt = a0
et ,
where a0 and az are constants and et represents the random disturbances at time t. We obtain estimates d0 and a., of a0 and a,, and we wish to use the residuals,
to test for autocorrelation of the et . We compute the first circular autocorrelation coefficient of the residuals : tf-i RI = E etet+i + $i$y. t=i
The significance of R: may be determined for large samples by a test involving the first two circular autocorrelation coefficients of X2 . In this case using the circular definition of R^ is probably not too damaging, since the residuals may well be homogeneous in time. But the autocorrelation coefficients for X2 are likely to be much influenced by the circular terms. The Durbin-Watson ratio (Durbin & Watson 1950-1951),
where zt is the residual at time t from a least squares regression with any number of independent variables, has been suggested as a test statistic for positive autocorrelation between zt and zt-\ . This ratio is related to the von Neumann ratio. Durbin and Watson have not established exact significance levels for d, but they do provide lower and upper bounds for various sample sizes and numbers of estimated parameters in the regression equation. If d exceeds the upper bound, the hypoth-
54
TIME SERIES: General
esis of positive autocorrelation in the disturbances must be accepted, whereas if d is less than the lower bound, this hypothesis must be rejected. Should d lie between the bounds, the test is inconclusive. An alternative approximate test for d has been suggested by Theil and Nagar (1961). R. L. Anderson and T. W. Anderson (1950) have established a test for autocorrelation of residuals from fitted Fourier series. [For additional information on autocorrelation, see MARKOV CHAINS; see also T. W. Anderson 1948; Cochrane & Orcutt 1949; Durbin I960; Parzen 1961; Quenouille 1947; Sargan 1961.]
series with very pronounced seasonal fluctuations. In addition, it is evident that this transformation is not appropriate for time series generated by stochastic difference-equation processes. The main objects of the variate difference method are to determine the difference series that best eliminates Mt and to estimate the variance of et . To accomplish the former, we compute the variance of the difference series of order k. Denote this variance as V fc . If Mt is nearly eliminated in the difference series of order kn , it can be shown that the following equalities should hold approximately :
Transformation of observations Since methods to deal with the class of stochastic processes that arise in economic time series are frequently not available, we are often forced to try to transform our observations in such a way that classical statistical procedures can legitimately be used. (Analogous transformations were mentioned above in the discussion of the logistic function.) Unfortunately, choosing the correct transformation requires knowledge of the underlying stochastic process. However, it is possible to indicate the transformations that are appropriate for various possible underlying stochastic processes, leaving it to the researcher to decide which type of stochastic process most likely generated his observations. Variate difference method. The variate difference method is a procedure for eliminating the systematic component from a time series composed of a systematic component and a random element. It does this by differencing the observations. The method has not been very popular in recent econometric applications, primarily because of its rather limited applicability, to be noted below. The method utilizes a somewhat primitive fundamental model of an economic time series. The series X t , t = 1, • • • , N, is assumed to be composed of two additive parts, namely, a "smooth" systematic part, Mt, and a random element, et. It is also assumed, perhaps unrealistically, that the mean value of et is zero, its variance is constant, and the et are not autocorrelated. If Mt is a polynomial function of time, then it can be eliminated from Xt by taking differences of the Xt of a sufficiently high order. If Mt is a sufficiently smooth function of time, it might be approximated by a polynomial in a finite interval, and taking differences of the Xt might reduce Mt sufficiently. The transformation of differencing the observations will not eliminate Mt to any marked degree if Mt is not sufficiently smooth. For example, the method is not applicable to certain monthly time
Thus, to determine whether the feth-order difference series eliminates Mt , we require a test for the equality of V7l. and V/m . Several tests have been suggested. O. Anderson (1929) and R. Zaycoff (1937) have given expressions for the standard error of V/£+1 — V7c . Thus, we might use the ratio of this difference to its standard error as the test statistic, a statistic that is normally distributed for large samples. Tintner (1940) indicated a quite inefficient small-sample test based upon systematic selection of items in the difference series in such a way that the items selected are independent. The exact distribution of V7v based upon a circular definition of the population has been established by Tintner (1955), providing an exact test (Rao & Tintner 1962). In practical applications we might use the exact distribution of the difference between the circularly defined variances as an approximation to the distribution of the difference between the noncircular variances, which in large samples will not differ significantly from that between the circular variances. Suppose we find that the fe,,th-order difference series does eliminate Mt ; then we may use as an estimator of the variance of et the variance of this series, namely, V fco . (For an alternative procedure, see Rao & Tintner 1963. For more information on the variate difference method, consult Durbin 1962; Grenander & Rosenblatt 1957; Wilks 1962, p. 526.) Transformations in multiple regression. One of the worst difficulties that plague empirical econometric research is autocorrelation of the residuals in regression studies of economic time series. Although the regression coefficients may be estimated without bias even if the residuals are autocorrelated, the standard errors of the coefficients obtained using classical least squares methods will not be valid. Suppose we estimate by least squares the regression function X l t = k0 + Wat + €t
TIME SERIES: General and find significant autocorrelation in the residuals, where Xu = kn + LX 2( . Then it can be shown that a valid estimator of the standard error of k2 is given by the classical estimator multiplied by the adjustment factor [1 + 2(r 1 R 1 + r,R2 + • • • ) ] * • In this formulation r, is the autocorrelation coefficient of et and et-i and R, is the autocorrelation coefficient of X.^ and X 2 .,-, : . Thus, this procedure requires knowledge of the correlograms of et and X 2f . If we were to assume that both of these variables were generated by a first-order linear autoregressive process (a simple Markov scheme), then we could use as estimators of the correlograms the first autocorrelation coefficients computed from the sample, say, rl and #1 . This would lead to the adjustment factor
55
However, it should be noted that eliminating trends in variables or introducing time as a separate variable in regression studies is really a confession of ignorance that is sometimes unavoidable. The relation that is being estimated must somehow have shifted over time, but rather than seek an explanation for this shifting, we simply eliminate it and estimate a relation that is stable over the period being considered. Autoregressive transformations. Cochrane and Orcutt (1949) have shown that autocorrelation in residuals can be eliminated by a simple transformation of variables if the residuals follow a simple Markov scheme. Assume that we want to fit, by the method of least squares, the relation (2)
,, = k0 + k2X2t + • • • +
+ ut
The ut are not independent but are known to follow the simple Markov scheme u, = Aut-i + vt,
An alternative to adjusting the standard errors in this manner is to transform the observations in such a way that autocorrelation in the residuals is removed, so that classical least squares estimation can legitimately be applied. Elimination of trends. Autocorrelation of residuals is frequently due to trends in the variables included in time series regression studies. Hence, econometricians often transform their observations by taking deviations from trends. This would generally necessitate fitting trend functions to each of the variables, although that can be avoided in some instances. For example, the variate difference method might be used to find a difference series for each variable that sufficiently eliminates the systematic trend components. First differences would be called for if each variable had a linear trend as its systematic component (an exponential trend, if we are working with logarithms of the variables). An important theorem, due to Frisch and Waugh (1933), also establishes a rather simple procedure for handling trends in variables. Suppose that all variables in the regression follow linear trends. Then it can be shown that the regression results obtained after transforming the variables into deviations from trends are the same as those obtained by using the original variables but including time itself as an independent variable in the regression. This theorem has been generalized by Tintner (1952, p. 301 ) to cases in which all variables have trends that are orthogonal polynomials of time or generally orthogonal functions of time, thus extending the applicability of the method.
where A is a constant, |A| < 1, and the vt have mean value zero, have finite and constant variance, and are not autocorrelated. If we make the transformations Yit = Xit — AXi.t-i, then least squares can legitimately be applied to the linear relationship for the transformed variables : (3) Y l f = fe 0 (l - A ) +fe 2 Y 2 ,+ • • • +kpYpt + vt. It should be noted that this transformation reduces to taking first differences of the observations when A is very close to unity, thus establishing a link between the autoregressive transformation and the variate difference method. A difficulty in applying this method is that it requires knowledge of the constant A, which characterizes the stochastic process generating ut . This difficulty can be surmounted in the following manner (Johnston 1963, pp. 192-195) : We first fit (2) by the method of least squares and compute the residuals ut = Xlt — Xlt. We then estimate A by applying least squares to ut =
vt.
Using A, the estimator of A, to transform the observations, we fit (3) by least squares and test the residuals vt = Yit — Ylt for autocorrelation. If the autocorrelation of these residuals is not significant, we have found a reasonably good estimator of A, and our task is completed. If the autocorrelation is significant, we use the residuals vt to obtain a new estimator of A by fitting
56
TIME SERIES: General
and repeat the above steps. We continue this process until the residuals computed from our estimator of (3) are not significantly autocorrelated. Stochastic processes in econometrics The most promising approach to the satisfactory analysis of economic time series is the explicit use of stochastic processes in econometric research. Although some headway has been made along these lines, the results achieved thus far are not very satisfactory. In statistical analysis of time series, we wish to use our observations to estimate the parameters of the underlying stochastic process that generated the time series. But in order to use a small sample to make statistical inferences concerning the values of population parameters, we must know the small-sample distributions of the estimators employed. Unfortunately, considerable mathematical difficulty is encountered in determining the small-sample distributions of parameter estimators of many types of stochastic processes. Stochastic processes have found wide and diverse applications in economic time series analysis. Dynamic economic problems are frequently analyzed with the aid of dynamic models that can be characterized as stochastic processes (see, for example, Adelman & Adelman 1959; de Cani 1961; F. M. Fisher 1962; Granger & Hatanaka 1964; Morgenstern 1961; Tinbergen 1939). Stochastic processes have been employed to analyze the formation of commodity and stock prices (Cootner 1964; Kendall 1953; Quenouille 1957). Much effort has been directed toward finding an explanation of the income distribution in terms of stochastic processes, as it is a distribution that is very skew and fits badly into the traditional analysis of statistical income distributions [see SIZE DISTRIBUTIONS IN ECONOMICS]. Labor mobility problems have been investigated with the aid of Markov processes (Blumen et al. 1955). Prais and Houthakker (1955) employed stochastic processes involving the lognormal distribution in analyzing household budgets. Stochastic processes have also been used quite successfully in operations research, and it is hoped that the same or related methods will be useful in analyses of economic time series (Bharucha-Reid I960; Takacs 1960). Estimation of parameters. To illustrate the application of maximum likelihood estimation to stochastic processes, consider the Poisson process [Fisz (1954) 1963, p. 488; see also QUEUES]. Let N(£) be the number of events occurring during the time period from 0 to t, where N(£) can take on values 0, 1, 2, • • • . We assume that N(£) has inde-
pendent and homogeneous increments, i.e., that N(£ 2 ) — N(£ a ) is independent of, and has the same distribution as, N(£ 2 + fe) — N(£ t + /z) for all choices of £, and £ 2 , £2 > £1, and for all choices of h greater than zero. The probability of the occurrence of more than one event in the time interval (t, t + A£) tends sufficiently fast to zero as A£ -> 0. The transition probability, Pa(tl, £ 2 ), is the probability that N(£,) = i if N(£,) = j and can be written = exp[-L(t 2 -*, where L, the parameter to be estimated, is the average number of events occurring per unit of time. Suppose we have observations on N ( £ ) for £ = £ 1; t, , • • - , £ „ and denote N(£ f c ) = j k , k = 1, • • • , n. The likelihood function is then
Maximizing P with respect to L yields the maximum likelihood estimator, L = ;'„/£„ . Large-sample or asymptotic distributions of maximum likelihood estimators have been established for simple Markov processes (T. W. Anderson 1959). Consider a first-order stochastic difference equation, Xe = aXi_! + ut , where a is a constant to be estimated from the sample Xt , • — ,XS. Assume that the initial value, X0 , is a constant and that ut is a nonautocorrelated normally distributed random variable with zero mean and constant and finite variance. The maximum likelihood estimator of a is
EX? t=l If a I < 1 (in which case Xt is a stationary time series or a time series with no trend), the expression (a — a) V~N is, under wide conditions, asymptotically normally distributed with mean zero. Using this result, approximate confidence interval estimates of a could be made for very large samples. More interesting is the case in which a > I . Then X t is an evolutionary time series — the stochastic equivalent of an economic time series with exponential trend — and the expression a2- 1 has a Cauchy distribution, a distribution whose mean and higher moments do not exist. However,
TIME SERIES: General if in addition to the above assumptions it is assumed that X0 = 0 and ut is normally distributed, then a is a maximum likelihood estimator, and the expression (a-a)
is asymptotically normal and provides a basis for approximate confidence interval estimates for very large samples. Asymptotic distributions such as these could be used as rough approximations to small-sample distributions of this estimator, but it is to be hoped that exact small-sample distributions will be established, so that they would be immediately applicable to the analysis of short economic time series. Multiple stochastic processes. Multiple stochastic processes arise frequently in econometric research. For example, in dynamic business cycle models we often attempt to explain the cyclical behavior of consumption, investment, and income by a system of equations in which the current value of each of these endogenous variables is related to its own lagged values, to lagged values of other endogenous variables, to current and lagged exogenous variables, and to a random term. The interdependence of economic variables leads us to analyze a particular time series in the context of a system of equations that constitutes a multiple stochastic process. [See ECONOMETRIC MODELS, AGGREGATE.] Not enough is known about the estimation of multiple stochastic processes. In econometric work, lagged endogenous variables are frequently handled like given constants, a treatment which is plainly inadequate. Also, small-sample distributions have not yet been sufficiently explored. Quenouille ( 1957, p. 70) has investigated the problems of estimating a multiple Markov scheme. This is a relatively simple multiple stochastic process, composed of a system of first-order stochastic linear difference equations. As an example, we might wish to estimate the constants ai} and bij in the system a n X l f + av,X.,t + b-LiX-i.t-i + br
with the sets of observations X1X , • • • , X1A- and X2i , • • • , X2N . We assume that e, and e.2 are random variables with zero means and constant and finite variances and that they are independent over time. Under certain conditions, we can solve for Xu and X.,t , rewriting the system as follows: Xlt = UuXi.t-i + Ui2X2.t-, + v,,e,t + v^e,t , X2t = u2iXlit-\ + u.J2X2it-i + v.2]elt + v«2e.,t .
57
Defining the simple covariances as j t-\
and the lagged covariances as 1
*
'ij ~ TV - I / j
X X
" *,*-i»
the maximum likelihood estimators of the ui} are found by solving the system of equations C
11W11 +
C
12W21 ~
C
ll >
C 2 Ai + C 22 W 21 = C'21 ,
c
iA* + c12w22 = c; 2 ,
C
21^12
I ^22 W 22
=
C 22 '
It is also possible to obtain standard errors of the estimated w,- ; -, but it is not possible to obtain estimators of the a i; and bi}•, In order to accomplish this, further assumptions about the coefficients have to be made. (See, for example, F. M. Fisher 1965. For a further discussion of multiple stochastic processes, see Bartlett 1955. Works containing additional information on the statistical treatment of stochastic processes as well as useful references to the vast literature on this topic are Moran 1951; 1953; Rosenblatt 1962.) GERHARD TINTNER [See also LINEAR HYPOTHESES, article on REGRESSION.] BIBLIOGRAPHY
ADELMAN, IRMA; and ADELMAN, FRANK L. (1959) 1965 The Dynamic Properties of the Klein-Goldberger Model. Pages 278-306 in American Economic Association, Readings in Business Cycles. Homewood, 111.: Irwin. -» First published in Volume 27 of Econometrica. ANDERSON, OSKAR N. 1929 Die Korrelationsrechnung in der Konjunkturforschung: Ein Beitrag zur Analyse von Zeitreihen. Bonn: Schroeder.
ANDERSON, R. L. 1942 Distribution of the Serial Correlation Coefficient. Annals of Mathematical Statistics 13:1-13. ANDERSON, R. L. 1954 The Problems of Autocorrelation in Regression Analysis. Journal of the American Statistical Association 49:113-129. -> A correction was published in Volume 50, page 1331. ANDERSON, R. L.; and ANDERSON, T. W. 1950 Distribution of the Circular Serial Correlation Coefficient for Residuals From a Fitted Fourier Series. Annals of Mathematical Statistics 21:59-81. ANDERSON, T. W. 1948 On the Theory of Testing Serial Correlation. Skandinavisk aktuarietidskrift 31:88-116. ANDERSON, T. W. 1959 On Asymptotic Distributions of Estimates of Parameters of Stochastic Difference Equations. Annals of Mathematical Statistics 30:676-687. ANDERSON, T. W. 1962 The Choice of the Degree of a Polynomial Regression as a Multiple Decision Problem. Annals of Mathematical Statistics 33:255-265.
58
TIME SERIES: General
ANDERSON, T. W. 1964 Some Approaches to the Statistical Analysis of Time Series. Australian Journal of Statistics 6, no. 1:1-11. BARTLETT, M. S. 1935 Some Aspects of the Time-correlation Problem in Regard to Tests of Significance. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society 98:536-543. BARTLETT, M. S. (1955) 1962 An Introduction to Stochastic Processes, With Special Reference to Methods and Applications. Cambridge Univ. Press. BHARUCHA-REID, ALBERT T. 1960 Elements of the Theory of Markov Processes and Their Applications. New York: McGraw-Hill. BLACKMAN, R. B.; and TUKEY, J. W. (1958) 1959 The Measurement of Power Spectra, From the Point of View of Communications Engineering. New York: Dover. -» First published in the Bell System Technical Journal. BLUMEN, ISADORE; KOGAN, MARVIN; and MCCARTHY, PHILIP 1955 The Industrial Mobility of Labor as a Probability Process. Cornell Studies in Industrial and Labor Relations, Vol. 6. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press. BRUCKMANN, G.; and PFANZAGL, J. 1960 Literaturbericht iiber die Zerlegung saisonabhangiger Zeitreihen. Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Versicherungsmathematik, Blatter 4:301-309. COCHRANE, DONALD; and ORCUTT, G. H. 1949 Application of Least Squares Regression to Relationships Containing Auto-correlated Error Terms. Journal of the American Statistical Association 44:32-61. COOTNER, PAUL H. (editor) 1964 The Random Character of Stock Market Prices. Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press. COWLES COMMISSION FOR RESEARCH IN ECONOMICS 1953 Studies in Econometric Method. Edited by William C. Hood and Tjalling C. Koopmans. New York: Wiley. DAVIS, HAROLD T. 1941 The Analysis of Economic Time Series. Cowles Commission for Research in Economics, Monograph No. 6. Bloomington, Ind.: Principia. DE CANI, JOHN S. 1961 On the Construction of Stochastic Models of Population Growth and Migration. Journal of Regional Science 3, no. 2:1-13. DURBIN, J. R. 1960 Estimation of Parameters in Timeseries Regression Models. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B 22:139-153. DURBIN, J. R. 1962 Trend Elimination by Moving-average and Variate-difference Filters. Institut International de Statistique, Bulletin 39:131-141. DURBIN, J. R.; and WATSON, G. S. 1950-1951 Testing for Serial Correlation in Least Squares Regression. Parts 1-2. Biometrika 37:409-428; 38:159-178. FISHER, FRANKLIN M. 1962 A Priori Information and Time Series Analysis: Essays in Economic Theory and Measurement. Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing. FISHER, FRANKLIN M. 1965 Dynamic Structure and Estimation in Economy-wide Econometric Models. Pages 589-635 in James S. Duesenberry et al., The Brookings Quarterly Econometric Model of the United States. Chicago: Rand McNally. FISHER, R. A. (1925) 1958 Statistical Methods for Research Workers. 13th ed. New York: Hafner. -» Previous editions were also published by Oliver and Boyd. Fisz, MAREKA (1954) 1963 Probability Theory and Mathematical Statistics. 3d ed. New York: Wiley. -> First published as Rachunek prawdopodobienstwa i statystyka matematyczna. FOSTER, F. G.; and STUART, ALAN 1954 Distributionfree Tests in Time-series Based on the Breaking of
Records. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B 16:1-22. FRISCH, RAGNAR; and WAUGH, FREDERICK V. 1933 Partial Time Regressions as Compared With Individual Trends. Econometrica 1:387-401. GRANGER, CLIVE W. J.; and HATANAKA, M. 1964 Spectral Analysis of Economic Time Series. Princeton Univ. Press. GRENANDER, ULF 1957 Modern Trends in Time Series Analysis. Sankhya. 18:149-158. GRENANDER, ULF; and ROSENBLATT, MURRAY 1957 Statistical Analysis of Stationary Time Series. New York: Wiley. HANNAN, EDWARD J. (1960) 1962 Time Series Analysis. New York: Wiley. HANNAN, EDWARD J. 1963 The Estimation of Seasonal Variations in Economic Time Series. Journal of the American Statistical Association 58:31-44. HART, B. I. 1942 Tabulation of the Probabilities for the Ratio of the Mean Square Successive Difference to the Variance. Annals of Mathematical Statistics 13:207214. HEMELRIJK, JAN 1958 Distribution-free Tests Against Trend and Maximum Likelihood Estimates of Ordered Parameters. Institut International de Statistique, Bulletin 36:15-25. HOTELLING, HAROLD 1927 Differential Equations Subject to Error, and Population Estimates. Journal of the American Statistical Association 22:283-314. HURWICZ, LEONARD 1950 Least-squares Bias in Time Series. Pages 365-383 in Tjalling C. Koopmans (editor), Statistical Inference in Dynamic Economic Models. New York: Wiley. JENKINS, G. M.; and PRIESTLEY, M. B. 1957 The Spectral Analysis of Time-series. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B 19:1-12. JOHNSTON, JOHN 1963 Econometric Methods. New York: McGraw-Hill. KENDALL, M. G. 1938 A New Measure of Rank Correlation. Biometrika 30:81-93. -» This introduces the T coefficient. Its use in testing for trend is discussed in Kendall 1948. KENDALL, M. G. (1948) 1963 Rank Correlation Methods. 3d ed., rev. & enl. New York: Hafner. KENDALL, M. G. 1953 The Analysis of Economic Timeseries. Part 1: Prices. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A 116:11-25. KENDALL, M. G.; and STUART, ALAN (1946) 1961 The Advanced Theory of Statistics. Volume 2: Inference and Relationship. New ed. New York: Hafner; London: Griffin. -> The first edition was written by Kendall alone. KOOPMANS, TJALLING C. (editor) 1950 Statistical Inference in Dynamic Economic Models. New York: Wiley. KUZNETS, SIMON 1934 Time Series. Volume 14, pages 629-636 in Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences. New York: Macmillan. MALINVAUD, EDMOND (1964) 1966 Statistical Methods in Econometrics. Chicago: Rand McNally. -» First published in French. MANN, HENRY B. 1945 Nonparametric Tests Against Trend. Econometrica 13:245-259. MANN, HENRY B.; and WALD, A. 1943 On the Statistical Treatment of Linear Stochastic Difference Equations. Econometrica 11:173-220. MORAN, P. A. P. 1948 Some Theorems on Time Series. Part 2: The Significance of the Serial Correlation Coefficient. Biometrika 35:255-260.
TIME SERIES: Advanced Problems MORAN, P. A. P. 1951 Estimation Methods for Evolutive Processes. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B 13:141-146. MORAN, P. A. P. 1953 The Estimation of the Parameters of a Birth-and-death Process. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B 15:241-245. MORGENSTERN, OSKAR 1961 A New Look at Economic Time Series Analysis. Pages 261-272 in Hugo Hegeland (editor), Money, Growth, and Methodology, and Other Essays in Economics. Lund (Sweden): Gleerup. NERLOVE, MARC 1964 Spectral Analysis of Seasonal Adjustment Procedures. Econometrica 32:241-286. ORCUTT, G. H.; and JAMES, S. F. 1948 Testing the Significance of Correlation Between Time Series. Biometrika 35:397-413. PARZEN, EMANUEL (1961) 1965 Stochastic Processes. San Francisco: Holden-Day. PHILLIPS, A. W. 1959 The Estimation of Parameters in Systems of Stochastic Differential Equations. Biometrika 46:67-76. PRAIS, S. J.; and HOUTHAKKER, H. S. 1955 The Analysis of Family Budgets With an Application to Two British Surveys Conducted in 1937-1939 and Their Detailed Results. Cambridge Univ. Press. QUENOUILLE, M. H. 1947 A Large Sample Test for the Goodness of Fit of Autoregressive Schemes. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A 110:123-129. QUENOUILLE, M. H. 1957 The Analysis of Multiple Timeseries. New York: Hafner. RAO, J. N. K.; and TINTNER, GERHARD 1962 The Distribution of the Ratio of the Variances of Variate Differences in the Circular Case. Sankhyd 24A: 385-394. RAO, J. N. K.; and TINTNER, GERHARD 1963 On the Variate Difference Method. Australian Journal of Statistics 5:106-116. RHODES, E. C. 1940 Population Mathematics III. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A 103:362-387. ROSENBLATT, MURRAY 1962 Random Processes. New York: Oxford Univ. Press. SARGAN, J. D. 1961 The Maximum Likelihood Estimation of Economic Relationships With Autoregressive Residuals. Econometrica 29:414-426. SCHUSTER, ARTHUR 1906 On the Periodicities of Sunspots. Royal Society of London, Philosophical Transactions Series A 206:69-100. SLUTSKY, EUGEN E. (1927) 1937 The Summation of Random Causes as the Source of Cyclic Processes. Econometrica 5:105-146. -> First published in Russian. Reprinted in 1960 in Slutsky's Izbrannye trudy. Symposium on Spectral Approach to Time Series. 1957 Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B 19: 1-63. Symposium on Stochastic Processes. 1949 Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B 11:150-282. SYMPOSIUM ON TIME SERIES ANALYSIS, BROWN UNIVERSITY, 1962 1963 Proceedings. Edited by Murray Rosenblatt. New York: Wiley. TAKACS, LAJOS 1960 Stochastic Processes: Problems and Solutions. New York: Wiley. THEIL, H.; and NAGAR, A. L. 1961 Testing the Independence of Regression Disturbances. Journal of the American Statistical Association 56:793-806. TINBERGEN, JAN 1939 Statistical Testing of Businesscycle Theories. Volume 2: Business Cycles in the United States of America: 1919-1932. Geneva: League of Nations, Economic Intelligence Service. TINTNER, GERHARD 1940 The Variate Difference Method. Bloomington, Ind.: Principia.
59
TINTNER, GERHARD 1952 Econometrics. New York: Wiley. TINTNER, GERHARD 1955 The Distribution of the Variances of Variate Differences in the Circular Case. Metron 17, no. 3/4:43-52. TINTNER, GERHARD 1960 Handbuch der Okonometrie. Berlin: Springer. VON NEUMANN, JOHN 1941 Distribution of the Ratio of the Mean Square Successive Difference to the Variance. Annals of Mathematical Statistics 12:367-395. WALD, A.; and WOLFOWITZ, J. 1943 An Exact Test for Randomness in the Non-parametric Case Based on Serial Correlation. Annals of Mathematical Statistics 14:378-388. WALLIS, W. ALLEN; and MOORE, GEOFFREY H. 1941 A Significance Test for Time Series Analysis. Journal of the American Statistical Association 36:401-409. WHITTLE, P. 1951 Hypothesis Testing in Time Series Analysis. Uppsala (Sweden): Almqvist & Wiksell. WHITTLE, P. 1963 Prediction and Regulation by Linear Least-square Methods. London: English Universities Press. WILKS, S. S. 1962 Mathematical Statistics. New York: Wiley. WOLD, HERMAN (1938) 1954 A Study in the Analysis of Stationary Time Series. 2d ed. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell. ZAYCOFF, RASHKO 1936 V'rkhu razlaganeto na statisticheski redove po vreme na tri slagaemi (Uber die Zerlegung statistischer Zeitreihen in drei Komponenten). Sofia, Universitet, Statisticheski Institut za Stopanski Prouchvaniia Trudove [1936] no. 4:1-22. ZAYCOFF, RASHKO 1937 V'rkhu izkliuchvaneto na sluchainata slagaema posr"dstvom' metoda "Variatedifference" (Uber die Ausschaltung der zufalligen Komponente nach der "Variate-difference"-Methode). Sofia, Universitet, Statisticheski Institut za Stopanski Prouchvaniia Trudove [1937] no. 1:1-46. II ADVANCED PROBLEMS
Numerical data often occur in the form of a time series, that is, a sequence of observations on a variable taken either continuously or at regular intervals of time. As examples consider records of economic variables (prices, interest rates, sales, unemployment), meteorological records, electroencephalograms, and population and public health records. In contrast to much experimental data, the consecutive observations of a time series are not in general independent, and the fascination of time series analysis lies in the utilization of observed dependence to deduce the way the value of a variable (say, steel production) can be shown to be in part determined by the past values of the same variable, or of other variables (say, demand for automobiles). In the so-called discrete time case, observations are taken at regular intervals of time. The common interval of time can be taken as the unit, so that the value of a variable x at time t can be denoted by xt, where t takes the values • • • , —2, — 1, 0, 1, 2, • • • .
60
TIME SERIES: Advanced Problems
Of course, in practice one observes only a finite set of values, say xl, x2, • • • , xn, but it is useful to imagine that the series can in principle extend indefinitely far back and forward in time. For this reason t is allowed to run to infinity in both directions. (Of course, sometimes one observes a phenomenon continuously, so that x is measured for all t rather than just at intervals—such a process is referred to as continuous. However, since the discrete case is by far the more frequent in the social sciences, this discussion will be limited to that case.) Suppose that one has a model which explains how the xt series should develop. The model is termed a process and is denoted by {xt}; if some of the rules it specifies are probabilistic ones, it is called a stochastic process. Definition of a stationary process One class of stochastic processes is of particular importance, both in practice and in theory: this is the class of stationary processes. A stationary process is one that is in a state of statistical equilibrium, so that its statistical pattern of behavior does not change with time. Formally, the requirement is that for any set of instants of time, t a , t2, • • • , tn, and any time lag, s, the joint distribution of xtl,xt2, • • • , x t > l must be the same as that of xtl+s, xtz+a, • • • , xt>i+s. Thus, xl and x5 must have the same univariate distribution, ( x { , x 2 ) and (x-,, x 6 ) must have the same bivariate distribution, and so on. The assumption of stationarity is a strong one, but when it can be made it greatly simplifies understanding and analysis of a process. An intuitive reason for the simplification is that a stationary process provides a kind of hidden replication, a structure that does not deviate too far from the still more special assumptions of independence and identical distribution, assumptions that are ubiquitous in statistical theory. Whether the stationarity assumption is realistic for a particular process depends on how near the process is indeed to statistical equilibrium. For example, because most economies are evolving, economic series can seldom be regarded as stationary, but sometimes a transformation of the variable produces a more nearly stationary series (see the section on "smoothing" a series, below). Stationarity implies that if xt has an expectation, then this expectation must be independent of £, so that
(1)
£(*.)=/*>
say, for all t. Furthermore, if xt and xt.g have a
covariance, then this covariance can depend only on the relative time lag, s, so that (2)
COV(xt,
The important function Ta is known as the autocovariance function. Processes subject only to the restrictions (1) and (2), and not to any other of the restrictions that stationarity implies, are known as wide-sense stationary processes. They are important theoretically, but the idea of wide-sense stationarity is important also because in practice one is often content to work with first-order and second-order moments alone, if for no other reason than to keep computation manageable. This survey will be restricted to stationary processes in the strict sense, unless otherwise indicated. Note that t need not necessarily mean time. One might, for example, be considering variations in thickness along a thread or in vehicle density along a highway; then t would be a spatial coordinate. Some particular processes. One of the simplest processes of all is a sequence of independent random variables, {et}. If the et have a common distribution, then the process is strictly stationary— this is the kind of sequence often postulated for the "residuals" of a regression or of a model in experimental design. If one requires of {e(} merely that its elements have constant mean and variance, ra and o-2, and be uncorrelated, then the process is a widesense stationary process. From now on {et} will denote a process of just this latter type. Often such a process of "residuals" is presumed to have zero mean (that is, m — 0); however, this will not always be assumed here. What is of interest in most series is just that the observations are not independent or even uncorrelated. A model such as (3)
xt = atXt-i +
(a first-order autoregression^) takes one by a very natural first step from an uncorrelated sequence, {e^}, to an autocorrelated sequence, { x t } . Here a is a numerical constant whose value may or may not be known, and the term axt-i introduces a dependence between observations. Such a model is physically plausible in many situations; it might, for example, crudely represent the level of a lake year by year, axf..i representing the amount of water retained from the previous year and ef a random inflow. A common type of econometric model is a vector version of (3), in which xt,et are vectors and a is a matrix. If observations begin at time T, then the series
TIME SERIES: Advanced Problems starts with XT , xT+1 is axT + e r+ i, xT+2 is a?xT + acT+i + £ r+2 , and in general, for t ^ T, t-r-i
(4)
=Z fc=0
past disturbances. The sequence bk is the transient response of the system to a single unit disturbance. The relation between the coefficients ak and bk can be expressed neatly in generating function form:
If a; <1 and the model has been operative from the indefinitely distant past, then one can let T tend to —oo in (4) and obtain a solution for xt in terms of the "disturbing variables" et : (5)
The condition a\
does not converge in mean square as T tends to -oo; that is, there does not exist a random variable £ such that E(%T - £ ) 2 ^ 0.) The series [xt] generated by (5) is stationary, and one verifies that
m I -a
(6) f V\ I i //
N T~* — T"1 — /-»r\Tr ('V -v 1 e — 1-s — CUV Ix Jit . Jif-s 1 — I-i
tr'cr _
o '
a2
where m and
expressing xt in terms of its own immediate past and a stationary residual, et. When p= 1, (8) and (3) are the same except for trivia of notation: a0 and a, in (8) correspond to 1 and —a in (3). When p > 1, a process of type (8) can generate the quasi-periodic variations so often seen in time series. Of course, this is not the only model that can generate such quasi-periodic oscillations (one might, for example, consider a nonlinear process or a Markov chain), but it is probably the simplest type of model that does so. Corresponding to the passage from (3) to (5), process (8) can be given the moving-average representation
CO - \ ~ /
xt = Z
Je=o
which represents xf as a linear superposition of
1
-1
i—A
~«~
A/ \ -*1 \ ^ /
fc=0
p V»
A, akzK
r.
fc=0
For example, if z is set equal to 0, then b0 = if the functions are differentiated once and z is again set equal to 0, then £>, = —aja\. (Discussions of time series sooner or later require some knowledge of complex variables. An introduction to the subject is given in MacRobert 1917.) The necessary and sufficient condition for series (9) to converge to a proper random variable and for the resulting {xt} series to be stationary is that A(z), considered as a function of a complex variable z, have all its zeros outside the unit circle; this is again a stability condition on the relation (8). If, however, the stability condition is not fulfilled, relations such as (8) can still provide realistic models for some of the nonstationary series encountered in practice. A relation such as (9) is said to express {xt} as a moving average of {et}- There are, of course, many other important types of process, particularly the general Markov process [see MARKOV CHAINS] and the point processes (see Bartlett 1963), but the simple linear processes described in this section are typical of those that are useful for many time series analyses. Autocovariance function The autocovariance function, F s , defined in (2) gives a qualitative idea of the decay of statistical dependence in the process with increasing time lag; a more detailed examination of it can tell a good deal about the structure of the process. A key result is the following: Suppose that {xt} is a moving average of a process [yt],
xt = Z
(H)
k
where the summation is not necessarily restricted to nonnegative values of k, although in most physical applications it will be. Denote the autocovariances of the two processes by r(sx) r ( / } . Then
(12)
<*> = y
S
— t-J i
(9)
61
j l c
j-fc+
*
so that
(13)
= (Z V) (Z
62
TIME SERIES: Advanced Problems
a generating function relation that will be written in the form
If relation (11) defines a stationary process of finite variance, then (14) is valid for z| = 1 at least. A deduction from (14) and (10) is that for the autoregression (8) the autocovariance generating function is a-'
(15)
A(z)A(z-')
By calculating the coefficient of zs in the expansion of this function on the circle \z = 1 one obtains P., ; for process (3) one obtains the result (7) as before; for the second-order process with a0 = 1 one obtains
waters, a problem for which it was natural to consider a model of the type
(19)
xt = 1C A; sin cos
a «+l
08+1
2s ) ^
0,
s
_ o- 2 {sin[(s+l)0]- P 4 sin[(s- 1)0]} 1- > 2 1 -22cos20 + 4sin<9
The autocovariance, Ts , has a peak near a lag, s, of approximately 27T/0, indicating strong positive correlation between values of xt and xt-s for this value of lag. The nearer the damping factor, p, lies to unity, the stronger the correlation. This is an indication of what one might call a quasiperiodicity in the xt series, of "period" 27T/0, the kind of irregular periodicity that produces the "trade cycles" of economic series. Such disturbed periodicities are no less real for not being strict. Either from (15) or from the fact that CQV(Xt-i, € t ) =
n
The approximation lies in the use of rr
where or1, /3-1 are the zeros of A(z). If these zeros are complex, say, a, ft = p exp (±z#), then (16) has the oscillatory form ;
ts
\
= -r---j^-j -^- ( -z=- — ./ (1 — a/3 ) ( a — /3 ) \ 1 — a2 1 — (32 /
v
+ et .
2 v-A =— \ n
— x /
+ ]CC sin
That is, the series is represented as the sum of a number of harmonic components and an uncorrelated residual. If the frequencies, toy (corresponding to lunar and diurnal variations and so forth), are known, so that the A, and ay are to be estimated, then on the basis of an observed series x1}x2, • • • , xn the least square estimators of the coefficients By and Cy are approximately
(16) 0-2
+ ctj ) + e(
y pa ^ 2L >
h *- 2
E PA s o, t=\ where Pt and Qt are any two of the functions of time cos (w/t), sin (wyt) (;' = 1, 2, • • • ) . In this approximation, terms of relative order n~J are neglected. The squared amplitude, A2} = B 2 + C2., is thus estimated approximately by
(20)
—-^y^ y^ xsxt cos [o>y(s —t)]. /i . ' w „ *=1
t=l
This can also be written in the form
0,
it can be shown that for the autoregression (8)
(18)
0,
0.
These are the Yule-Walker relations, which provide a convenient way of calculating the Ys from the coefficients, ak. This procedure will be reversed below, and (18) will be used to estimate the ak from estimates of the autocovariances. Spectral theory Some of the first attempts at time series analysis concerned the prediction of tidal variation of coastal
which is mathematically (although not computationally) convenient. The importance of K] is that it measures the decrease in residual sum of squares (that is, the improvement in fit of model (19)) obtained by fitting terms in cos(co ; t) and sin(co,t). The larger this quantity, the greater the contribution that the harmonic component of frequency, coy, makes to the variation of xt. For this reason, if the coy are unknown, one can search for periodicities (see below) by calculating a quantity analogous to (20) for variable &>: the periodogram
TIME SERIES: Advanced Problems (24)
(21)
x x cos [&>(s — -TT / ^ / j s t
8=1
t=l
=— n
An unusually large value of f n (to) at a particular frequency suggests the presence of a harmonic component at that frequency. It is an empirical fact that few series are of the type (19): in general, one achieves much greater success by fitting structural models such as an autoregressive one. Even for the autoregressive model, however, or, indeed, for any stationary process, an analogue of representation (19) called the spectral representation holds. Here the sum is replaced by an integral. This integral gives an analysis of xt into different frequency components; for stationary series the amplitudes of different components are uncorrelated. In recent work the spectral representation turns out to be of central importance: the amplitudes of frequency components have simple statistical properties and transform in a particularly simple fashion if the process is subjected to a moving-average transformation (see eq. (26)); the frequency components themselves are often of physical significance. So even in the general case the periodogram fn(o)) provides an empirical measure of the amount of variation in the series around frequency w. Its expected value for large rz, the spectral density function (s.d.f.),
=lim
l --
n
j exp (-za>s)E (
= 2 E(xtxt-s ) exp ( — IMS ) , S = -00
provides the corresponding theoretical measure for a given process. If the xt have been reduced to zero mean (which, in fact, affects 0(o>) oiuy f°r w = 0). then the spectral density function becomes
(23) a
=flf[exp(-io>)].
There is a relation reciprocal to (23), the spectral representation of the autocovariance,
exp (—£
N
63
) = 1L r s exp(— icos),
nd, as can be seen from (13) and (14), this is °nly a trivial modification of the autocovariance generating function, #(z), already encountered. In fact,
(25)
r, =
277
exp (IMS
In more general cases $(ey) maY fail to exist for certain values, and $(w)do) must be replaced by dF(at') in (25), where F(w) is the nondecreasing spectral distribution function. An important property of spectral representations is the simplicity of their transformation under moving-average transformations of the process; relation (14) can be rewritten (26)
<J>,(°0 = B[exp(iw)]B[exp(-iG>)]),
showing that the effect of the moving-average operation (11) is to scale each frequency component up or down individually, by a factor |B[exp(zw)]| 2 . So, if for the autoregression with spectral density function determined by (15) the polynomial A(z) has zeros at p-1 exp (±0), and p is near unity, then <^((w) will have peaks near o> = ±9, indicating a quasiperiodicity of "period" 2-77/0. Note that for an uncorrelated series $(o)) is constant—all frequencies are equally represented on the average. For an autoregressive series $(&>) is variable but finite—this is an example of a process with continuous spectrum. A process of type (19) has a constant background term in (f> owing to the "noise," et, but also has infinite peaks at the values (o = ±a)j, these constituting a line spectrum component. For a discrete series one need only consider frequencies in the range —77 < a) ^TT, since with observations at unit intervals of time the frequencies 277S + a) (s integral) cannot be distinguished one from the other. This is the aliasing effect, which can occasionally confuse an analysis. If, however, the series has little variation of frequency greater than 77 (that is, of period less than two time units), then the effect is not serious, for the higher frequencies that could cause confusion hardly occur. Effect of "smoothing" a series—a caution. In order to isolate the "trend" in a series, {xt}, it has sometimes been common to derive a smoothed series, {xt}, by an averaging operation such as
(27)
2m + 1
Xt-Tc ,
although more elaborate and more desirable types of average are often used. In terms of frequency, the effect of the operation
64
TIME SERIES: Advanced Problems
1.00
GAIN FUNCTION
(l) b \
(2)
(3)'
FREQUENCY o)
Figure 1 — The gain functions for three linear operations on a time series a. Curve (2) represents the gain function for the ideal filter passing periods greater than five time units (frequencies less than 2ir/5). b. Curve (1) represents the gain function for a five-term uniform average (formula (27) with m = 2). c. Curve (3) represents the gain function for a finite moving average approximating the ideal filter (the average with weights given by (30) using u0 = 2ir/5, but truncated at fe = ± 10).
(27) is to multiply the spectral density function by a factor B[exp(z<w)]B[exp( —ito)], where (28)
sinjYra LV (2m
This function is graphed as the dotted curve (1) in Figure 1 and is known as the gain function of the transformation (27). Now, if the purpose of "trend extraction" is to eliminate the high frequencies from a series—that is, to act as a "low-pass filter"—then the ideal gain factor would correspond to the square-shouldered solid curve (2) in Figure 1. (A gain factor is sometimes referred to as a "window.") The function (28) obviously departs considerably from this ideal. To obtain a moving-average transformation (29)
— z-i
which acts as a perfect low-pass filter for the range —
The fact that these coefficients decrease rather slowly means that appreciable truncation of the
sum will be necessary (probably at a fe-value equal to a multiple of 27r/w 0 ), but the resultant operation will still be a considerable improvement over (27). The gain function of a truncated smoothing operator is illustrated as the dashed curve (3) in Figure 1. As was first pointed out by Slutsky (1927), injudicious smoothing procedures can actually have the effect of introducing periodicities — just because the gain function of the averaging operation has a peak at a frequency where it should not. One should always be quite clear about the effect of one's "smoothing" operations, and the way to do this is to graph the corresponding gain factor as a function of frequency. Attempts are sometimes made to "eliminate" trend in a series by the method of variate difference — that is, by calculating series such as
y' t X
This measure can have a rough success, in that it largely eliminates deviations from stationarity, although a more fundamental approach would be to fit a model which would actually generate the observed nonstationarity, such as an unstable autoregression. In any case, in evaluating the series obtained after differencing, one must remember
TIME SERIES: Advanced Problems that the application of a p-fold difference, Ap, has the effect of multiplying the spectral density function of a stationary series by (2sin-|co)2p. Sample analogues Consider now the problem of inference from a sample of nconsecutive observations, x1,x2, • • • ,xn. Autocovariance function. Define the uncorrected lagged product-sum,
(31) t=3+l
If E(%0 =0, then
(32)
C; =
n —s
certainly provides an unbiased estimate of Fs and, under wide conditions, also a consistent one. However, in general the mean will be nonzero and unknown. The sample autocovariance is in such cases naturally measured by
(33)
n —s
n —s
_ *=«+!
and EJC is estimated by
(34)
65
If the series has already been corrected for the mean (so that one works with xt — x rather than Xt'), then (36) will become (37)
f B (o>) =
/ J
C«cos (cos).
n
Whether one uses formula (36) or formula (37) is not of great consequence. A constant nonzero mean can be regarded as a harmonic component of zero frequency, so the two functions (36) and (37) will differ only near the origin. The sampling variability of f n (co) does not decrease with increasing n, and f n (co) is not a consistent estimator of c/>(co). The problem of finding a consistent estimator will be discussed below. Fitting and testing autoregressive models The autoregressive model (8) is a useful trial model, since it usually explains much of the variation and often has some physical foundation. Furthermore, its test theory is typical of a much more general case. The first problem is that of the actual fitting, the estimation of the parameters ak and cr2; the second problem is that of testing the fit of the model. If the et and xt have means 0 and /JL, respectively, then the model (8) must be modified slightly to
*=(38)
ak(Xt
— yU,) = €t .
Minor modifications of (33) will be found in the literature. Expression (33) will in general provide a biased but consistent estimate of Fs with a sampling variance of the order of (n — s)-1. For a given n the variability of Cs thus increases with s; fortunately, the earlier autocovariances generally contain most of the information. In order to eliminate problems of scale, investigators sometimes work with the autocorrelation coefficient
One usually assumes the et normally distributed— not such a restrictive assumption as it appears. To a first approximation the means and variances of autocorrelations are unaffected by nonnormality (see Whittle 1954, p. 210), and estimates of parameters such as the autoregressive coefficients, a fc , should be similarly robust. For normal processes the log-likelihood of the sample X-L, x2, • • • , xn is, for large n,
f\OO Q c r J\
(39)
n /n rI g — — v_;g/v_y0
rather than with C s , but this is not essential. Spectral density function. The sample analogue of spectral density function (the periodogram, formula (21) ) was introduced before the spectral density function itself. Note from (21) that one can write
n
L = const. — -^logcr2 —
Maximizing this expression with respect to obtains the estimator
EE (40)
*
7;
one
1
—
n / J
cos (cos) (36)
n
The second approximate equality follows if one neglects the difference between the various averages (1/n) Zli^-fc (fe = 0, 1, 2, • • • , p), that is, if,
66
TIME SERIES: Advanced Problems
as is often done, an end effect is neglected. Thus, the maximum likelihood estimator of JJL is approximately the usual sample arithmetic mean, despite the dependence between observations. Inserting this estimator in (39), one finds
(41) n I 1 L =s const. —-=r\ log cr2 H 5-
cr- / •* / A
2 \
so that the maximum likelihood estimators of the remaining parameters are determined approximately by the relations
as a x2 variable with q df. In both cases large values of the test statistic are critical. Fitting and testing more general models The approximate expression (41) for the loglikelihood (maximized with respect to the mean) can be generalized to any process for which the reciprocal of the spectral density function can be expanded in a Fourier series, CO
(47)
(ft(o))^ 1 = cr~2 E y* exp (iws). 8=-<x>
The generalized expression is
(42)
= 0,
j = 1, 2, • • • , p,
(48) (43)
= iv n Note the analogue between (42) and (43) and the Yule-Walker relations (18). To test prescribed values of the ak one can use the fact that the estimators dk are asymptotically normally distributed with means ak (respectively) and a covariance matrix
( Here [ajk] denotes a p x p matrix with typical element ajK, j , k — 1, 2, • • • , p.) This result holds if the et are independently and identically distributed, with a finite fourth moment. (See Whittle 1954, p. 214.) However, a more satisfactory and more versatile approach to the testing problem is provided by use of the Wilks X-ratio. This will be described in a more general setting below; for the present, note the following uses. To test whether a given set of coefficients a l 9 a2 , • • • , ap are zero, treat
as a x2 variable with p degrees of freedom (cZf). Here erf, has been used to denote the estimator (43), emphasizing the order p assumed for the autoregression. To test whether an autoregression of order p gives essentially as good a fit as one of order p + q, treat (46)
= (n — p — g)log
2 rp+q
OA—~m s=-oo
(49)
dco.
+
4?r
In general it will be easier to calculate the sum over autocovariances in (48) than to calculate the integral over the periodogram in (49), but sometimes the second approach is taken. If the model depends on a number of parameters, O-L, 02, • • • , Op (of which cr2 will usually be one), then 0(w) will also depend on these, and the maximum likelihood estimators, # ; , are obtained approximately by maximizing either of the expressions (48) and (49). The covariance matrix of the estimators is given asymptotically by
(50) [cov
= (n - p) log
\ \
where cr2 is the "prediction variance," the conditional variance of xt given the values of xt-i, xt-.,, • • • . (See Whittle 1954.) The sum in (48) cannot really be taken as infinite; in most practical cases the coefficients ys converge reasonably fast to zero as s increases, and the sum can be truncated. Another way of writing (48) is
L ==; const. —
(44)
(45)
4-J
, _ J_
n
I
n/
L ~ const. --=- log0-2 + —
dlog< 277-
d6k
dO
(See Whittle 1954.) Thus, for the moving-average process (51)
xt = et - Pet-i ,
with |/3 < 1, one finds that -i 1 (52) E
/3|S|CS
The maximum likelihood estimator of (3 is obtained by minimizing (52), and expression (52) with /3
TIME SERIES: Advanced Problems substituted for ft provides the maximum likelihood estimator of a2 = var(e). One finds from (50) that the two estimators are asymptotically uncorrelated, with 4 var(
(53)
n
Practical techniques for the calculation of the maximum likelihood estimators in more general cases have been worked out by Durbin (1959) and Walker (1962). Tests of fit can be based upon the X-ratio criterion. Let cr2 denote the maximum likelihood estimator of o-2 when parameters 0i, 0 2 , • • • , 9,, (one of these being cr2 itself) are fitted and the values of parameters 9p+l, 9p+2, • • • , 0P+q are prescribed. Thus, cr2+(j will be the maximum likelihood estimator of
i//2=(rc-p-
og
cr
as a x2 variable with g df. Multivariate processes In few realistic analyses is one concerned with a single variable; in general, one has several, so that xt must be considered a vector of m jointly stationary variables, (xlt, x2t, • • • , xmt). There is a generalization (Whittle 1954) of expression (49) for the log-likelihood in such cases, but the only case considered here is that of a multivariate autoregression, (55)
E ak(xt-k — u) = £«,
where the nk are m x m matrices with n0 = ', and £ ( £ « ) = 0, (56)
s = t, s ^ t.
This last assumption states that the vector residuals are mutually uncorrelated but that the covariance matrix of a single vector residual is V. As before, the maximum likelihood estimator of the mean vector, u., is approximately x, and with this inserted the following generalization of (41) results: (57)
^ n ~ l^/l i V V trtv ^««'V-l** f1 M L = const. — -^-[log |V| +2-, 2-« \nj* ak^j^)i'
Here Cs is the m x m matrix whose (jk)ih element is the sample covariance of xjt and xkit_s, that is, the (jfe)th element of C, is
67
(58)
(r .Yv V I
/ ^ Jv j $
\t=S + l
II
/^J
/ \ t=1
^Itt
\
)
n —s n —s and tr A denotes the sum of the diagonal elements of a matrix A. The maximum likelihood estimators are given by (59)
E fc=0
(60) For the important case p = 1, which can be written (61)
Xt = OLXt-i + £t,
these become (62) (63)
« = C1CS1, f — •-' f V— — '-'
Estimator (62) will, of course, be modified if certain elements of a are known and need not be estimated. Tests of fit can be based on the X-ratio criterion as before, with expression (57) used for the log-likelihood. In econometric work, models of type (61) are particularly important. One minor complication is that exogenous variables may also occur in the right-hand side (see (73), below); exogenous variables are variables which are regarded as external to the system and which need not be explained—for example, in a model of a national economy, variables such as overseas prices and technical progress might be regarded as exogenous. A much more severe complication is that of simultaneity: that xt may be represented as a regression upon some of its own elements as well as upon xt-i and exogenous variables. This latter difficulty has led to an extensive literature, which will not be discussed here (for a general reference, see Johnston 1963). Regression. An important special type of multivariate process is the regression (64)
Xt = E
+
where xt (now assumed to be scalar) is regarded as linearly dependent upon a number of variables, ujt, with a stationary residual, 7]t (in general autocorrelated). The processes [ujt] may be other stationary processes, even lagged versions of the {xt} process itself, or deterministic sequences such as t" or sin (cut). Simple and unbiased estimators of the /3j are the least square estimators, b j , obtained by minimizing £"=1i?2 and determined by the linear equations
68
TIME SERIES: Advanced Problems
(65)
E bk(ujt, M fct ) = (xt, Ujt},
7=1,2, ---.r,
where the notation (66)
(xt,yt) = E xtyt
has been used for the simple product-sum. The covariance matrix of these estimators is (67) r n n
vb = [(ujt, MM)]-1 EE*
fc=0
where [ajk] indicates an r x r matrix with typical element ajk and Ts the autocovariance function of {r)t}. If the processes {ujt} are jointly stationary, then one can write
n
(68)
exp
and (67) can be rewritten
(69)
n
where M(co) = [M;/,(w)], M = M(TT) - M(-TT), and 0(oj) is the spectral density function of {T^}. This principle can be extended even to mildly nonstationary processes, such as polynomials in t (Grenander & Rosenblatt 1957). The maximum likelihood estimators, /3;, will in general have smaller variances; these estimators are obtained by minimizing the log-likelihood, (70)
L ^ const. —
log cr2 +
They obey the equation system
(71) 7 = 1,2, - - - . r . Their covariance matrix is (72)
If the residual spectral density function, <£(eo), involves unknown parameters, then expression (70) must be maximized with respect to these as well as to the (3j. This maximization can be complicated, and a simpler way of allowing for some autocorrelation in {^t} is to fit, instead of (64), a model with some autoregression and with uncorrelated residuals, p (73) E + €, =E
27T
n
If 0(cu) has the same value at all co's for which any of the M; 7 ;(ft)) change value, then the variances of the least square estimators will be asymptotically equal to those of the maximum likelihood estimators, and, indeed, the two sets of estimators may themselves be asymptotically equal. For example, (40) above shows that the maximum likelihood estimator of a mean, /*, reduces asymptotically to the least square estimator x, a great simplification.
The p* of (73) cannot be identified with the p, of (64), but they do indicate to what extent the ujt can explain xt variation. Spectral (periodogram) analysis In fitting a parametric model one obtains an estimate of the spectral density function, Dut one often wishes to obtain a direct estimate without the assumptions implied in a model, just as one uses Cg to estimate the autocovariance function, Ts . The periodogram ordinate, f n ()-), one has also, for normal processes, (75) This variance does not tend to zero with increasing n, and f n (&>) is not a consistent estimator of <£(w). That explains the very irregular appearance of the periodogram when it is graphed and the reason one
E (3jUjt, Xf-
s
—
conceives the idea of estimating $(co) by smoothing the periodogram. What one can say concerning distributions is that the quantities (76)
I,= ' / e i - ' - x
are approximately independent standard exponential variables for 7 = 1,2, • • • , N, where N < n/2. That is, the I; have approximately a joint probability density function exp(— E^i^-)Suppose now that one attempts to estimate $(«) at w = X. by an estimator of the form
(77)
E
cos (CDS),
TIME SERIES: Advanced Problems
then for a bivariate stationary process {xt, y t } the idea of a spectral density function is replaced by that of a spectral density matrix
where K(o>) is a symmetric function of period represented by a Fourier series, (78)
K(o>)=£fe,exp(za>s). 8
(86)
From (76) it follows that -
(79)
(80)
var<5(X) ~ — / TiTT J
M
s
m
ks =
m,
si > m,
0,
(82)
'
To test whether a strong peak in the periodogram indicates the presence of a harmonic component (when a delta-function would be superimposed on the spectral density function), one can use the statistic
(83)
9=
max I,
SI,
for which (84)
p(g>u) =
J!
The sum in (84) is taken for all values of j not greater than 1/u. In constructing the I; one can use a formula of type (77) to estimate
=E
tyijx
(87)
The Fourier series K(w) will be chosen as a function with a peak at the origin; as this peak grows sharper, the bias of $(A) (determined from (79) ) decreases, but the variance (determined by (80)) increases. The best choice will be a compromise between these two considerations. The question of the optimal choice of weight function has been much studied. The choice is partly a matter of convenience, depending upon whether or not one works from the periodogram, that is, upon which of the two formulas (77) is used. If one is calculating digitally, then a simple and useful smoothing formula is Bartlett's, for which
(81)
[
Suppose one wishes to investigate the dependence of {yt} upon { x t } . As an alternative to low-lag linear models such as
K(\ -
2-7T
69
-* + et
one can apply multivariate techniques to the Fourier components of the processes, at individual values of a). Thus, $ OT/ (OJ) is the variance of the Fourier component of {yt} at frequency co; one can take a linear regression of this component onto the corresponding Fourier component of { x t } and find a "residual variance," (88)
The quantity C r , y (w) is the type of correlation coefficient known as the coherency; if it approaches unity in magnitude, then the frequency components at a) of the two series are closely related. It may well happen, for example, that low frequency components of two series keep well in step, although the short-term variation corresponding to high frequency components may be almost uncorrelated between the two series. Note that (88) is the spectral density function of the process 00
I1?*} = {yt- k E= -oo bbXt-k}, where the b's are chosen to minimize var(i7). In practice the elements of the spectral density matrix must be estimated by formulas analogous to (77). A sometimes illuminating alternative to a periodogram analysis is to decompose a series into components corresponding to different frequency bands by using a number of band-pass operators of type (29) and to examine these components individually.
P. WHITTLE [See also LINEAR HYPOTHESES, article on REGRESSION; MARKOV CHAINS.] BIBLIOGRAPHY There are no completely satisfactory texts, principally because virtually nobody has a satisfactorily broad grasp of both the theory and the application of time series analysis. A person with a mathematical background may do best
70
TIME SERIES: Cycles
to read the first four chapters of Grenander & Rosenblatt 1957 and to follow this with a study of Hannan 1960. For someone with less mathematics, chapters 29 and 30 of Kendall & Stuart 1966 provide an introduction which, although not deep, is nevertheless sound and well illustrated. Jenkins 1965 surveys some of the more recent work on spectral analysis. BARTLETT, M. S. 1963 The Spectral Analysis of Point Processes. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B 25:264-296. DURBIN, J. 1959 Efficient Estimation of Parameters in Moving-average Models. Biometrika 46:306-316. GRANGER, CLIVE W. J.; and HATANAKA, M. 1964 Spectral Analysis of Economic Time Series. Princeton Univ. Press. GRENANDER, ULF; and ROSENBLATT, MURRAY 1957 Statistical Analysis of Stationary Time Series. New York: Wiley. HANNAN, EDWARD J. (1960) 1962 Time Series Analysis. London: Methuen. INTERNATIONAL STATISTICAL INSTITUTE 1965 Bibliography on Time Series and Stochastic Processes. Edited by Herman Wold. Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd. JENKINS, G. M. 1965 A Survey of Spectral Analysis. Applied Statistics 14:2-32. JOHNSTON, JOHN 1963 Econometric Methods. New York: McGraw-Hill. KENDALL, MAURICE G.; and STUART, ALAN 1966 The Advanced Theory of Statistics. Volume 3: Design and Analysis, and Time Series. New York: Hafner; London: Griffin. MACROBERT, THOMAS M. (1917) 1947 Functions of a Complex Variable. 3d ed. New York: Macmillan. SLUTSKY, EUGEN E. (1927) 1937 The Summation of Random Causes as the Source of Cyclic Processes. Econometrica 5:105-146. -> First published in Russian. Reprinted in 1960 in Slutsky's Izbrannye trudy. SYMPOSIUM ON TIME SERIES ANALYSIS, BROWN UNIVERSITY, 1962 1963 Proceedings. Edited by Murray Rosenblatt. New York: Wiley. WALKER, A. M. 1962 Large-sample Estimation of Parameters for Autoregressive Processes With Movingaverage Residuals. Biometrika 49:117-131. WHITTLE, P. 1953 The Analysis of Multiple Stationary Time Series. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B 15:125-139. WHITTLE, P. 1954 Appendix. In Herman Wold, A Study in the Analysis of Stationary Time Series. 2d ed. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell. WHITTLE, P. 1963 Prediction and Regulation by Linear Least-square Methods. London: English Universities Press. WOLD, HERMAN (1938) 1954 A Study in the Analysis of Stationary Time Series. 2d ed. With an Appendix by P. Whittle. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell. Ill CYCLES
Cycles, waves, pulsations, rhythmic phenomena, regularity in return, periodicity—these notions reflect a broad category of natural, human, and social phenomena where cycles are the dominating feature. The daily and yearly cycles in sunlight, temperature, and other geophysical phenomena are among the simplest and most obvious instances.
Regular periodicity provides a basis for prediction and for extracting other useful information about the observed phenomena. Nautical almanacs with their tidal forecasts are a typical example. Medical examples are pulse rate as an indicator of cardiovascular status and the electrocardiograph as a basis for analysis of the condition of the heart. The study of cyclic phenomena dates from prehistoric times, and so does the experience that the area has dangerous pitfalls. From the dawn of Chinese history comes the story that the astronomers Hi and Ho lost their heads because they failed to forecast a solar eclipse (perhaps 2137 B.C.). In 1929, after some twelve years of promising existence, the Harvard Business Barometer (or Business Index) disappeared because it failed to predict the precipitous drop in the New York stock market. Cyclic phenomena are recorded in terms of time series. A key aspect of cycles is the degree of predictability they give to the time series generated. Three basic situations should be distinguished: (a) The cycles are fixed, so that the series is predictable over the indefinite future. (b) The cycles are partly random, so that the series is predictable only over a limited future. (c) The cycles are spurious—that is, there are no real cycles—and the series is not predictable. For the purposes of this article the term "cycle" is used in a somewhat broader sense than the strict cyclic periodicity of case (a). Limited and unlimited predictability The fundamental difference between situations (a) and (b) can be illustrated by two simple cases. The scheme of "hidden periodicities." Suppose that an observed time series is generated by two components. The first is strictly periodic, with period length p, so that its value at time t + p is equal to its value at time t. The second component, superimposed upon the first, is a sequence of random (independent, identically distributed) elements. Thus, each term of the observed series can be represented as the sum of a periodic term and a random one. Tidal water is a cyclic phenomenon where this model applies quite well (see Figure 1). Here the observed series is the measured water level at Dover, the strictly periodic component represents the lunar cycle, 12 hours and 50 minutes in length (two maxima in one lunar day), and the random elements are the irregular deviations caused by storms, random variations in air pressure, earthquakes, etc. The periodic component provides a prediction—
TIME SERIES: Cycles
71
Predicted by model Observed
figure 1 — Level of tidal water at Dover, 6 daysi * Hypothetical data.
an unbiased predicted value for a future time with expectation equal to that future value of the periodic component, and with prediction error equal to the random element. The difficulty is that the periodic component is not known and must be estimated empirically. A simple and obvious method is that of Buys Ballot's table; each point on the periodic component is estimated by the average of several points on the observed series, separated in time by the length of the period, p, where p either is known or is assessed by trial and error. The larger is the residual as compared to the cyclic component, the longer is the series needed to estimate with confidence the cyclic component. The approach of hidden periodicities may be extended, with two or more periodic components being considered. Tidal water again provides a typical illustration. In addition to the dominating lunar component, a closer fit to the data is obtained by considering a solar component with period 183 days. In view of its simplicity and its many important applications, it is only natural that the approach involving strictly periodic components is of long standing. A distinction must be made, however, between formal representation of a series (which is always possible), on the one hand, and prediction, on the other. Under general conditions, any series, even a completely random one, can be represented by a sum of periodic components plus a
residual, and if the number of periodic components is increased indefinitely, the residual can be made as small as desired. In particular, if each of the periodic components is a sine or a cosine curve (a sinusoid), then the representation of the observed series is called a spectral representation. Such a representation, it is well to note, may be of only limited use for prediction outside the observed range, because if the observed range is widened, the terms of the representation may change appreciably. In the extreme case when the observations are all stochastically independent, the spectral representation of the series is an infinite sum of sinusoids; in this case neither the spectral representation nor alternative forecasting devices provide any predictive information. Irregular cycles. Until rather recently (about 1930), the analysis of oscillatory time series was almost equivalent to the assessment of periodicities. For a long time, however, it had been clear that important phenomena existed that refused to adhere to the forecasts based on the scheme of hidden periodicities. The most obvious and challenging of these was the sequence of some twenty business cycles, each of duration five to ten years, between 1800 and 1914. Phenomena with irregular cycles require radically different methods of analysis. The scheme of "disturbed periodicity." The breakthrough in the area of limited predictability came with Yule's model (1927) for the irregular
72
TIME SERIES: Cycles
Disturbances plotted as de from the observed series
Figure 2 — Sunspof intensity Source: Adapted from Yule 1927.
11-year cycle of sunspot intensity (see Figure 2). Yule interpreted the sunspot cycle as similar to the movement of a damped pendulum that is kept in motion by an unending stream of random shocks. [See the biography of YULE.] The sharp contrast between the scheme of hidden periodicities and the scheme of disturbed periodicity can now be seen. In the hidden periodicities model the random elements are superimposed upon the cyclic component(s) without affecting or disturbing their strict periodicity. In Yule's model the
series may be regarded as generated by the random elements, and there is no room for strict periodicity. (Of course, the two types can be combined, as will be seen.) The deep difference between the two types of model is reflected in their forecasting properties (see Figure 3). The time scales for the two forecasts have here been adjusted so as to give the same period. In the hidden-periodicities model the forecast over the future time span has the form of an undamped sinusoid, thus permitting an effec-
Disturbed periodicity model Hidden periodicity model
Figure 3 — Forecasting the future on the basis of the past
TIME SERIES: Cycles tive forecast over indefinitely long spans when the model is correct. In Yule's model the forecast is a damped sinusoid, which provides effective information over limited spans, but beyond that it gives only the trivial forecast that the value of the series is expected to equal the unconditional over-all mean of the series. Generalizations. The distinction between limited and unlimited predictability of an observed times series goes to the core of the probability structure of the series. In the modern development of time series analysis on the basis of the theory of stochastic processes, the notions of predictability are brought to full significance. It can be shown that the series yt under very general conditions allows a unique representation, (1)
yt
known as predictive decomposition, where (a) the two components are uncorrelated, (Z?) <&t is deterministic and ^t is nondeterministic, and (c) the nondeterministic component allows a representation of the Yule type. In Yule's model no O« component is present. In the hidden-periodicities model <£>i is a sum of sinusoids, while tyt is the random residual. Generally, however, <$>t, although deterministic in the prediction sense, is random. The statistical treatment of mixed models like (1) involves a variety of important and challenging problems. Speaking broadly, the valid assessment of the structure requires observations that extend over a substantial number of cycles, and even then the task is difficult. A basic problem is to test for and estimate a periodic component on the supplementary hypothesis that the ensuing
20.0
73
residual allows a nondeterministic representation, or, more generally, to perform a simultaneous estimation of the two components. A general method for dealing with these problems has been provided by Whittle (1954); for a related approach, see Allais (1962). Other problems with a background in this decomposition occur in the analysis of seasonal variation [see TIME SERIES, article on SEASONAL ADJUSTMENT]. Other stochastic models. Since a tendency to cyclic variation is a conspicuous feature of many phenomena, stochastic models for their analysis have used a variety of mechanisms for generating apparent or genuine cyclicity. Brief reference will be made to the dynamic models for (a) predatorprey populations and (£>) epidemic diseases. In both cases the pioneering approaches were deterministic, the models having the form of differential equation systems. The stochastic models developed at a later stage are more general, and they cover features of irregularity that cannot be explained by deterministic methods. What is of special interest in the present context is that the cycles produced in the simplest deterministic models are strictly periodic, whereas the stochastic models produce irregular cycles that allow prediction only over a limited future. Figure 4 refers to a stochastic model given by M. S. Bartlett (1957) for the dynamic balance between the populations of a predator—for example, the lynx—and its prey—for example, the hare. The data of the graph are artificial, being constructed from the model by a Monte Carlo experiment. The classic models of A. J. Lotka and V. Volterra are deterministic, and the ensuing cycles take the form
24.0
Figure 4 — Predator-prey populations according to a stochastic model Source: Bartlett 1957, p. 37.
74
TIME SERIES: Cycles
NUMBER OF CASES
4,000
1910
Figure 5 — Paralytic cases of poliomyelitis, Sweden 1905—1962 Source: Unpublished data.
of sinusoids. The cyclic tendency is quite pronounced in Figure 4, but at the same time the development is affected by random features. After three peaks in both populations, the prey remains at a rather low level that turns out to be critical for the predator, and the predator population dies out. The peaks in Figure 5 mark the severe spells of poliomyelitis in Sweden from 1905 onward. The cyclic tendency is explained, on the one hand, by the contagious nature of the disease and, on the other, by the fact that slight infections provide immunity, so that after a nationwide epidemic it takes some time before a new group of susceptibles emerges. The foundations for a mathematical theory of the dynamics of epidemic diseases were laid by Kermack and McKendrick (1927), who used a deterministic approach in terms of differential equations. Their famous threshold theorem states that only if the infection rate, p, is above a certain critical value, p 0 , will the disease flare up in epidemics. Bartlett (1957) and others have developed the theory in terms of stochastic models; a stochastic counterpart to the threshold theorem has been provided by Whittle (1955). Bartlett's predator-prey model provides an example of how a cyclic deterministic model may become evolutive (nonstationary) when stochasticized, while Whittle's epidemic model shows how
an evolutive deterministic model may become stationary. Both of the stochastic models are completely nondeterministic; note that the predictive decomposition (1) extends to nonstationary processes. The above examples have been selected so as to emphasize that there is no sharp demarcation between cycles with limited predictability and the spurious periodicity of phenomena ruled by randomness, where by pure chance the variation may take wavelike forms, but which provides no basis even for limited predictions. Thus, if a recurrent phenomenon has a low rate of incidence, say A per year, and the incidences are mutually independent (perhaps a rare epidemic disease that has no aftereffect of immunity), the record of observations might evoke the idea that the recurrences have some degree of periodicity. It is true that in such cases there is an average period of length 1/X between the recurrences, but the distance from one recurrence to the next is a random variable that cannot be forecast, since it is independent of past observations. A related situation occurs in the summation of mutually independent variables. Figure 6 shows a case in point as observed in a Monte Carlo experiment with summation of independent variables (Wold 1965). The similarity between the three waves, each representing the consecutive additions
TIME SERIES: Cycles
75
—1,500 -
-2,000 1800
1850
1900
Figure 6 — Spurious cycles and Kondratieff waves Sources: Consecutive sums, Wold 1965, p. 25; wholesale prices, Piatier 1961.
of some 100,000 variables, is rather striking. Is it really due to pure chance? Or is the computer simulation of the "randomness" marred by some slip that has opened the door to a cyclic tendency in the ensuing sums? (For an amusing discussion of related cases, see Cole's "Biological Clock in the Unicorn" 1957.) Figure 6 also gives, in the series of wholesale prices in Great Britain, an example of "Kondratieff waves"—the much discussed interpretation of economic phenomena as moving slowly up and down in spells of some fifty years. Do the waves embody genuine tendencies to long cycles, or are they of a spurious nature? The question is easy to pose but difficult or impossible to answer on the basis of available data. The argument that the "Kondratieff waves" are to a large extent parallel in the main industrialized countries carries little weight, in view of international economic connections. The two graphs have been combined in Figure 6 in order to emphasize that with regard to waves of long duration it is always difficult to sift the wheat of genuine cycles from the chaff of spurious periodicity. [See the biography of KONDRATIEFF.] Genuine versus spurious cycles Hypothesis testing. Cycles are a specific feature in many scientific models, and their statistical assessment usually includes (a) parameter estimation for purposes of quantitative specification of the model, and (£>) hypothesis testing for purposes of establishing the validity of the model and thereby of the cycles. In modern statistics it is often (sometimes tacitly) specified that any method under (a) should be supplemented by an appropriate device under (b). Now, this principle is easy to state, but
it is sometimes difficult to fulfill, particularly with regard to cycles and related problems of time series analysis. The argument behind this view may be summed up as follows, although not everyone would take the same position: (i) Most of the available methods for hypothesis testing are designed for use in controlled experiments—the supreme tool of scientific model building—whereas the assessment of cycles typically refers to nonexperimental situations. (ii) The standard methods for both estimation and hypothesis testing are based on the assumption of independent replications. Independence is on the whole a realistic and appropriate assumption in experimental situations, but usually not for nonexperimental data. (iii) Problems of point estimation often require less stringent assumptions than those of interval estimation and hypothesis testing. This is frequently overlooked by the methods designed for experimental applications, because the assumption of independence is usually introduced jointly for point estimation, where it is not always needed, and for hypothesis testing, where it is always consequential. (if) It is therefore a frequent situation in the analysis of nonexperimental data that adequate methods are available for estimation, but further assumptions must be introduced to conduct tests of hypotheses. It is even a question whether such tests can be performed at all in a manner corresponding to the standard methods in experimental analysis, because of the danger of specification errors that mar the analysis of nonexperimental data. (f) Standard methods of hypothesis testing in
76
TIME SERIES: Cycles
controlled experiments are thus of limited scope in nonexperimental situations. Here other approaches come to the fore. It will be sufficient to mention predictive testing—the model at issue is taken as a basis for forecasts, and in due course the forecasts are compared with the actual developments. Reporting of nonexperimental models should always include a predictive test. The following example is on the cranky side, but it does illustrate that the builder of a nonexperimental model should have le courage de son modele to report a predictive test, albeit in this case the quality of the model does not come up to the model builder's courage. The paper (Lewin 1958) refers to two remarkable events—the first permanent American settlement at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607 and the Declaration of Independence in 1776 —and takes the 169 years in between as the basic "cycle." After another 84y2 years (% of the basic cycle) there is the remarkable event of the Civil War, in 1861; after 56 more years (y3 of the cycle) there is the beginning of the era of world wars in 1917; after 28 more years (y6 of the cycle) there is the atomic era with the first bomb exploded in 1945. The paper, published in 1958, ends with the following predictive statement: "The above relation to the basic 169 year cycle of yl5 y2, y3, % is a definite decreasing arithmetic progression where the sum of all previous denominators becomes the denominator of the next fraction. To continue this pattern and project, we have the 6th cycle—1959, next U.S. Epochal Event—14 year lapse—y12 of 169 years" (Lewin 1958, pp. 11-12). The 1959 event should have been some major catastrophe like an atomic war, if I have correctly understood what the author intimates between the lines in the first part of his article. It is well to note that this paper, singled out here as an example, is far from unique. Cycles have an intrinsic fascination for the human mind. A cursory scanning of the literature, particularly Cycles, the journal of the Foundation for the Study of Cycles, will suffice to show that in addition to the strictly scientific contributions, there is a colorful subvegetation where in quality and motivation the papers and books display all shades of quasiscientific and pseudoscientific method, down to number mysticism and other forms of dilettantism and crankiness, and where the search for truth is sometimes superseded by drives of self-realization and self-suggestion, not to speak of unscrupulous money-making. The crucial distinction here is not between professional scientists and amateurs. It is all to the good if the search for truth is strengthened by many modes of motivation. The sole valid
criterion is given by the general standards of scientific method. Professionals are not immune to selfsuggestion and other human weaknesses, and the devoted work of amateurs guided by an uncompromising search for truth is as valuable here as in any other scientific area. Further remarks Cycles are of key relevance in the theory and application of time series analysis; their difficulty is clear from the fact that it is only recently that scientific tools appropriate for dealing with cycles and their problems have been developed. The fundamental distinction between the hidden-periodicity model, with its strict periodicity and unlimited predictability, and Yule's model, with its disturbed periodicity and limited predictability, could be brought to full significance only after 1933, by the powerful methods of the modern theory of stochastic processes. On the applied side, the difficulty of the problems has been revealed in significant shifts in the very way of viewing and posing the problems. Thus, up to the failure of the Harvard Business Barometer the analysis of business cycles was essentially a unirelational approach, the cycle being interpreted as generated by a leading series by way of a system of lagged relationships with other series. The pioneering works of Jan Tinbergen in the late 1930s broke away from the unirelational approach. The models of Tinbergen and his followers are multirelational, the business cycles being seen as the resultant of a complex system of economic relationships. [See BUSINESS CYCLES; DISTRIBUTED LAGS.] The term "cycle," when used without further specification, primarily refers to periodicities in time series, and that is how the term is taken in this article. The notion of "life cycle" as the path from birth to death of living organisms is outside the scope of this presentation. So are the historical theories of Spengler and Toynbee that make a grandiose combination of time series and life cycle concepts, seeing human history as a succession of cultures that are born, flourish, and die. Even the shortest treatment of these broad issues would carry us far beyond the realm of time series analysis; this omission, however, must not be construed as a criticism. [For a discussion of these issues, see PERIODIZATION.] Cycles vs. innovations. The history of human knowledge suggests that belief in cycles has been a stumbling block in the evolution of science. The philosophy of the cosmic cycle was part of Stoic and Epicurean philosophy: every occurrence is a recurrence; history repeats itself in cycles, cosmic
TIME SERIES: Cycles cycles; all things, persons, and phenomena return exactly as before in cycle after cycle. What is it in this strange theory that is of such appeal that it should have been incorporated into the foundations of leading philosophical schools and should occur in less extreme forms again and again in philosophical thinking through the centuries, at least up to Herbert Spencer, although it later lost its vogue? Part of the answer seems to be that philosophy has had difficulties with the notion of innovation, having, as it were, a horror innovationum. If our philosophy leaves no room for innovations, we must conclude that every occurrence is a recurrence, and from there it is psychologically a short step to the cosmic cycle. This argument being a blind alley, the way out has led to the notions of innovation and limited predictability and to other key concepts in modern theories of cyclic phenomena. Thus, in Yule's model (Figure 2) the random shocks are innovations that reduce the regularity of the sunspot cycles so as to make them predictable only over a limited future. More generally, in the predictive decomposition (1) the nondeterministic component is generated by random elements, innovations, and the component is therefore only of limited predictability. Here there is a close affinity to certain aspects of the general theory of knowledge. We note that prediction always has its cognitive basis in regularities observed in the past, cyclic or not, and that innovations set a ceiling to prediction by scientific methods. [See TIME SERIES, article on ADVANCED PROBLEMS.]
77
— X cos (tit + fji sin cot,
(4) while
(5) is a sequence of random variables, independent of one another and of xt, and identically distributed with zero mean, E(e) = 0, and standard deviation o-(e). For any X and ft the sinusoid (4) is periodic, xt+p — xt, with period p = 2-Tr/co, and satisfies the difference equation (6)
— *2,pXt-i + Xt-z — 0,
where p = cos co. The sinusoid xt makes a forecast of yt+if over any prediction span k (of course, for real prediction the values of X, //., and p must be known or assumed), (7)
fe = 1, 2,
pred yt+k = xt+k ,
giving the prediction error A(t, fe) = yt+k
= €t+1c.
Hence the forecast (7) is unbiased and has the same mean-square deviation for all t and k,
(8a)
E(A) = 0,
Further light can be cast on the rationale of the forecast (7) by considering the coefficients X, p as limiting regression coefficients of yt on cos tot and sin cot :
X = lim — > yy t cos cot; T
Mathematical analysis The verbal exposition will now, in all brevity, be linked up with the theory of stochastic processes. The focus will be on (a) the comparison between the schemes of "hidden periodicities" and "disturbed harmonics" and (b) spectral representation versus predictive decomposition. Write the observed series
(2)
'~,yt-i,yt,yt*, • • - ,
taking the observations as deviations from the mean and letting the distance between two consecutive observations serve as time unit. Unless otherwise specified, the series (2) is assumed to be of finite length, ranging from t = 1 to t = n. Hidden periodicities. With reference to Figure 1, consider first the case of one hidden periodicity. The observed series yt is assumed to be generated by the model (3)
yt -xt
= 0,±l, ±2,
Where xt, the "hidden periodicity," is a sinusoid,
n^
n £-j
jj, — lim — N yt sin cot. n->oo fl
<
Disturbed periodicity. trated in Figure 2 is (9)
A
Yule's model as illus-
0 < y < 1,
yt -
where the notation makes for easy comparison with model (3): (a) In (3) the disturbances, et, are superimposed on the periodic component, xt, while yt in (9) is entirely generated by current and past disturbances, (10a)
yt = €t + a^t-i + a2€t-2 + • ' • ,
where «i = 2p (a0 — 1) and (lOfo)
ak = 2pak-i - y 2 a fc _ 2 ,
k = 2, 3, • • • .
Hence in (3) the correlation coefficient (11)
r(e t + f c , ? / 0 = 0
78
TIME SERIES: Cycles
Model (9)
Figure 7 — The standard deviation, a(A), of the prediction error as a function of the range, k, spanned by the forecast
for all k •£ 0 and t, while (9) gives (11) for all k > 0 and t. (b) (See Figure 3.) If the future disturbances, et+jc, were absent, yt+k in (3) would reduce to xt+k and thus make an undamped sinusoid (4), while yt+k in (9), say, y*t+k, would satisfy the difference equation
(12)
=o with initial values y* = yt,y]_^ = yt_lt giving ( 13a)
(13b)
z/;+fc = ak€t + a^e^ + ••• , fe)
k)].
Hence, y*t+k would make a damped sinusoid with damping factor 7, frequency to given by cos o> = p/y, and period 2?r/aj, and where the two initial values yt, yt-i determine the parameters X*, ft*. Since the difference equations in (lOfo) and (12) are the same except for the initial values, the form (13fo) of a damped sinusoid extends to ak, except that X*, /x* will be different. (c) In (3) the undamped sinusoid, xt, provides a forecast of yt+k that is unbiased in the sense of (8a). In (9) the damped sinusoid, y*t+k, provides a forecast of yt+k,
(14) where
(d) Figure 7 illustrates that in model (3) the prediction error has constant mean square deviation for all spans k. In (9) it has mean square deviation (16)
and thus is increasing with k. Formulas (8Z?) and (16) show that in (3) the disturbances, et, do not interfere with the sinusoid component, xt, while in (9) they build up the entire process, yt. (e) The fundamental difference between models (3) and (9) is further reflected in the correlogram of yt,
In (3) the correlogram is an undamped sinusoid (4), in (9) a damped sinusoid (13b). Hence, the two correlograms are curves of the same types as those shown in Figure 3. The graph actually shows the two correlograms, not any two forecasts. Generalizations. The scheme (3) extends to several hidden periodicities,
(17)
v — — Z-i V •it
cos co;t +
sin coj
giving the same prediction formulas (7)-(8). Yule's model (9) extends to the general scheme of autor egression,
(18)
showing that the forecast (14) is unbiased in the sense of the conditional expectation of yt+i< as conditioned by the current and past observations
[E(A 2 )]* = (1 + a\ + •• • + al Jo^e)
yt
giving expansions of type (10a) and (13a) and a prediction like (15a). Note that formula (17) is a composite undamped swinging. The difference equations (6) and (12) extend from order 2 to order 2h. The extension of (13b) gives y*uk as a composite damped swinging.
TIME SERIES: Cycles Stationary stochastic processes. The above models are fundamental cases of stationary stochastic processes. The observed series (2) is seen as a realization of the process. Station arity means that for any fixed n the random variables r]t+i , • • • , i?*+n that generate the observed values yt+i , • • • , yt+n have a joint probability distribution that is independent of t. In this interpretation a realization corresponds to a sampling point in an ?z-dimensional distribution, and the parameters X, JJL in model (3) are random variables that vary from one realization (2) of the process to another. Two general representation theorems for stationary stochastic processes will be quoted briefly. Spectral representation. The basic reference for spectral representation is Cramer (1940). Any real-valued stationary process 7jt allows the representation (19)
2 r =— /
where X ( « ) , / A ( W ) are real processes with zero means and zero intercorrelations, with increments dX(w), dft(w) which have zero means and zero intercorrelations, and with variances
where V(w) is the cumulative spectrum of the process. Conversely, X(«) and /*(w) can be represented in terms of 771 , Sin
tot
and correspondingly for ^t(w). (Here l.i.m. signifies limit in the mean; l.i.m. may exist even if the ordinary limit does not.) Applying the representation (19) to model (17), the spectrum V(«) has discontinuities at the points &> = a>i , while the component et corresponds to the continuous part of the spectrum. As applied to models (9) and (18), the representation (19) gives a spectrum V(w) that is everywhere continuous. Broadly speaking, the spectral representation (19) is useful for analyzing the cyclical properties of the series (2) inside the range of observations, while it is of operative use for prediction outside the observation range only in the case when V(w) presents one or more discontinuities. Predictive decomposition. The basic reference for predictive decomposition is Wold (1938). Any stationary process 771 with finite variance allows the
79
decomposition (1). The deterministic component, Oi, can be linearly predicted to any prescribed accuracy over any given span k on the basis of the past observations yt-i, yt-2, '' • • The nondeterministic component, ^, allows a representation of type (10a) with ]C«f < °°, correlation properties in accordance with (11) for all k > 0 and t, and hence a prediction of type (13a). The ensuing prediction for rjt+k, pred r)t+k = ®t+k + pred yt+*, has least square properties in accordance with (16), and if all joint probability distributions are normal (or have linear regressions), the prediction will be unbiased in the sense of (15b ). In models (3) and (17), xt is the deterministic component and et the nondeterministic component. Models (9) and (18) are completely nondeterministic. Levels D, M, N in Figure 7 refer to models that are completely deterministic, mixed, and completely nondeterministic, respectively, each level indicating the standard deviation of the prediction error for indefinitely large spans k. Making use of the analytical methods of spectral analysis, Kolmogorov (1941) and Wiener (1942) have developed the theory of the decomposition (1) and the nondeterministic expansion (10). This article aims at a brief orientation to the portrayal of cycles as a broad topic in transition. Up to the 1930s the cyclical aspects of time series were dealt with by a variety of approaches, in which nonscientific and prescientific views were interspersed with the sound methods of some few forerunners and pioneers. The mathematical foundations of probability theory as laid by Kolmogorov in 1933 gave rise to forceful developments in time series analysis and stochastic processes, bringing the problems about cycles within the reach of rigorous treatment. In the course of the transition, interest in cycles has been superseded by other aspects of time series analysis, notably prediction and hypothesis testing. For that reason, and also because cyclical features appear in time series of very different probability structures, it is only natural that cycles have not (or not as yet) been taken as a subject for a monograph. HERMAN WOLD [See also BUSINESS CYCLES and PREDICTION AND FORECASTING, ECONOMIC.] BIBLIOGRAPHY
ALLAIS, MAURICE 1962 Test de periodicite: Generalisation du test de Schuster au cas de series temporelles autocorrelees dans Fhypothese d'un processus de per-
80
TIME SERIES: Seasonal Adjustment
turbations aleatoires d'un systeme stable. Institut International de Statistique, Bulletin 39, no. 2:143193. BARTLETT, M. S. 1957 On Theoretical Models for Competitive and Predatory Biological Systems. Biometrika 44:27-42. BURKHARDT, H. 1904 Trigonometrische Interpolation: Mathematische Behandlung periodischer Naturerscheinungen mit Einschluss ihrer Anwendungen. Volume 2, pages 643-693 in Enzyklopddie der mathematischen Wissenschaften. Leipzig: Teubner. -> The encyclopedia was also published in French. BUYS BALLOT, CHRISTOPHER H. D. 1847 Les changemens periodiques de temperature dependants de la nature du soleil et de la lune mis en rapport avec le prognostic du temps deduits d'observations Neerlandaises de 1729 a 1846. Utrecht (Netherlands): Kemink. COLE, LAMONT C. 1957 Biological Clock in the Unicorn. Science 125:874-876. CRAMER, HARALD 1940 On the Theory of Stationary Random Processes. Annals of Mathematics 2d Series 41:215-230. Cycles. -» Published since 1950 by the Foundation for the Study of Cycles. See especially Volume 15. KERMACK, W. O.; and MCKENDRICK, A. G. 1927 A Contribution to the Mathematical Theory of Epidemics. Royal Society of London, Proceedings Series A 113: 700-721. KERMACK, W. O.; and MCKENDRICK, A. G. 1932 Contributions to the Mathematical Theory of Epidemics. Part 2: The Problem of Endemicity. Royal Society of London, Proceedings Series A 138:55-83. KERMACK, W. O.; and MCKENDRICK, A. G. 1933 Contributions to the Mathematical Theory of Epidemics. Part 3: Further Studies of the Problem of Endemicity. Royal Society of London, Proceedings Series A 141: 94-122. KEYSER, CASSIUS J. (1922) 1956 The Group Concept. Volume 3, pages 1538-1557 in James R. Newman, The World of Mathematics: A Small Library of the Literature of Mathematics From A'h-Mose the Scribe to Albert Einstein. New York: Simon & Schuster. -» A paperback edition was published in 1962. KOLMOGOROV, A. N. (1941) 1953 Sucesiones estacionarias en espacios de Hilbert (Stationary Sequences in Hilbert Space). Trabajos de estadistica 4:55-73, 243-270. -> First published in Russian in Volume 2 of the Biulleten Moskovskogo Universiteta. LEWIN, EDWARD A. 1958 1959 and a Cyclical Theory of History. Cycles 9:11-12. MITCHELL, WESLEY C. 1913 Business Cycles. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press. -> Part 3 was reprinted by University of California Press in 1959 as Business Cycles and Their Causes. PIATIER, ANDRE 1961 Statistique et observation economique. Volume 2. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. SCHUMPETER, JOSEPH A. 1939 Business Cycles: A Theoretical, Historical, and Statistical Analysis of the Capitalist Process. 2 vols. New York and London: McGraw-Hill. -> An abridged version was published in 1964. SCHUSTER, ARTHUR 1898 On the Investigation of Hidden Periodicities With Application to a Supposed 26 Day Period of Meteorological Phenomena. Terrestrial Magnetism 3:13-41.
TINBERGEN, J. 1940 Econometric Business Cycle Research. Review of Economic Studies 7:73-90. WHITTAKER, E. T.; and ROBINSON, G. (1924) 1944 The Calculus of Observations: A Treatise on Numerical Mathematics. 4th ed. Princeton, N.J.: Van Nostrand. WHITTLE, P. 1954 The Simultaneous Estimation of a Time Series: Harmonic Components and Covariance Structure. Trabajos de estadistica 3:43-57. WHITTLE, P. 1955 The Outcome of a Stochastic Epidemic—A Note on Bailey's Paper. Biometrika 42: 116-122. WIENER, NORBERT (1942) 1964 Extrapolation, Interpolation and Smoothing of a Stationary Time Series, With Engineering Applications. Cambridge, Mass.: Technology Press of M.I.T. -» First published during World War n as a classified report to Section D2, National Defense Research Committee. A paperback edition was published in 1964. WOLD, HERMAN (1938) 1954 A Study in the Analysis of Stationary Time Series. 2d ed. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell. WOLD, HERMAN 1965 A Graphic Introduction to Stochastic Processes. Pages 7-76 in International Statistical Institute, Bibliography on Time Series and Stochastic Processes. Edited by Herman Wold. Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd. WOLD, HERMAN 1967 Time as the Realm of Forecasting. Pages 525-560 in New York Academy of Sciences, Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Time. New York: The Academy. YULE, G. UDNY 1927 On a Method of Investigating Periodicities in Disturbed Series, With Special Reference to Wolfer's Sunspot Numbers. Royal Society, Philosophical Transactions Series A 226:267-298. IV
SEASONAL ADJUSTMENT
The objective of economic time series analysis is to separate underlying systematic movements in such series from irregular fluctuations. The systematic movements in the economy—the signals— reveal seasonal patterns, cyclical movements, and long-term trends. The irregular fluctuations—the noise—are a composite of erratic real world occurrences and measurement errors. There are definite advantages in breaking down these two major factors into their respective components. Separation of the systematic components provides a better basis for studying causal factors and forecasting changes in economic activity. Separation of the irregular components provides a basis for balancing the costs of reducing statistical errors against the resultant gains in accuracy. This article is concerned with one of the systematic components, seasonal variations, especially how to measure and eliminate it from economic time series. The relationships between seasonal variations and the other components are also described, with special reference to economic time series in the United States. Characteristics of seasonal variations in different countries, regions, and industries are not discussed.
TIME SERIES: Seasonal Adjustment The seasonal factor. The seasonal factor is the composite effect of climatic and institutional factors and captures fluctuations that are repeated more or less regularly each year. For example, the aggregate income of farmers in the United States displays a definite seasonal pattern, rising steadily each year from early spring until fall, then dropping sharply. Most economic series contain significant seasonal fluctuations, but some (stock prices, for example) contain virtually none. Changing weather conditions from one season to another significantly affect activities in such industries as construction and agriculture. Movements in a series resulting from this factor are referred to as climatic variations. Differences from year to year in the intensity of weather conditions during each season introduce an irregular element in the pattern of these movements. For example, a very cold winter will have a greater effect on some industries than a winter with average temperature and precipitation. Intermingled with the effects of variations in climatic conditions are the effects of institutional factors. Thus, the scheduling of the school year from September to June influences the seasonal pattern of industries associated with education, and the designation of tax dates by federal and state authorities affects retail sales and interest rates. Holidays also help to shape the pattern of activities over 12-month periods. The effects of Christmas and Easter upon the volume of business are widespread, but most direct and largest upon retail sales. Other holidays, such as July 4, Memorial Day, and Labor Day, have a like but generally lesser effect. The number of shopping days between Thanksgiving and Christmas may have some effect upon the volume of Christmas shopping. The effects of certain of these holidays (Easter, Labor Day, and Thanksgiving Day) upon the activities of certain months is uneven, because they do not fall on the same day of the month each year; the dates upon which they fall affect the distribution of activity between two months. The movements resulting from this factor are referred to as holiday variations (and are illustrated by curve 2 of Figure 1, below). The use of the Gregorian calendar, which provides for months of different lengths and calendar composition, has a special effect upon monthly fluctuations. This effect is due mainly to differences in the character and volume of business activity on Saturdays and Sundays and the variations in the number of these days in the same month in different years. From this point of view there are more than 12 types of months; for example, there are
81
seven different types of months with 31 days, one starting with each different day of the week. The movements resulting from this factor are referred to as calendar, or trading day, variations (and are illustrated by curve 3 of Figure 1, below). Another type of variation that occurs regularly each year arises from the introduction of new models, particularly in the automobile industry. Although new models are introduced at about the same time each year, the exact date is not predetermined and is separately decided upon by the various companies in the industry. To some extent, these decisions are based upon economic conditions rather than climatic and institutional factors. The movements resulting from this factor are referred to as model year variations. This complex of factors yields an annual cycle in many economic series, a cycle that is recurrent and periodic. The pattern varies over time, partly because calendar variations are not the same from year to year, but mainly because of changes in the relative importance of firms, industries, and geographic areas. Thus, the seasonal pattern of construction in the United States has been changing as a result of the increasing importance of the south as compared with the north. The annual cycle is not divisible into shorter periods, because any period less than a year will not contain all the factors that determine the annual cycle; for example, holidays are spaced unevenly over the full 12 months, the school schedule spans most of the year, and the tax collection program has a different impact in the various quarters. Unlike business cycle fluctuations, the timing and pattern of seasonal movements in various economic processes, such as production, investment, and financial markets, are not highly correlated. The role of the seasonal factor. The pattern and amplitude of the seasonal factor are of considerable interest to economists and businessmen. Reducing the waste of resources that are left idle during seasonal low months is one of the targets of economists concerned with accelerating economic growth. Knowledge of the seasonal pattern in the sales of their products (as well as in the materials they purchase) is helpful to companies in determining the level of production that is most efficient in the light of storage facilities, insurance costs, and the risks of forced selling. It can be used to reduce overordering, overproduction, and overstocking. Some companies forecast only their annual total sales. Then, on the basis of this single forecast, they plan their production schedules, determine their inventory and price policies, and establish quotas for their salesmen. For the companies in
82
TIME SERIES: Seasonal Adjustment
this group that also experience large seasonal fluctuations, a good first approximation of the monthly pattern of sales can be obtained by prorating the estimated annual total over the months according to the pattern shown by the seasonal factors. A more refined method involves forecasting the cyclical and trend movements for each of the 12 months ahead and applying the seasonal factors to the forecasts. The seasonal factors can be of further value in making shorter-term forecasts as the year progresses. To keep the forecasts current, the original estimates of the cyclical and trend movements can be revised each month in the light of experience to date, and the seasonal factors can be applied to the revised forecasts. But the principal interest in economic time series is usually the longer-term cyclical and trend movements. The cycle consists of cumulative and reversible movements characterized by alternating periods of expansion and contraction. It lasts three to four years, on the average. The trend reflects the still longer-run movements, lasting many years. The nature of the interest in these longer-term movements can be illustrated by the situation in the spring of 1961. About a year earlier a recession had begun in the United States. Although the March and April 1961 data for most economic time series were below the levels reached in March and April 1960, they were higher than in the immediately preceding months. The question was whether the recent improvements were larger or smaller than normal seasonal changes. In forecasting the pattern in the months ahead, it was crucial to know whether the economy had entered a new cyclical phase— whether the economy had been rising or declining to the levels of March and April 1961. An accurate answer to this question was required to determine the economic programs appropriate at the time. If the underlying movements of the economy were continuing downward, anti-recession measures were in order. But if a reversal had taken place, a different policy was needed. A mistaken reading of statistical trends at such a critical juncture could be costly to the economy; one kind of error could lead to increased unemployment; the other, to eventual inflation. Cyclical movements are shown more accurately and stand out more clearly in data that are seasonally adjusted. Seasonally adjusted data not only avoid some of the biases to which the widely used same-month-year-ago comparisons are subject but also reveal cyclical changes several months earlier than such comparisons do. Seasonally adjusted series, therefore, help the economic statistician to make more accurate and more prompt diagnoses of current cyclical trends.
Figure 1, computed by the ratio-to-moving-average method (discussed below) by the Bureau of the Census computer program, illustrates various fluctuations discussed above and the resulting seasonally adjusted series. In addition, the figure shows the months for cyclical dominance (MCD) curve. This MCD measure provides an estimate of the appropriate time span over which to observe cyclical movements in a monthly series. In deriving MCD, the average (without regard to sign) percentage change in the irregular component and cyclical component are computed for one-month spans (January-February, February-March, etc.), two-month spans (January-March, February-April, etc.), up to five-month spans. Then MCD is the shortest span for which the average change (without regard to sign) in the cyclical component is larger than the average change (without regard to sign) in the irregular component. That is, it indicates the point at which fluctuations begin to be more attributable to cyclical than to irregular movements, and the MCD curve is a moving average of this many months. (This procedure is explained in full detail in Shiskin 19570.) Seasonal adjustment methods. There are many different methods of adjusting time series for seasonal variations. All are, however, based on the fundamental idea that seasonal fluctuations can be measured and separated from the trend, cyclical, and irregular fluctuations. The task is to estimate the seasonal factor and to eliminate it from the original observations by either subtraction or division, or some combination of the two. All familiar methods of seasonal adjustment, including the well-known link-relative and ratio-tomoving-average methods, follow this simple logic. The link-relative method was introduced in 1919 by Warren M. Persons (1919a; 1919b) of Harvard University. The ratio-to-moving-average method was developed in 1922 by Frederick R. Macaulay (1931) of the National Bureau of Economic Research in a study done at the request of the Federal Reserve Board. The ratio-to-moving-average method has the advantages of more precise measurement of the components and greater flexibility. In addition, it permits analysis of each of the successive stages in the seasonal adjustment process. For these reasons, it was adopted by almost all groups engaged in large-scale seasonal adjustment work, despite the fact that it is relatively laborious. The ratio-to-moving-average method. The first step in the ratio-to-moving-average method is to obtain an estimate of the trend and cyclical factors by the use of a simple moving average that combines 12 successive monthly figures, thereby eliminating the seasonal fluctuations. Such a moving
TIME SERIES: Seasonal Adjustment
83
Billions of dollars T32
- 28
- 24
5. Seasonally adjusted series
-1 14 1953
1954
1955
1956
1957
1958
1959
1960
1961
1962
1963
1964
1965
Figure I — Sysfemaf/c and irregular components of total retail sales, United States 1953—1965 Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census 1966, p. 33.
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average is known as a "trend-cycle curve" (see curve 6 of Figure 1), since it contains virtually all the trend and cycle movements and few or none of the seasonal and irregular movements in the data. Division of the raw data by the moving average yields a series of "seasonal-irregular" ratios. An estimate of the seasonal adjustment factor for a given month is then secured by averaging the seasonal-irregular ratios for that month over a number of years (see curve 4 of Figure 1). It is assumed that the irregular factor will be canceled out in the averaging process. Finally, the original observations are seasonally adjusted by dividing each monthly observation by the seasonal adjustment factor for the corresponding month (see curve 8 of Figure 1). This method yields a multiplicative seasonal adjustment; an additive adjustment can be made by an analogous procedure. At present there is no way of making a simultaneous additive and multiplicative adjustment by this method. The ratio-to-moving-average method has been programmed for electronic computers and is in widespread use throughout the world. The first seasonal adjustment computer program was developed at the U.S. Bureau of the Census in the summer of 1954. Shortly thereafter, it was used extensively for national series for the United States, Canada, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries, Japan, and other countries. It has also been utilized by many private concerns to adjust their own data. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics adopted a similar method in 1960, and other adaptations were introduced at about the same time in several other countries. These programs take advantage of the electronic computer's high-speed, low-cost computations by utilizing more powerful and refined techniques than clerical methods had used in the past. Thus, weighted moving averages are used to represent the trend-cycle factor and to measure changing seasonal patterns. As a result, the computer programs are likely to produce satisfactory results more frequently. They also produce more information about each series—for example, estimates of the trend-cycle and irregular components and of the relations between them. This information can be used for checking the adequacy of the results, for forecasting seasonal and other movements, and for studying the relations among different types of economic fluctuations. For example, for the data graphed in Figure 1 the Bureau of the Census program also gives an indication of the relative importance of the components of the retail sales series by calculating the per cent of the total variation that is contributed by these components over one-
Tcrb/e 7 — Per cenf of total variation contributed by components of total retail sales, United States, 1953-1965 COMPONENT
PER CENT OF VARIATION Monfh-to-monfh
Holiday Trading day Seasonal Irregular Trend-cycle Tofa/
Twelve-month spans
0.5
0.5 7.1 0.0 2.4 90.0
100.0
100.0
0.4
33.1 64.8 1.2
Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census 1966, p. 33.
month and longer spans. These data are shown in Table 1. The Bureau of the Census method was designed to analyze a large variety of series equally well. To this end, alternative routines to handle different kinds of series were built into the program, along with techniques for automatically selecting the most appropriate routine for each series. The completeness, versatility, and economy of this method have stimulated broad interest in economic time series analysis in recent years. This program adjusts for changes in average climatic conditions and institutional arrangements during the year. Adjustments for variations in the number of trading days are also made for some series—for example, new building permits. Further adjustments for variable holidays, such as Easter, are made for certain series, such as retail sales of apparel. Similar adjustments for Labor Day and Thanksgiving Day help bring out the underlying trends. Studies of the effects of unusual weather upon some series have also been started. It is important to note, however, that conventional methods adjust for average weather conditions, and not for the dispersion about this average. For this reason many seasonally adjusted series, such as housing starts, will tend to be low in months when the weather is unusually bad and high in months when the weather is unusually good. The variants of the ratio-to-moving-average method all give about the same results, and there is considerable evidence that this method adjusts a large proportion of historical series very well. There are, however, some series that cannot be satisfactorily adjusted in this way—for example, those with abrupt changes in seasonal patterns or with constant patterns of varying amplitudes, or those which are highly irregular. Another problem concerns the appropriate seasonal adjustment of an aggregate that can be broken down into different sets of components, each with a different seasonal pattern. However, the principal problem remaining
TIME SERIES: Seasonal Adjustment now appears to be obtaining satisfactory seasonal adjustment factors for the current year and the year ahead. These are less accurate than those for previous years, but they play a more important role in the analysis of current economic trends and prospects. Regression methods. Attempts to use regression methods to analyze time series have been intensified since electronic computers have become available. The basic principle is to represent each of the systematic components by explicit mathematical expressions, usually in the functional form of a linear model. This can be accomplished in a simple form, for example, by regressing the difference between the unadjusted series and the trend-cycle component for each month on the trend-cycle values for that month. The constant term in the regression equation is the additive part of the seasonal component, and the product of the regression coefficient and the trend-cycle value is the multiplicative part of the seasonal component. Thus, this approach has the advantage over the ratio-to-moving-average method that it is not committed to a single type of relationship (e.g., additive or multiplicative) among the seasonal, cyclical, and irregular components of the series. Another advantage is that the different types of fluctuations can be related to the forces causing them by representing these forces as appropriate variables in the mathematical expressions. Thus, in measuring the seasonal factor, direct allowance can be made, say, for the level of the series or for temperature and precipitation. In certain series, special factors could be taken into account; for example, in measuring the seasonal factor in unemployment, allowance could be made for the number of students in the labor force, or in the case of automobile sales, the level of automobile dealers' inventories could be taken into account. Finally, the mathematical expressions for the estimates of the systematic components provide the basis for deriving measures of variance and significance tests to evaluate the reliability of the estimates; this applies, for example, to estimates of the seasonally adjusted series and to the seasonal component, or to the differences in either series over time. The principal doubt about the regression approach is whether fairly simple functional forms can adequately measure the implicit economic patterns. Or, to consider the matter from another point of view, do the complex mathematical forms required to represent the systematic movements of historical series constitute a plausible theory of economic fluctuations? A related question is whether either fairly simple functional forms, which only
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crudely measure historical patterns, or the more complex forms, which fit the past more closely, can provide the basis for accurate forecasts of future patterns. Thus far, regression methods have been applied to only a small number of series, and their powers to decompose series into the various systematic components and to forecast seasonal factors for future years have not yet been fully tested. While the ratio-to-moving-average method does not have the advantages provided by the mathematical properties of the regression method, extensive tests have demonstrated that it gives good results in practice. Tests completed at the Bureau of the Census show that regression methods yield historical seasonal factors very similar to those yielded by the ratioto-moving-average method, but that the regression "year-ahead" factors and the trend-cycle curves are less accurate. Criteria for judging a seasonal adjustment. Although it is not now possible to draw a set of hardand-fast rules for judging the success of a seasonal adjustment, five guidelines have proved useful. (a) Any repetitive intrayear pattern present in a series before seasonal adjustment should be eliminated and thus should not appear in the seasonally adjusted series, in the trend-cycle component, or in the irregular component. This implies that the seasonal factors are not correlated with the seasonally adjusted series, or with the trend-cycle or irregular components. (The correlations should be computed year by year, because residual seasonality sometimes shows up with inverse patterns in different years.) (b) The underlying cyclical movements should not be distorted. Seasonally adjusted series that in unadjusted form had a large seasonal factor should be consistent in terms of cyclical amplitude, pattern, and timing with other related economic series that either had no seasonal factor at all or had a small seasonal factor compared with the cyclical factor. Similarly, changes in a seasonally adjusted series such as new orders for machinery and equipment should be followed by like changes in a corresponding series such as sales. (c) The irregular fluctuations should behave like a random series when autocorrelations of lags of about 12 months are considered. Autocorrelations of smaller lags need not necessarily behave like the similar autocorrelations of a random series because some irregular influences, such as a long strike, spread their effects over several months. A seasonally adjusted artificial series containing a random component should produce a random series as the irregular component.
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( d ) The sum of the seasonally adjusted series should be equal to the sum of the unadjusted series. For most series, sums are meaningful in economic terms, and the preservation of sums meets the common-sense requirement that the number of units produced, traded, or exported in a year should not be altered by the seasonal adjustment. (e) Revisions in the seasonal factors that take place when data for additional years become available should be relatively small. Tests of seasonal adjustments. With the massive increase in the number of series seasonally adjusted in recent years, due largely to the increasing use of electronic computers for this purpose, the need for routine objective tests of the quality of the adjustments has grown. A general type of test involves examining the results of applying a seasonal adjustment procedure to artificial series. One method of constructing suitable artificial series is to combine the irregular, cyclical, and seasonal factors from different real economic series into artificial aggregates; that is, the seasonal factor from one economic series, the trend-cycle factor from another, and the irregular factor from a third are multiplied together to form a new series. A test of the Bureau of the Census method, using 15 different types of such artificial series, revealed that in most instances the "estimated" components trace a course similar to that of the "true" components (Shiskin 1958). Although some limitations were evident, this test showed that the Census method has considerable power to rediscover the different types of fluctuations that were built into the series and does not generate arbitrary fluctuations that have no relationship to the original observations. A statistical test for the presence of a stable seasonal adjustment component may be made by using the analysis of variance and the associated F-test. This is a test of the null hypothesis that monthly means are equal. Here, the variance estimated from the sum of squares of the differences between the average for each month and the average for all months (between-months variance) is compared with the variance estimated from the sum of squares over all months of the differences between the values for each month and the average for that month (within-months variance). If the betweenmonths variance of the "seasonal-irregular" ratios (computed by dividing the original observations by an estimate of the trend-cycle component) is significantly greater than the within-months variance, it can usually be assumed that there is a true seasonal factor in the series. If the between-months
variance is not significantly greater than the withinmonths variance of the irregular series (computed by dividing the seasonally adjusted series by an estimate of the trend-cycle component), then it can usually be assumed that a complete seasonal adjustment has been made. This test must, however, be used cautiously because differences between months can also appear as a result of differences in the behavior of the irregular component from month to month, because differences between months may be hidden when changes in seasonality in one month are offset by changes in another month, and because the assumptions of the test may not be well satisfied. Nevertheless, the F-test has proved to be a useful test of stable seasonality in practice. [See LINEAR HYPOTHESES, article on ANALYSIS OF VARIANCE.]
Experience in applying spectral analysis to physical science data has encouraged researchers to explore its use in economics, and this technique is now being used to test for seasonality. Spectral analysis distributes the total variance of a series according to the proportion that is accounted for by each of the cycles of all possible periodicities, in intervals for 2-month and longer cycles. If there is a seasonal pattern in a series, a large proportion of the variance will be accounted for by the 12-month cycle and its harmonics (cycles of 6, 4, 3, 2.4, and 2 months). A significant proportion of the total variance of a seasonally adjusted economic series should be accounted for by a cycle of 45 to 50 months, the average duration of the business cycle, but not by the 12-month cycle or its harmonics. A random series would not be expected to show a significant cycle at any periodicity. While quantitative statistical methods based on suitable assumptions for economic time series have not yet been developed for determining from a spectrum whether seasonality exists, such judgments can often be made from inspection of charts of the spectra. A question sometimes raised about spectral analysis is whether it is appropriate to consider an economic time series from the viewpoint of the frequency domain, as spectral analysis does, rather than the time domain, as most other methods do. This question comes up mainly because economic series are available for relatively short periods and economic cycles, other than the seasonal, are irregular in length and amplitude. However, the prospect that mathematical representation of a time series in this way may reveal relationships not otherwise apparent would appear to make this alternative view worth further exploration. These tests do not provide enough information
TIME SERIES: Seasonal Adjustment to determine whether all the criteria listed above are satisfied. To this end, comparisons of the sums of seasonally adjusted and unadjusted data are also made, often for all fiscal years in addition to calendar years. The magnitude of revisions resulting from different methods of seasonal adjustment is usually appraised by seasonally adjusting series which cover periods successively longer by one year (e.g., 1948-1954, 1948-1955, 1948-1956, and so forth) and comparing the seasonal factors for the terminal years with the "ultimate" seasonal factors. Relations of seasonal to other fluctuations. An analysis has been made of the cyclical, seasonal, and irregular amplitudes of a sample of about 150 series considered broadly representative of the different activities of the U.S. economy. This study revealed that, for the post-World War n period, seasonal movements dominate other kinds of monthto-month movements in most current economic series. Seasonal movements are almost always larger than either the irregular or the cyclical movements, and they are often larger than both of the other types combined. More specifically, the average monthly amplitude of the seasonal fluctuations exceeds that of the cyclical factor in 78 per cent of the series, exceeds the irregular factor in 65 per cent of the series, and exceeds the cycle-trend and irregular factors in combination in 45 per cent of the series. Furthermore, where the seasonal factor is larger, it is often much larger. The seasonal factor is three or more times as large as the cyclical factor in 45 per cent of the series, three or more times as large as the irregular factor in 16 per cent of the series, and three or more times as large as the cyclical and irregular fluctuations together in 11 per cent of the series. (See Shiskin 1958.) These results apply to observations of change over intervals of one month; over longer spans the relative importance of the several components would, of course, be different. Table 1 shows how seasonal and trading day fluctuations, which dominate the short-term movements, give way in relative importance to the trend-cycle factor when comparisons are made over longer periods. These findings emphasize the advantages of seasonally adjusted series over those not so adjusted for studying cyclical movements. Where the seasonal fluctuations are large, a difference in the unadjusted data for two months may be due largely or solely to normal seasonal fluctuations; if the data are seasonally adjusted, the difference can be assumed to be caused chiefly by cyclical or irregular factors. JULIUS SHISKIN
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Much of the material in this article is discussed in greater detail in Shiskin 1957a; 1958; and the Shiskin paper in Organization for European Economic Cooperation 1961. References that deal with the problem of seasonal adjustment as it relates to current economic conditions are Organization for European Economic Cooperation 1961 and Shiskin 1957a; 1957b. Early works on seasonality and seasonal adjustment methods are Barton 1941; Burns & Mitchell 1946; Hotelling & Hotelling 1931; Kuznets 1933; Macaulay 1931; and Persons 1919a; 1919b. Works dealing with the history of the Bureau of the Census method and its variants are Organization for European Economic Cooperation 1961; Shiskin & Eisenpress 1957; Shiskin et al. 1965; and Young 1965. Alternative methods are described in Hannan 1963; Rosenblatt 1963; and U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 1964. Tests of seasonal adjustment methods are discussed in Burns & Mitchell 1946; Granger & Hatanaka 1964; Hannan 1963; Kuznets 1933; Rosenblatt 1963; and Shiskin 1957b. BARTON, H. C. JR. 1941 Adjustment for Seasonal Variation. Federal Reserve Bulletin 27:518-528. BURNS, ARTHUR F.; and MITCHELL, WESLEY C. 1946 Measuring Business Cycles. National Bureau of Economic Research, Studies in Business Cycles, No. 2. New York: The Bureau. H> See especially pages 43-55, "Treatment of Seasonal Variations" and "Notes on the Elimination of Seasonal Variations." GRANGER, CLIVE W. J.; and HATANAKA, M. 1964 Spectral Analysis of Economic Time Series. Princeton Univ. Press. -> See also "Review" by H. O. Wold in Annals of Mathematical Statistics, February 1967, pages 288-293. HANNAN, E. J. 1963 The Estimation of Seasonal Variations in Economic Time Series. Journal of the American Statistical Association 58:31-44. HOTELLING, HAROLD; and HOTELLING, FLOY 1931 Causes of Birth Rate Fluctuations. Journal of the American Statistical Association 26:135-149. KUZNETS, SIMON 1933 Seasonal Variations in Industry and Trade. New York: National Bureau of Economic Research. MACAULAY, FREDERICK R. 1931 The Smoothing of Time Series. New York: National Bureau of Economic Research. ORGANIZATION FOR EUROPEAN ECONOMIC COOPERATION 1961 Seasonal Adjustment on Electronic Computers. Report and proceedings of an international conference held in November 1960. Paris: Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. PERSONS, WARREN M. 1919a Indices of Business Conditions. Review of Economics and Statistics 1:5-107. PERSONS, WARREN M. 1919£> An Index of General Business Conditions. Review of Economics and Statistics 1:111-205. ROSENBLATT, HARRY M. (1963) 1965 Spectral Analysis and Parametric Methods for Seasonal Adjustment of Economic Time Series. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Working Paper No. 23. Washington: Government Printing Office. -> First published in American Statistical Association, Business and Economics Section, Proceedings, pages 94-133. SHISKIN, JULIUS 1957a Electronic Computers and Business Indicators. National Bureau of Economic Research, Occasional Paper No. 57. New York: The Bureau. -> First published in Volume 30 of the Journal of Business.
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SHISKIN, JULIUS 1957b Seasonal Adjustments of Economic Indicators: A Progress Report. Pages 39-63 in American Statistical Association, Business and Economics Section, Proceedings. Washington: The Association. SHISKIN, JULIUS 1958 Decomposition of Economic Time Series. Science 128:1539-1546. SHISKIN, JULIUS; and EISENPRKSS, HARRY (1957) 1958 Seasonal Adjustments by Electronic Computer Methods. National Bureau of Economic Research, Technical Paper No. 12. New York: The Bureau. -> First published in Volume 52 of the Journal of the American Statistical Association. SHISKIN, JULIUS et al. 1965 The X-ll Variant of the Census Method. II: Seasonal Adjustment Program. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Technical Paper No. 15. Washington: The Bureau. U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS 1964 The BLS Seasonal Factor Method (1964). Washington: The Bureau. U.S. BUREAU OF THE CENSUS Monthly Retail Trade Report [1966]: August. YOUNG, ALLAN H. 1965 Estimating Trading-day Variation in Monthly Economic Time Series. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Technical Paper No. 12. Washington: The Bureau.
TITCHENER, EDWARD B. Edward Bradford Titchener (1867-1927), a psychologist, was born in England, reared in the German (Wundtian) tradition, and spent his adult, professional years in America. He spent his early years in Chichester, an ancient Roman city about seventy miles south of London, as the elder of two children and the only son of John and Alice Field (Habin) Titchener. He died in Ithaca, New York, from a cerebral tumor. Titchener was a precocious and studious lad, and it was well for him that he was, because his father's early death meant that there was no financial assistance forthcoming for his education. After his elementary training at the prebendal school in Chichester, of which his grandfather was at one time headmaster, he had to rely for his further education upon scholarships and other academic awards won by his own efforts. In 1881, when he was 14 years old, Titchener went to Malvern College in Worcestershire on such a scholarship. He did well there, for, as the story goes, James Russell Lowell, who one year distributed the prizes at the school, remarked, after he had presented the youthful Titchener with several prizes and saw the lad advance for still another, "I am tired of seeing you, Mr. Titchener." After Malvern, Titchener went in 1885 to Brasenose College, Oxford, on a senior scholarship in classics and philosophy and as Hulman "exhibitioner"—a supplementary scholarship awarded
on the basis of need as well as excellence. Near the end of his classical training, he elected a course in physiology under John Scott Burdon-Sanderson, regius professor of medicine at Oxford, and became so absorbed in that subject that he delayed his graduation one year, until 1890, to devote himself to it. During this time he translated into English the third edition of Wundt's huge two-volume Grundzuge der physiologischen Psychologic (18731874). He was attracted by Wundt's combination of philosophy and psychology and by his promise of a new experimental science of psychology; in the fall of 1890 he went to study in Wundt's laboratory in Leipzig. Titchener received his PH.D. degree after only two years' study at Leipzig. In that short period he assimilated Wundt's system and completed two experimental researches: his doctoral dissertation on the binocular effects of monocular stimulation and a study on the chronometry of cognition. At Leipzig he was also permanently influenced by the positivism of Ernst Mach and Avenarius. At that time, psychology was not recognized as a science in England, and although Titchener would have preferred to remain in his homeland, he had to go elsewhere to obtain a position in psychology and a laboratory. In the fall of 1892 he accepted an assistant professorship at Cornell and became head of the newly established laboratory of psychology there. His advancement at Cornell was rapid: in 1895, when he was only 28 years old, he was promoted to the Sage professorship of psychology, and in 1910, when he was offered the chairmanship of the department of psychology at Clark University, Cornell made him a professor in the graduate school, thus relieving him from undergraduate teaching. (After a short time, he missed the contacts with the undergraduates, and after receiving an additional appointment in the arts college, he resumed his popular undergraduate lectures and his direction of the undergraduate laboratories.) Titchener represented the Wundtian point of view in America. He insisted that psychology is a science and that as a science it is concerned with description, not with use or application. He stood throughout his life for the scientific study of the generalized, normal, adult human mind. In 1898, in an article called "The Postulates of a Structural Psychology," he accepted James's differentiation between the structural and functional points of view of mind, and thereafter he was known as the leader of the "structural school," which stood in opposition to the more popular "functional school" led by Dewey, James, and Angell. When behavior-
TITCHENER, EDWARD B. ism superseded functional psychology in America, Titchener opposed it on the grounds that behaviorism is biology, not psychology, and that it ignores the very problems that are the proper concern of psychology: the study of experience as dependent on an experiencing individual, that is, on a nervous system. He was deeply interested in the experimental results of gestalt psychology and readily accepted them, but not their interpretation. He maintained that the gestalt approach was too narrow, being concerned only with "perception" and with only one aspect of it, that is, "form." Titchener saw it as one of his first tasks in America to make the "new" German psychology available in English. He published translations of three successive editions of Kiilpe's Outlines of Psychology; with his colleague J. E. Creighton, he translated three editions of Wundt's Lectures on Human and Animal Psychology, and with his colleague J. H. Gulliver, he translated two editions of Wundt's Ethics. Also, with his student W. B. Pillsbury, he translated Kiilpe's Introduction to Philosophy. Titchener's translations of Wundt's Physiologische Psychologic could never quite keep up with Wundt's new editions of the work. The first book that Titchener wrote, An Outline of Psychology (1896), was patterned after Kiilpe's Outlines and thus also served to introduce German psychology into American universities. It went through many printings and three editions, as did his second book, A Primer of Psychology (1898Z?). In a further effort to make the teaching of psychology comparable to that of other scientific subjects, Titchener put together his famous twovolume work Experimental Psychology: A Manual of Laboratory Practice. It was patterned after manuals used in chemistry: one volume (1901) dealt with qualitative experiments and one (1905) with quantitative ones, and each of these volumes was further divided into two parts—a Student's Manual and an Instructors Manual. In the Student's Manual, Titchener presented a number of classical experiments that had "disciplinary value to the undergraduate student"; the Instructors Manual gave the instructors a wealth of background information about the selected experiments. The publication of Quantitative Experiments was delayed by the appearance in 1904 of G. E. Miiller's Gesichtspunkte und Tatsachen der psychologischen Methodik, which covered much the same subject matter. Titchener was sorely tempted, as he explained in the Preface to the Instructor's Manual, "to leave my text as it stood and to take account of Miiller's book simply in footnote references . . . but the better counsel prevailed" (1901-
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1905, vol. 2, part 2, p. iii). He embodied Miiller's new results in his exposition. Titchener then turned to problems of attention, feeling, and thought. In 1908 he published Lectures on the Elementary Psychology of Feeling and Attention. He sought to give the concept of feeling an independent, elementary status and to enhance the scientific validity of the concept of attention by relating it to specific aspects of the sensory experience. From among the various terms that had historically been used to describe change in the attentive consciousness, Titchener chose "clearness." It was an unfortunate choice because of the word's many connotations. Later he changed the term to "vividness" and still later to "attensity," but the confusion persisted, and his concept of attention, although widely discussed, was not widely accepted. The following year, Titchener published Lectures on the Experimental Psychology of the Thought-processes (1909a). This work constituted an attack on the theory of Kiilpe and the Wiirzburg school that thought is "imageless." Kulpe and his students were unable to analyze the thought processes and therefore concluded that thought is a separate, conscious element, comparable to sensations. Titchener repeated Kulpe's experiments at Cornell, corroborating most of the results but drawing very different conclusions from them. He asserted that these results did not warrant the abandonment of the view that thought is imaginal and sensory, and he provided a theory to explain the apparently imageless character of "imageless thought." Accepting N. Ach's concept of the determining tendency and the premise of the Wiirzburg school that thought may be unconscious, he offered the context theory of meaning, according to which "meaning is the conscious sensory or imaginal context that accrues (associatively, it would seem) to the initial sensory core of a perception or the initial imaginal core of an idea" (Boring [1929] 1950, p. 415). This theory sought to account for the lack of analyzable content in the results of the Wiirzburg experiments on thought. Titchener wrote two more textbooks. A Textbook of Psychology (1909&) was too systematic and too sophisticated for elementary courses in psychology. In 1915 he published A Beginner's Psychology, which was more suitable as an introductory text. Since he was never able to complete a projected three-volume work on systematic psychology, his textbooks are the only systematic accounts of his psychology that he left. Titchener was elected a charter member of the American Psychological Association but soon with-
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drew: he resented the association's failure to take action against a member who had plagiarized his translation of Wundt. Since, however, he missed the contacts with his colleagues that the annual meetings provided, he invited the heads of ten of the most prominent laboratories in the country to attend a conference on experimental psychology at Cornell in the spring of 1904. The group, unofficially known as "The Experimentalists," thereafter met annually; after Titchener's death, it became a more formal organization, the Society of Experimental Psychologists. The list of Titchener's honors is long, including honorary degrees from Oxford, Wisconsin, Harvard, and Clark, and memberships in the American Philosophical Society and the Royal Society of Medicine in England. He was coeditor of the American Journal of Psychology from 1895 to 1920 and sole editor from 1921 to 1925. From 1894 to 1920 he was also the American editor of Mind. His own list of publications was long (216); many other works (176) came from his students in the Cornell laboratory. Clearly, he was one of the most respected and influential figures in the development of the discipline of psychology in America. KARL M. DALLENBACH
BORING, EDWIN G. (1929) 1950 A History of Experimental Psychology. 2d ed. New York: Appleton. DALLENBACH, KARL M. 1928 Bibliography of the Writings of Edward Bradford Titchener: 1917-1927. Journal of Psychology 40:121-125. FOSTER, WILLIAM S. 1917 A Bibliography of the Published Writings of Edward Bradford Titchener: 18891917. Pages 323-337 in Studies in Psychology. Worcester, Mass.: Wilson. KULPE, OSWALD (1893) 1909 Outlines of Psychology, Based Upon the Results of Experimental Investigation. 2d ed. Translated by Edward Bradford Titchener. London: Sonnenschein; New York: Macmillan -» First published as Grundriss der Psychologic, auf experimenteller Grundlage dargestellt. Titchener was also the translator of the 1895 and 1901 English editions. PILLSBURY, W. B. 1928 The Psychology of Edward Bradford Titchener. Philosophical Review 37:95-108. Studies in Psychology. 1917 Worcester, Mass.: Wilson. -> A volume presented to Titchener by his colleagues and former students in recognition of the 25th anniversary of his doctorate. WARREN, HOWARD C. 1927 Edward Bradford Titchener. Science 66:208-209. WUNDT, WILHELM (1873) 1905 Principles of Physiological Psychology. Translated by Edward Bradford Titchener and J. E. Creighton. London: Sonnenschein; New York: Macmillan. -* First published as Volume 1 of Wilhelm Wundt's Grundziige der physiologischen Psychologic. Titchener and Creighton were also the translators of the 1894, 1896, and 1901 editions.
[For the historical context of Titchener's work, see the biographies of JAMES; KULPE; MULLER, GEORG ELIAS; WUNDT ; for discussion of the subsequent development of his ideas, see ATTENTION; PSYCHOPHYSICS; SENSES.]
TOCQUEVILLE, ALEXIS DE
WORKS BY TITCHENER (1896) 1902 An Outline of Psychology. New ed., enl. New York: Macmillan. 1898a The Postulates of a Structural Psychology. Philosophical Review 7:449-465. (1898k) 1925 A Primer of Psychology. Rev. ed. New York: Macmillan. 1901-1905 Experimental Psychology: A Manual of Laboratory Practice. 2 vols. New York and London: Macmillan. -» Volume 1: Qualitative Experiments, 2 parts. Volume 2: Quantitative Experiments, 2 parts. 1908 Lectures on the Elementary Psychology of Feeling and Attention. New York: Macmillan. 1909a Lectures on the Experimental Psychology of the Thought-processes. New York: Macmillan. (19096) 1910 A Textbook of Psychology. New York: Macmillan. 1910 The Past Decade in Experimental Psychology. American Journal of Psychology 21:404—421. 1915 A Beginner's Psychology. New York: Macmillan. 1929 Systematic Psychology: Prolegomena. New York: Macmillan. SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY
ANGELL, FRANK 1928 Titchener at Leipzig. Journal of General Psychology 1:195-198. BORING, EDWIN G. 1927 Edward Bradford Titchener. Journal of General Psychology 38:489-506.
Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) lived at the time of two revolutions, the democratic and the industrial; their impact upon the traditional order furnished him with the major themes of his scholarly work. Tension between traditional and modern values dominated Tocqueville's life and writings. Convinced of the irreversibility of democracy and contemptuous of reactionaries who thought they could block this historical movement, he was nevertheless obsessed by the erosion of those traditional contexts and values—aristocracy, honor, localism, religion, cultural variety—on which European liberty had depended for so many centuries. In his personal life this conflict of values proved almost too great to contain, and in his final years he succumbed to melancholy, despairing of the future of liberty and culture in Europe. It was this same tension, however, that provided the underlying creative impulse behind the extraordinarily dispassionate analyses of modern society contained in his two major works, Democracy in America (1835) and The Old Regime and the French Revolution (1856). In these, Tocqueville formulated analytical perspectives that were to prove fruitful both for the continued study of Western society and for the study of the non-Western
TOCQUEVILLE, ALEXIS DE societies which in the twentieth century are undergoing a modernization strikingly akin to what fascinated Tocqueville in the "first new nation," the United States. Behind Tocqueville's analytical perspectives, and giving them coherence, is a unified philosophy of history that rests on what he called "the principle of equality." What class struggle was for Marx, Gesellschaft for Tonnies, and rationalization for Max Weber, equalitarianism was for Tocqueville. Each of these men endowed a single dynamic aspect of the social order with decisive developmental significance. In Tocqueville's eyes, the master principle of European history was the relentless leveling of social ranks that, he believed, had been going on since the end of the Middle Ages—a leveling as inexorable as it was universal in Europe, one that touched literally every sphere of society and culture. It is this principle of social development that gives meaning to the major areas of fact and insight into which his sociological work falls. There are four such areas: power, stratification, industrialism, and mass culture. Power. Tocqueville was fascinated by the problem of power, particularly the power of the modern democratic state. The impact of centralized, massbased sovereignty upon the traditional authorities of family, local community, social class, and morality is a theme in his work second only to that of equalitarianism. The two themes are, indeed, inseparable. Tocqueville was not the first to emphasize the affinity between social equality and political centralization, but his Democracy in America is certainly the first systematic treatment of the subject, just as his Old Regime and the French Revolution is the first scholarly demonstration of the roots of the French Revolution in the history of European administrative centralization. From the vantage point of contemporary sociology, three aspects of his consideration of power are noteworthy: the affinity between mass equality and bureaucracy, the role of public opinion, and the relation between political power and "secondary" or "intermediate" social authorities. In the history of European polity, Tocqueville wrote (anticipating Weber), "the substitution of paid for unpaid functionaries is of itself . . . sufficient to constitute a real revolution" ([1835] 1945, vol. 1, p. 208). Democracy inevitably has an accelerative influence upon bureaucracy, for unpaid political service can be performed only by the rich and privileged, whose very existence frustrates the objectives of democracy. Hence it is possible, he wrote, to measure the progress of democracy in a nation by the rate of increase of paid functionaries.
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Tocqueville saw the relation between bureaucratic centralization and social equalitarianism not only as historical but also as functional. All that erodes social hierarchy, regionalism, and localism is bound to intensify centralization in the state. Conversely, all that furthers the development of political centralization—war, dynastic ambition, and revolution—is bound to accelerate social leveling. While the major cause of modern bureaucracy is the democratization of power, Tocqueville identified four factors which account for its variable intensity from nation to nation: revolution, the role of the lower classes, level of literacy, and war. When revolution ushers in democracy, as in France, it makes for a higher degree of initial centralization than is the case when democracy evolves gradually, as in the United States. When the lower classes hold the balance of power, administration tends to be centralized, for this is the only means whereby the lower classes can wrest power from local aristocracy. The lower the level of literacy in a population, the greater and more inevitable the tendency to concentrate administration in an educated, governing elite. Finally, "All men of military genius are fond of centralization . . . and all men of centralizing genius are fond of war" (ibid., vol. 2, p. 300). The relation between Tocqueville's "administrative centralization" and what Weber was to call "rationalization" is, of course, very close. Both saw conflict between bureaucracy and the democratic impulses that had helped produce it. Tocqueville's depiction of the sort of despotism democratic nations have to fear is almost indistinguishable in tenor from that found two generations later in Weber's melancholy ruminations on administrative rationalization. For both men, any future despotism would emerge not primarily from individuals or groups but from the bureaucratic system per se. Tocqueville's dominating interest in public opinion followed from his view that the locus of democratic power is in mass majorities. What he called "the tyranny of the majority"—at bottom the sway of public opinion—may be more stifling to individuality, as it was in America, than even the medieval Inquisition had been. Despite his profound interest in public opinion, he had no clear awareness of its sources. It does not seem to have occurred to him that public opinion is something that can be manufactured by minority pressure groups. He conceived of it as a more or less direct emanation from the political masses. But if he did not explore its sources and variable expressions, he nevertheless correctly identified it as a new and powerful force in the modern state, one henceforth
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crucial to the legitimacy of governments. Equally important, Tocqueville, in contrast to most political conservatives of his day, feared not the instability but the stability of public opinion in democracy, a stability so great, in his view, that not only political revolution but even intellectual innovation would become increasingly unlikely. The role of "secondary" or "intermediate" authorities in democracy was a prime concern of Tocqueville's. Liberty, in his view, has little to do with the breadth of political power or the extent of mass participation in it. Liberty can exist only where there are countervailing authorities which stand as buffers between the individual and the central government. Traditional secondary authorities—aristocracy, guild, commune—had been eroded by the impact of equalitarian democracy. Tocqueville asked what authorities, if any, had succeeded these. In Europe he found almost none; hence his growing pessimism about the future of liberty there. In America, however, the great profusion of voluntary associations, the power and independence of local communities, the professions (especially the legal profession), and the whole system of division of powers within the political government seemed to him the effective basis of a pluralism that might restrain the powers of both majority opinion and administrative centralization. A distinction between authority and power is fundamental in Tocqueville, authority being the inner nature of association, rooted in function and allegiance, while power is coercion, generally with the implication of force externally applied. It is in terms of this distinction that his treatment of family, local community, master-servant, professional, and other social relationships can most readily be understood. Each of these, for Tocqueville, is a pattern of constraints as well as of activities, and its internal strength is a function of its relative immunity from political power. Stratification. Tocqueville's theory of social stratification follows from his conception of power. He is at the opposite extreme from Marx, who found in the capitalist class essentially the same union of power, wealth, and status that had characterized the feudal nobility. According to Tocqueville, the dominant tendency of modern history is toward the disengagement of these three elements from one another. Social class, in the sense of selfconscious and culturally distinct classes, is precluded in modern society by exactly the same forces that destroyed feudal aristocracy: political centralization, the greater importance of money, and civil equality. There are levels of wealth and privilege, but the nature of democracy and of a money-based economy prevents these levels from
hardening into real classes. Tocqueville was by no means blind to the power of manufacturing interests and their remoteness from workers. Indeed, he speculated on how "an aristocracy may be created by manufactures/' But however dangerous the power of manufacturers may be to the politics of democracy, manufacturers do not and cannot constitute a genuine social class. For while the category is fixed by industrialism, the content is ever-changing; incessant mobility prevents the crystallizing of attitudes and culture, the sinking of roots, and the socially recognized eminence that social class requires. What struck Tocqueville was the immense middle class in the United States. This class was neither rich nor poor; its position made it, in his view, a vast arena for status aspiration. Tocqueville's theory of stratification, in short, rests on status mobility rather than class. The decline of traditional class, far from lessening the desire for elevation of status, only intensifies it. When it is birth alone that ranks men in society, Tocqueville observed, everyone knows exactly what his own position is in the social scale. "He does not seek to rise, he does not fear to sink." But when equalitarianism prevails and money becomes the basis of rank in society, the desire to rise is matched by the fear of sinking in the social scale. The principle of equality is accompanied not by love of equality but by obsession with social status. "When inequality of conditions is the common law of society, the most marked inequalities do not strike the eye; when everything is nearly on the same level, the slightest [inequalities] are marked enough to hurt it. Hence the desire of equality always becomes more insatiable in proportion as equality is more complete" (ibid., vol. 2, p. 138). It is preoccupation with status that above all else explains why "Americans are so restless in the midst of their prosperity": a restlessness making for unhappiness on a wide scale. In France, Tocqueville wrote, this status anxiety produces high rates of suicide; in America, high rates of insanity. Tocqueville provided two classic paradigms of social status in modern democracy, each the subject of a long chapter. The first is the masterservant relation. Tension is the very essence of this relation, Tocqueville observed, given a setting in which civil equality is dogma as well as law. An "imperfect phantom of equality" haunts the mind of servant and master alike, making obedience as confused and reluctant a sentiment in the first as unwonted command is in the second. The same problem of context has dislocated the historic notion of honor. The social roots of this value, Tocqueville showed, are feudal, and all that has weakened
TOCQUEVILLE, ALEXIS DE the hierarchical arid personal character of European society has weakened the structural possibility of honor as a cementing value. Yet honor, like status, is, he noted, a verbal obsession of Americans. The subtlety and perception of Tocqueville's sociological treatment of these two values remained unmatched until Weber's and Simmel's work. In one sphere only did Tocqueville see the outline and substance of genuine social class in America: the Negro-white relationship. In the South, where slavery made a caste of the Negro, issues of status and mobility were nonexistent, but if Negroes "are once raised to the level of freemen, they will soon revolt at being deprived of almost all their civil rights; and as they cannot become the equals of the whites, they will speedily show themselves as enemies" (ibid., vol. 1, p. 378). Equally perceptive are Tocqueville's observations on the status of the Negro in the North, where, though legally free, the Negro encountered a different type of segregation. "I have remarked that the white inhabitants of the North avoid the Negroes with increasing care in proportion as the legal barriers of separation are removed by the legislature" (ibid., vol. 1, p. 375). It was visibility that made real assimilation between the two races a distant and dim prospect in Tocqueville's eyes. Recalling the long ages required in Europe for the erasure of social distinction between noble and commoner, he wrote: "I despair of seeing an aristocracy disappear which is founded upon visible and indelible signs" (ibid,, vol. 1, p. 358). The only real possibility of extreme social conflict, even revolution, that Tocqueville could foresee in America was that between Negro and white. One final element of Tocqueville's picture of stratification must be mentioned: intellectual and political elites. Here the social scene he was describing was not America but France, in the age just prior to the French Revolution. It was at this time, according to Tocqueville, that writers and philosophers became, for the first time, a significant political force, one that replaced traditional aristocracy. Intensely rationalist in temper, drawn to the uses of political power, and scornful of tradition, this group, which included all of the philosophes, became "a power in the country and ended up as its political leaders." Burke preceded Tocqueville in identifying the political role of the literary elite in eighteenth-century France, but Tocqueville showed that such elites are as inevitable an emergent of modern society as any of the other types or groups. Industrialism. Despite the overwhelmingly political nature of Tocqueville's treatment of modernism, that is, his view that modern culture and the modern economy are direct consequences of the
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growth of power and of its diffusion, he was keenly aware of the social impact of the new industrialism. This is why he emphasized the money base of social stratification of the new democratic society and why he studied such matters as technology, division of labor, wages, land rents, and cyclical business depression. All of these were placed by Tocqueville within the political perspective of democracy. He did not share the view of the economists of his time that economic phenomena have either primary or self-contained reality. For Tocqueville, economic behavior is a derivative of politics rather than vice versa. Tocqueville foresaw recurring economic crisis as "an endemic disease" of modern democratic nations, but he attributed this not to any iron law of depression of wages under private property (indeed, Tocqueville prophesied the long-run rise of wages and democracy) but to the "democratic propensity" to convert slow-yield ownership of land into commercial holdings, thus destroying the historic balance between agriculture and commerce. He noted the absence in America of any genuine agrarian culture and mentality— democracy tends to "make agriculture itself a trade." Land is brought into tillage in order that it may be resold, not farmed. As the politics of democracy breeds desire for advancement in the social scale, it aids also in the conversion of wealth into those forms—negotiable shares, money, credit —which are helpful to this advancement. Tocqueville's view of the human impact of technology and division of labor is rather pessimistic. Admitting that these forces stimulate economic production, he nevertheless thought that they represent a new form of enslavement and degradation of man. It is the specialization of the worker under industrialism that seemed to Tocqueville to be most fraught with evil. "In proportion as the principle of the division of labor is more extensively applied, the workman becomes more weak, more narrowminded, and more dependent. The art advances, the artisan recedes" (ibid., vol. 2, p. 159). Mass culture. Tocqueville was the first to assess systematically the effects of democracy and commercialism upon the arts, literature, religion, philosophy, and other areas of culture. Here, as in his perspectives on power and stratification, equalitarianism is the dominant element. He thought it unlikely that America would produce artists and writers of stature. His words were written, it is amusing to note, only a decade before the New England "renaissance" that brought forth such major writers as Melville, Hawthorne, Emerson, and Thoreau. Nevertheless, the reasons he gave have proved durable in the continuing sociological analysis of mass culture. There is, first, the power
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of mass opinion, which puts so heavy a premium upon conformity that true humanistic genius will be intimidated. Second is the fact that in democracy, literature and the arts in general become a trade. "The ever increasing crowd of readers and their continual craving for something new ensure the sale of books that nobody much esteems" (ibid., vol. 2, p. 61). Third is the gradual disappearance of great cultural themes in the wash of mediocrity that attends adulation of the common man and fear of the extraordinary. "In aristocracies a few great pictures are produced; in democratic countries a vast number of insignificant ones. In the former statues are raised of bronze; in the latter, they are modeled in plaster" (ibid., vol. 2, p. 51). Tocqueville did not doubt that there would be an unprecedented spread of literacy and taste for art and philosophy, but he feared that it would be at the level of the lowest common denominator. In science Tocqueville foresaw the limitless practical application of what had already been discovered, but not the discovery of fresh knowledge, for while "the purely practical part of science is admirably understood," it remains true that "hardly anyone in the United States devotes himself to the essential theoretical and abstract portion of human knowledge." The spirit of technicism, Tocqueville thought, makes scientific vitality as unlikely as artistic, although in both areas "the number of those who cultivate science, letters, and arts becomes immense" (ibid., vol. 2, p. 42). Philosophy and religion are shaped by the social contexts of both democracy and commerce. In philosophy there is a taste for broad, general ideas that are accessible to all without undue effort and which permit people to "flatter themselves that they can delineate vast objects with little pains and draw the attention of the public without much trouble" (ibid., vol. 2, p. 17). It is this intellectual predilection, according to Tocqueville, that creates a natural affinity between democracy and Cartesianism, with its emphasis on intuitively reached principles that are open to all men of common sense. Religion in democracy is characterized by a dislike of ceremony and form that affects even Roman Catholicism, whose priests in America "show less taste for minute individual observances" than is the case in Europe. Tocqueville was struck by the high rate of converts to Catholicism in the United States and explained this, first, by the theological affinity between Catholic doctrine and the notion of a leveled laity under the priest and, second, by the social affinity between Catholic minority status and those parties (chiefly the emerging Democratic party) in which equality rather than
achievement or privilege is the goal. Tocqueville viewed drama, history writing, oratory, language, and the study of the classics from the same perspective, emerging in each instance with a conclusion that rests upon the spread of popular themes, forms, and idioms, and the unlikelihood of the kind of high quality that had been known in aristocratic ages. Influence. Tocqueville's impact was immediate upon scholars in both Europe and America, but the shape of this impact was very different on the two continents. In America, until about the 1940s, Tocqueville was thought of essentially as a political philosopher. Attention was fixed chiefly on the sections of the first volume of Democracy in America which are concerned with the processes of political government. For a long time he was hardly known in America as a sociologist of stratification, culture, religion, and industry. In Europe, it was the sociological elements of his work—those found in the second volume of Democracy in America and The Old Regime—that early proved of greatest influence. His distinction between power, class, and status and his emphasis upon the mass potential of modern democracy, upon administrative centralization, and upon the mass character of modern culture supplied the theoretical background for the more detailed and systematic treatments of these forces that flourished in the sociology of France, Italy, and Germany at the end of the century. Burckhardt, Taine, Le Play, Acton, Tonnies, Weber, Simmel, and Michels all employed perspectives based on Tocqueville. Tocqueville and Marx are, in a real sense, the two magnetic poles of European sociology: Tocqueville, in his emphasis upon equalitarianism and the separation of power, wealth, and status, and his preview of totalitarianism as resulting from the leveling of classes; Marx, in his emphasis upon class conflict, the coalescence (in the bourgeoisie) of power, wealth, and status, and his vision of freedom finally achieved through the very equality that, for Tocqueville, carried the seeds of despotism. ROBERT A. NISBET [See also ANGLO-AMERICAN SOCIETY; DEMOCRACY; MASS SOCIETY; PLURALISM; POLITICS, COMPARATIVE; PRESIDENTIAL GOVERNMENT; PUBLIC OPINION; SOCIAL MOBILITY; STRATIFICATION, SOCIAL; VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONS; and the biographies of BAGEHOT; BRYCE; LE PLAY; LINDSAY; MICHELS; SIMMEL; TONNIES; WEBER, MAX.] WORKS BY TOCQUEVILLE (1832) 1964 BEAUMONT DE LA BONNINIERE, GUSTAVE AUGUSTE DE; and TOCQUEVILLE, ALEXIS DE On the Penitentiary System in the United States and Its Ap-
TOLMAN, EDWARD C. plication in France. New ed. With an introduction by Thorsten Sellin and a foreword by Herman R. Lantz. Carbondale: Southern Illinois Univ. Press. -> First published in French. (1835) 1945 Democracy in America. 2 vols. Translated by Henry Reeve, revised by Francis Bowen, and edited by Phillips Bradley. New York: Knopf. -» First published in French. A new edition, translated by George Lawrence, edited by J. P. Mayer, and with an introductory essay by Max Lerner, was published by Harper in 1966. Paperback editions were published in 1961 by Vintage and by Schocken. (1856) 1955 The Old Regime and the French Revolution. Translated by Stuart Gilbert. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday. -* First published as L'ancien regime et la revolution. (1893) 1949 The Recollections of Alexis de Tocqueville. Edited by J. P. Mayer. New York: Columbia Univ. Press. -» First published posthumously in French. A paperback edition was published in 1959 by Meridian. Oeuvres completes d'Alexis de Tccqueville. 2d ed. Published by Mme. de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont. 9 vols. Paris: Levy, 1866-1878. -* The first edition was published in 1860-1865. Oeuvres, papiers $t correspondances. Final edition by J. P. Mayer. Vols. 1—. Paris: Gallimard, 1951—. -> Volumes 1, 2, 31, 51-2, 6, 9, and 12 have been published to date. SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY
EICHTHAL, EUGENE D' 1897 Alexis de Tocqueville et la democratic liber ale. Paris: Levy. GORING, HELMUT 1928 Tocqueville und die Demokratie. Munich: Oldenbourg. MARCEL, R. PIERRE 1910 Essai politique sur Alexis de Tocqueville. Paris: Alcan. MAYER, J. P. 1960 Alexis de Tocqueville: A Biographical Study in Political Science. New York: Harper. NISRET, RORERT A. 1967 The Sociological Tradition. New York: Basic Books. PIERSON, GEORGE W. 1938 Tocqueville and Beaumont in America. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.
TOLERANCE See PREJUDICE; STEREOTYPES. TOLERANCE SETS See ESTIMATION, article on CONFIDENCE INTERVALS AND REGIONS.
TOLMAN, EDWARD C. Edward Chace Tolman (1886-1959), American psychologist and civil libertarian, lived out a meaningful life of paradox. Tolman was a professor who was too shy, felt too inept, and did not have the desire to seek faculty leadership on his campus. Yet, during Berkeley's "Year of the Oath" (1949-1950, when there was a controversy over loyalty oaths at the University of California), it was Tolman (a member of the national board of the American Civil Liberties Union) who led the faculty in full battle
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against the university regents—a battle that saved academic freedom at the university. Tolman was a behaviorist, but his research and theory evoked from his behavioristic colleagues an agonized search for hidden errors and the fear that he was undermining the development of "objective psychology true and narrow." By the middle of the century, most of his researches, having been tested and retested, were admitted into the official behavioristic corpus and forced a recasting of many of the dominant behavioristic theories. Tolman the experimental psychologist was a "rat man"—unapologetically dedicated to the investigation of the behavior of the laboratory rat (he flaunted his rodent orientation by inscribing his major work, Purposive Behavior in Animals and Men [1932], to M.N.A.—Mus norvegicus albinus). But just as Tolman's behaviorism was suspect to his fellow behaviorists, so was his rat psychology suspect to his fellow "rat men." He found his most enthusiastic supporters among the psychologists concerned with human cognition. When this unpretentious man died on November 19, 1959, his death was noted not only by psychologists (both animal and human) and other learned men (both scientific and humanistic) but also in the nation's capital, where the Washington Post wrote in its editorial: "His death last week is a loss to the nation as well as to the whole academic community." Autobiography. In the History of Psychology in Autobiography, Tolman has written an autobiographical essay in which, so he tells us, he "tried to think out, as a very amateur clinical psychologist, what kind of person I think I am and how I think I got that way . . ." (1952, p. 328). His testimony deserves a full hearing. What follows, however, are only some mercilessly telescoped excerpts from his essay—perhaps they will indicate the nature of the whole. I was born in Newton, Massachusetts in 1886. I went to the Newton Public Schools, . . . and then went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where I obtained a B.S. in electrochemistry in 1911. I went to M.I.T. not because I wanted to be an engineer, but because I had been good in mathematics and science in high school and because of family pressure. . . . My father was president of a manufacturing company. . . . My brother, who was five years older, and I were, first one and then the other, expected to go into our father's business. . . . My brother, however, escaped by becoming a theoretical chemist and physicist and I, having read some William James during my senior year at Technology, fancied that I wanted to become a philosopher. Upon graduating from M.I.T., I went to the Harvard summer school and took an introductory course in philosophy with Perry and one
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in psychology with Yerkes. . . . I decided then and there that I did not have brains enough to become a philosopher (that was still the day of great metaphysical systems), but that psychology was nearer my capacities and interests. It offered, at that date, what seemed a nice compromise between philosophy and science. . . . Although we lived in a well-to-do conventional suburb with stress on appearances, there still persisted in our family . . . the legacy of reformism, equal rights for Negroes, women's rights, Unitarianism and humanitarianism from the earlier days of the "Flowering of New England." These social tendencies were combined with the special Bostonian emphasis on "culture" together with . . . a special dose of moral uplift and pacifism. . . . The rebellion of my brother and of myself against parental domination was in directions which the parents themselves could not too greatly, or too consciously, disapprove. . . . In the fall of 1911, therefore, after only one summer session course in philosophy and one in psychology, I began at Harvard as a full graduate student . . . in the joint department of philosophy and psychology. The courses I remember most vividly were: Perry's course in Ethics, which laid the basis for my later interest in motivation and, indeed, gave me the main concepts (reinforced by a reading of McDougall's Social Psychology as part of the requirement of the course) which I have retained ever since; Holt's course in Experimental . . . Langfeld's course in Advanced General, using Titchener as a textbook, which almost sold me temporarily on structuralistic introspectionism; Holt's seminar in Epistemology in which I was introduced to, and excited by, the "New Realism"; and Yerkes' course in Comparative, using Watson's Behavior—An Introduction to Comparative Psychology, which was just out, as a text. . . . At the end of my first graduate year at Harvard . . . I spent a month in Giessen with Koffka, . . . and so got my first introduction to Gestalt psychology. . . . And in the fall of 1923 I went back to Giessen for a couple of months to learn more. After getting my doctor's degree at Harvard in 1915 I was instructor for three years at Northwestern. During the summer of 1918, . . . I was offered . . . an instructorship at California. From the very first California symbolized for me some sort of a final freeing from my overwhelmingly too Puritanical and too Bostonian upbringing. It would seem meet to indicate the main sources from which I think my ideas have come. First of all most of the credit, if it be credit, should go to all the students whose ideas I have shamefully . . . adopted and exploited . . . and ended up by believing to be my own. Secondly, it should go to my teachers at Harvard who taught me to think, to be critical, to be complicated but to remain naturalistic. Next, it should go to the Gestalt psychologists, but especially to Kurt Lewin. . . . Again, it should go to ... Egon Brunswik, who opened my eyes to the meaning and the viability of the European psychological tradition, both academic and psychoanalytical. . . . (1952, passim)
Systems and psychology. Tolman flourished during the era of the system builders (roughly the period between the two world wars, 1918-1939) when every American psychologist of note had his private system—or at least a "significant variant" of a more commonly held system. This was the period when new men working in new laboratories were becoming increasingly critical of the reigning psychological system elaborated by Wundt in Germany and Titchener in America. And as the inadequacies of structuralism and of its introspective method became more obvious, there began to appear new claimants to the system throne. This throne could not remain vacant. Psychologists had a "felt need" for a system. Certainly this need was not due to the fact that psychology had amassed so many solid observations and had formalized so many general laws that higher-order abstractions were essential to give aesthetic harmony to the whole. It was precisely because psychology did not know what its proper domain was and because it had few reliable facts, general laws, or even acceptable methods that it seemed to require a system. Such a system might give at least a semblance of order to the accumulated heterogeneous observations called "psychological"; of legitimacy to one's methods; and of philosophic sophistication to the proliferating ad-lib conceptualizations. In the United States it was John B. Watson who was the most vigorous "pretender" to the Titchenerian throne. Behaviorism was revealed by Watson in 1913 with his publication of "Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It" and thus was known to Tolman before he had finished his graduate studies. It did not immediately get into Tolman's blood, either as a nutrient or as an irritant—later it became both. At Harvard, Tolman was as impressed by the philosophers as he was by the psychologists. In addition, he had been exposed to gestalt psychology. He found it difficult, therefore, even after becoming converted to behaviorism, to remain faithful to Watson's dogma, which professed to see nothing of value in what had gone before 1913, either in philosophy or psychology. And so, in keeping with the imperatives of his time, Tolman set out to build his own system. The development of this system—named by Tolman "purposive behaviorism"—began about 1920 and came into official existence with the publication of his Purposive Behavior in Animals and Men in 1932. It continued to evolve and change as long as Tolman lived; his last theoretical paper, "Principles of Purposive Behavior," bears the publication date of 1959, the year of his death.
TOLMAN, EDWARD C. Purposive behaviorism. Tolman's first formal proposal for a new system is found in his 1922 essay, "A New Formula for Behaviorism." In this paper Tolman expressed his dissatisfaction with "the archbehaviorist, Watson" and his muscletwitch behaviorism. Tolman believed that Watson's self-styled "stimulus-response" psychology is a pseudophysiological approach to behavior. It makes a brave show of defining stimulus and response as physiology defines them, but finding this impossible in dealing with behavior, it ends up with a system which is neither physiologically nor psychologically consistent and which is not capable of adequate behavioral description. (This criticism he was, many years later, to level also at Clark Hull's "neobehaviorism".) But Tolman had a more basic objection to Watson. He could not agree that all of the problems dealt with by introspective psychology need be, or even can be, expunged from a scientific psychology. And so Tolman proposed, in 1922, a "true nonphysiological behaviorism," in this respect antedating and setting the stage for Kenneth W. Spence's variant of Hull's system and B. F. Skinner's variant of behaviorism [see LEARNING, articles On INSTRUMENTAL LEARNING and REINFORCEMENT; DRIVES]. This truly nonphysiological behaviorism, Tolman promised, "will bring under a single rubric all the apparently different and contradictory methods of actual psychology . . . [and] will allow for a more ready and adequate treatment of the problems of motive, purpose, determining tendency, and the like, than was made easy by the older subjectivistic formulation" ([1922] 1951, p. 8). Tolman was to devote the next 37 years to redeeming this pledge. Tolman's system-building was characterized by two major attributes. The first of these was breadth. Like all other system builders of his time, he was "obsessed by a need for a single comprehensive theory or scheme for the whole of psychology" (1952, p. 336), and like all the others, he was to fall short of this grand goal. But where the others sought comprehensiveness by exclusion (denying the existence of many psychological problems and phenomena) or by "monolithism" (attempting to stretch a very few "principles" or "axioms" to cover all behavior), Tolman's approach was to welcome into his purview all that was animal and human and to insist that what he had welcomed was complex and multidetermined. For example, learning theorists of the time were dedicated to the search for one or two universal nostrums, such as "the law of effect" or "conditioning," which would explain the learning process. Tolman's experiments made
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it quite clear that the learning process is not amenable to easy analysis by these—or other—simple universals. Tolman's formulation of the problem of learning was broadly conceived. It had room for motivational, perceptual, emotional, and many other variables and families of variables. He was the first psychologist to experiment in the area of behavior genetics and was the sole behaviorist to challenge the extreme environmentalism of the 1920s and early 1930s. Eventually he came to entertain the notion that several different kinds of learning processes exist (1949). [See GENETICS, article on GENETICS AND BEHAVIOR.] Among some system builders it became the fashion to attempt to pare down one's system to mathematical statements, fitted curves, or "hypothetico-deductive" predictions. Where others tried (because their formulations were simple enough to permit such attempts) and lost (precisely because their formulations were so simple), Tolman never tried at all. He ended with a "scheme"—not with a set of easily testable theories. This is Tolman's strength and his weakness. Because he wanted to consider everything that mattered, the all-inclusiveness of his system gives a unifying appearance to the many-splintered thing called psychology. Clinical, social, industrial, cognitive, and learning psychologists have repaired thereto and have found comfort in Tolman's scheme—a scheme which promises to show that psychology is a many-splendored, unified thing. Whatever the realities behind his promise to integrate all of psychology, Tolman's system does have the negative, but not inconsiderable, virtue of discouraging the easy promulgation of vague and oversimplified descriptions of behavior and equally ambiguous and undernourished "explanatory principles." The second attribute of Tolman's system-building was his belief that observed correlations between stimuli and responses could be gathered into general laws and could yield fruitful theory only through the use of "intervening variables"—his name for dispositions that direct behavior and that intervene between environmental stimuli and observable responses. Among the intervening variables that Tolman proposed were "cognitions," "expectancies," and "purposes." These "mentalistic" concepts were in disrepute among the behaviorists, but Tolman proceeded to study them empirically using his rats and invented an experimental method for inferring cognitions, expectancies, and purposes in both animals and men from observable behavior. The result was that these concepts (despite their official banishment from psychology, first by Watson and then by Hull) continued to remain respect-
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able among a respectable number of respectable experimental psychologists. Tolman's work took on new import in the late 1950s and early 1960s with the revival of interest in cognition by many experimental and physiological psychologists. Many of these latter-day cognitive psychologists found in Tolman's "expectancies," "cognitive maps," "hypotheses," and so on, the very concepts they needed. And so it appears that the greatest Tolmanian paradox of all may be in the making. Tolman's system, which because of its lack of mathematical statement and quantification was so critically attacked by all other system makers, may become the system of choice for the game theorists, decision theorists, and information theorists in their mathematical model-building—precisely when the relicts of the more orthodox behavioristic systems have become disillusioned with curve fitting, "hypothetico-deductive" predictions, and even (if Skinner is to be taken at his word) with simple statistical analysis of data. DAVID KRECH [For the historical context of Tolman's work, see GESTALT THEORY; and the biographies of BRUNSWIK; HOLT; HULL; KOFFKA; LEWIS; McDoUGALL; TlTCH-
ENER; WATSON; WUNDT; YERKES. For discussion of the subsequent development of his ideas, see LEARNING; MOTIVATION, especially the article on HUMAN MOTIVATION; THINKING, article On COGNITIVE ORGANIZATION AND PROCESSES.] WORKS BY TOLMAN
(1922) 1951 A New Formula for Behaviorism. Pages 1-8 in Edward C. Tolman, Collected Papers in Psychology. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press. (1932) 1951 Purposive Behavior in Animals and Men. Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press. -» Tolman's major work, containing a wealth of empirical data from his Berkeley laboratory and his first full-dress systematic presentation of purposive behaviorism. 1942 Drives Toward War. New York: Appleton. -> Tolman's Quaker background and his concern with the problem of peace found expression during World War ii in this book. Here he examined the motives which send men to war and then suggested the kinds of social controls that a warless society would have to impose on these motives. 1949 There Is More Than One Kind of Learning. Psychological Review 56:144-155. 1952 Edward C. Tolman. Volume 4, pages 323-339 in A History of Psychology in Autobiography. Worcester, Mass.: Clark Univ. Press. 1959 Principles of Purposive Behavior. Volume 2, pages 92-157 in Sigmund Koch (editor), Psychology: A Study of a Science. New York: McGraw-Hill. Collected Papers in Psychology. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1951. H» A collection of 19 of Tolman's papers together with an evaluative foreword published by his colleagues and former students to commemorate his more than thirty years of service at the
University of California. Tolman himself chose the papers as those which to him meant steps in the development of his theoretical system. The 1922 paper referred to in the present article is the first paper in this collection. SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY
CRUTCHFIELD, RICHARD S.; KRECH, D.; and TRYON, R. C. 1960 Edward Chace Tolman: A Life of Scientific and Social Purpose. Science 131:714-716. -» A brief biographical and appreciative note by three of Tolman's former students and later colleagues at Berkeley. [Editorial.] 1959 Washington Post November 25, p. A18, col. 1. LEYTHAM, G. W. H. 1962 In Memory of Edward Chace Tolman (1886-1959). British Psychological Society, Bulletin 49:21-28. RITCHIE, BENBOW F. 1964 Edward Chace Tolman. Volume 37, pages 293-324 in National Academy of Sciences, Biographical Memoirs. New York: Columbia Univ. Press. -»• Contains a list of Tolman's "Honors and Distinctions," as well as a 99-item bibliography of his published papers and books.
TONNIES, FERDINAND Ferdinand Tonnies (1855-1936), German sociologist, spent his childhood on a prosperous farm in Schleswig-Holstein and, after his father's retirement, in the town of Husum. In 1872 Tonnies enrolled with patriotic enthusiasm at the University of Strassburg, but making use of the German student's freedom to move, he transferred successively to the universities of Jena, Bonn, Leipzig, and Tubingen, where he finally received his doctorate in classical philology in 1877. Even then his interests had shifted to political philosophy and social problems. His father's means, which later made it possible for him to devote his time to private scholarship, later enabled him to pursue postdoctoral studies. Tonnies went to the University of Berlin and to London, beginning his Hobbesian studies and Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft. In 1881 a draft of the latter served as his Habilitationsschrift when Tonnies became a Privatdozent for philosophy at the University of Kiel. He made but little use of the venia legendi (license to lecture). Relatively unencumbered by academic duties, Tonnies contributed extensively not only to professional journals but to political periodicals as well, commenting on the important problems of his time and often taking sides on political issues. Despite his detachment from the university, he was appointed to a chair for economics and statistics in 1913, from which post he retired in 1916. He had lived outside Kiel during most of his academic life, but in 1921 he moved into the city and resumed teaching as professor emeritus in the field of sociology.
TONNIES, FERDINAND Tonnies was president of the German Sociological Society from 1909 to 1933; it had been founded by him together with Georg Simmel, Werner Sombart, and Max Weber. He also participated in the organization of the Hobbes and Spinoza societies and was active in the Society for Ethical Culture. Although he lived all his adult life in the region where he was born, Tonnies liked to travel and felt quite at home in England, where his studies and publications gained him many friends. He visited the United States in 1904, at which time he read a paper at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition. He was a corresponding member of the American Sociological Society. Conservative by temperament, Tonnies nevertheless took an active interest in the socialist and trade union movements, in consumer cooperatives, and in a variety of other progressive movements. He supported the independence movements in Finland and Ireland. In spite of his opposition to the imperial regime, he endeavored to defend Germany's cause in World War i and after the war investigated the "war guilt question." In protest against the rising National Socialist movement, he joined the Social Democratic party. This and his public denunciation of Nazism and anti-Semitism in the winter of 1932/1933 led to his illegal discharge by the Hitler government from his position as professor emeritus. He died in 1936, nearly 81 years old. Tonnies' mother came from a family of Lutheran pastors, and although he himself was an agnostic, he never ceased to concern himself with problems of religion. In his old age he came to believe in the possibility of an adogmatic universal religion that would unite all mankind. All his life he had a great love of poetry, and many of his own writings reveal a poetic vein. System of sociology Although Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft (1887) established Tonnies' reputation, his system of sociology is better studied in his later works, particularly those published after 1925. At this mature stage of his work Tonnies distinguished between a broad and a narrow concept of sociology. The former included social biology, demography, and social psychology, while the latter included only the study of social relationships, groups, norms, and values. Within the narrower field, Tonnies established three methodologically distinct divisions or levels of inquiry: (1) Theoretical or pure sociology as an integrated system of basic concepts. (2) Applied sociology, a deductive discipline that
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uses the concepts of theoretical sociology in order to understand and explain the origin and development of society, in particular modern society. (3) Empirical sociology or sociography, the latter term coined by Rudolf Steinmetz (1935), which was never clearly defined by Tonnies but which corresponds roughly to what is called sociological research in the United States. It was, of course, quite clear to Tonnies that these conceptual distinctions cannot be maintained in the study of concrete social phenomena. Empirical sociological research must be oriented toward a general theory of social interaction, and the physical existence and psychological interaction of men must be given recognition. Social entities. Tonnies perceived all social interactions and groups as creations of human thought and will. These creations he called social entities (soziale Wesenheiten), and he classified them roughly as social collectives (Samischaften), social corporations (soziale Korperschaften), and social relationships (soziale Verhdltnisse). The concept of Samtschaft occurs only in Tonnies' later writings and refers to those unorganized groups that are large enough to be independent of the participation of specific individuals, for example, social classes or the nation. The concept of social corporation is derived from the legal concept of persona iuris and refers to groups that are able to act through representative organs (officers). Social relationships may have their basis in biological or psychological relationships, or in both (as in the case of the relationship between parent and child), but as social relationships in the strict sense of the concept they exist because, and insofar as, they are recognized, acknowledged, and willed by the participants and, normally, also by outsiders (see Tonnies' preface to the 6th and 7th editions of Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft). Social relationships in this sense involve the awareness of certain obligations and claims that are regulated by social norms or rules of conduct. They occur, of course, within social corporations and social collectives. The biological, psychological, and social levels of these relationships are independent: it is possible, for example, for a parent to disown his child or for a marriage to be maintained even though the psychological relationship between the spouses has become essentially hostile. The identification of social entities with willed relationships distinguishes Tonnies' concept of the social from that of behaviorism, which attributes to any kind of human interaction the quality of being social. According to Tonnies, a social entity is a creation of the will of its members, which has
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for them a quasi-objective reality, imposes upon them certain obligations, and grants them certain rights. These characteristics are most evident in social corporations, but they exist also in simple social relationships. The will to maintain a particular social relationship as a social entity is manifest when the participants conform to the specific rules of conduct valid for that relationship. "Wesenwille" and "Kiirwille." The will that establishes a social entity may be differentiated according to its relation to ends and means. The meaning of "will" is much broader here than in popular usage. An action may be willed for its own sake, or because of a hardly conscious drive or inclination, or out of habit, or it may be consciously motivated on account of its intrinsic moral, aesthetic, or other value; or a course of action may be willed in order to achieve a certain end or purpose, regardless of its intrinsic value. Tonnies called the first type of will Wesenwille (natural will), because it is a manifestation of the actor's nature; the second type of will he called Kiirwille, a term derived from an ancient Germanic word for choosing, because the actor chooses among various possible means to an end. The translation of Kiirwille as "rational will" should not be interpreted to imply that only Kiirwille is rational while Wesenwille is not. Tonnies conceived of Wesenwille as having degrees of rationality, which correspond, as he acknowledged, to Max Weber's affectual, traditional, and value-rational orientations of social action; Kiirwille, in turn, corresponds to Weber's purposive-rational orientation of social action. "Gemeinschaft" and "Gesellschaft." In applying the concept of two types of will to social entities, Tonnies arrived at the fundamental distinction between entities that are the objects of Wesenwille and those that are the objects of Kiirwille. Certain entities, for example, social clubs or religious sects, result from mutual sympathy, habit, or common beliefs and are willed for their intrinsic value; other entities, for example, most business associations, are intended by their constituents to be means to specific ends. Gemeinschaft is the type of social entity that results from Wesenwille, while Gesellschaft results from Kiirwille. The German words have their English near-equivalents in the words "community" and "society"; these English terms have become accepted as interchangeable with the German ones. Tonnies developed the concepts of Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft by elaborate analyses of their empirical prototypes: kinship, neighborhood, town, and spiritual community are prototypes of the former; contractual relationships, collectives based on common interests, and special purpose associations
are prototypes of the latter. The concepts themselves are intended as ideal types and not as categories of classification. Empirically, pure Gemeinschaft is impossible, because all Gemeinschaften have rational aspects; likewise, pure Gesellschaft is impossible, because man's social conduct can never be entirely determined by intellect and reason. Any concrete social entity, therefore, is only more or less Gemeinschaft-like or more or less Gesellschaftlike. It would defeat the very purpose of Tonnies' theory were one to define, for example, the family as a Gemeinschaft, instead of inquiring to what extent a given family or, on a higher level of abstraction, a given type of family approximates the ideal type of Gemeinschaft and to what extent it contains traits of Gesellschaft. Tonnies himself compared the two concepts to chemical elements that may be found combined in different proportions. What distinguishes Tonnies' theory from similar conceptual dichotomies, then, is his voluntaristic conception of all social relationships. Accordingly, Gemeinschaft-l\ke social entities may be formed by conscious acts of association, as in the case of betrothals or religious orders, and a Gesellschaftlike small group, one that meets for professional discussion or to play chess, may have less formal organization than a Gemeinschaft-like corporate group, such as a village community. Tonnies identified Gemeinschaft-like relationships of equality (Genossenschaft) and of superordination-subordination (Herrschaft), as well as mixed cases; for example, the authority of the father over his children, of the master over his servant, and the rule of elders in a community are prototypes of Gemeinschaft-like authority relationships, while the relationship of husband and wife represents a combination of equality and superordination. In Gesellschaften, the individual members are conceptually peers, although in fact they may delegate authority to some persons; for example, the members of an association delegate authority to an executive committee. In both types of entity the abuse of authority may transform an originally friendly relationship into a more or less hostile one, and in the extreme case may result in the complete dissolution of social bonds in the strict sense of the term. Social norms. Tonnies conceived of every social entity as endowed with a collective will. Such a collective will is most readily evident in social corporations, but it exists in principle in all other collectives and relationships. The collective will aims at the realization and preservation of social values and becomes manifest in the rules of conduct or social norms which the associated individ-
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uals regard as binding. Tonnies distinguished three levels of norms and on each level, in turn, norms of Gemeinschaft-like and Gesellschaft-like character. The resulting scheme, which is very complex, can be reduced to a series of antitheses: custom and convention; customary law and statute law; religiously sanctioned ethics and rational ethics sanctioned by public opinion. Tonnies dealt with custom in many of its ramifications in his important work Die Sitte (1909a). The word "custom" designates (1) actual patterns of behavior; (2) a complex of prescriptive or prohibitive rules of conduct; and (3) a will, this last being, according to Tonnies, the least noticed and yet the most interesting meaning, clearly implied when we say "custom requires that. . . ." Tonnies considered it his particular achievement to have noted this third meaning. Custom in this sense signifies one kind of common will of a social entity. In his second major work, Kritik der offentlichen Meinung (1922&), the meanings of the term "public opinion" are differentiated in an analogous way. Opinions are not merely statements of thoughts, they contain an element of will. This is especially evident in the case of opinions on social and political issues: the expression of such opinions involves the claim that others should accept them as directives for social action. The normative character of opinions is even more obvious when they are held by certain publics, as distinct from individuals. Tonnies further distinguished from the opinions of limited publics the public opinion of a total society, that is, the opinion concerning public affairs that claims to be the only true and correct opinion. This latter he considered to be a kind of group will, because anyone who does not share this public opinion, or opposes it openly, is likely to be regarded as disloyal. There may be different degrees of firmness of any public opinion; on fundamental principles, public opinion tends to be much firmer and more persistent than on current issues.
philosophy of history was, however, presented in numerous articles, some of which were collected in Fortschritt und soziale Entwicklung (1926). He saw the transition from a predominantly Gemeinschaft-like to a predominantly Gesellschaft-like social order primarily as a consequence of increasing commercialization together with the rise of the modern state and the progress of science. The transition is therefore the work of three types of kiirwillig-oriented men: the economic, the political, and the scientific. Empirical sociology or sociography. Tonnies' empirical studies are concerned mainly with phenomena of social pathology (suicide, crime, illegitimacy), but he also studied population problems and the impact of business cycles and seasonal cycles on social conditions and social change (Oberschall 1965). Tonnies was motivated to make these studies both by humanitarian and ethical considerations and by a sociological interest in the effect of Gemeinschaft-like or Gesellschaftlike social environments on different types of deviant behavior. At an early stage in his career he began to see that it was necessary to give sociological theory an empirical foundation, not only through historical studies but more particularly through "mass observation" and statistical analysis. In his empirical studies he invented an entirely original method of correlation (see Tonnies 1909Z?; 1924; Striefler 1931). His recently published letters to his friend the philosopher Friedrich Paulsen (see Tonnies-Paulsen: Briefwechsel} contain evidence that his "almost passionate interest in statistics" and his plans for what he called studies in "physique sociale oder Soziologie [sic]," "on the basis of statistics," even antedate the first steps in the conception of Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft. As early as 1895 he stated that certain types of crime were increasing with the decline of Gemeinschaft and with the increasing predominance of Gesellschaft-like conditions.
Applied sociology The theory of Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft was originally intended as the conceptual framework for a historical analysis of the evolution of modern society. The first edition of the book carries the subtitle Abhandlung des Communismus und des Sozialismus als empirische Kulturformen, indicating that Tonnies intended to trace social evolution from primitive agrarian communism through the individualistic society of modern capitalism to an ultimate socialistic order, which he viewed as Gemeinschaft of a higher order. Only fragments of this historical treatise were published under the title Geist der Neuzeit (1935). Tonnies'
Contributions and influence Tonnies' concept of Wesenwille was derived from Arthur Schopenhauer and Wilhelm Wundt; his concept of Kurwille stemmed from Thomas Hobbes and the rationalist doctrine of natural law. Other important influences came from Adam Ferguson (the idea that sympathy is the basis of human society, and that alienation is a concomitant of "commercial" society), from John Millar (the basic types of authority), and from Lorenz von Stein, Marx, J. J. Bachofen, Emile de Laveleye, L. H. Morgan, Sir Henry Maine, Otto von Gierke, Rudolf von Jhering, and Adolf Wagner. The originality of Tonnies' doctrine of the differ-
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ent types of social entities lies in its synthesis of the social theories of rationalism with those of the romantic and historical schools. His theory overcomes the antagonism between the organicist and the contractual conceptions of society. According to Tonnies, these apparently irreconcilable views of human society correspond to real historical phenomena, and some of the greatest political theorists of the past have abstracted models from this reality: the model of the organic society is Aristotle's polis, while the model of the contractual society is Hobbes's "political commonwealth." The voluntaristic basis on which Tonnies reconciled the two traditions in social theory enabled him to state the old problem of the relationship of the individual to society in a new way and to propose a solution for it: some social relationships may be assumed to exist prior to individuals (and are actually so imagined), while other relationships may be assumed to be the result of an agreement among previously independent individuals. The individual is always conceived of as a social being, and, correspondingly, social entities are conceived of as the creations of willing and acting individuals. Epistemologically, Tonnies anticipated Georg Simmel's idea of pure sociology as a systematic theory of the "forms" of social relationships. He also foreshadowed the phenomenological method later developed by Alfred Vierkandt (see Salomon 1936). Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft makes great demands on the reader's erudition, especially on his familiarity with social and economic history, with political and social philosophy of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, and with nineteenth-century anthropological literature. Tonnies' style and his habit of shifting from conceptual thinking to empirical analysis constitute additional difficulties and sources of misinterpretation. For nearly thirty years, Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft was hardly known outside of a small public of scholars; a change came after World War i, when a new generation, disillusioned with the existing social order and longing for Gemeinschaft, turned to the book with enthusiasm. Tonnies did not share the pessimism of Oswald Spengler's Decline of the West, with its value-laden distinction between culture and civilization. He saw hopefully into the future, visualizing a socialist order that would have the attributes of Gemeinschaft and that would be based upon rational ethics and possibly on a world-wide political order. Tonnies' influence on the social sciences, although long delayed, is now so widespread and so much taken for granted that it is difficult to ap-
praise (Freyer 1936). For example, the concept of "mass society" with its emphasis on alienation owes a great deal to Tonnies. Rural sociologists, who at first uncritically equated rural life with Gemeinschaft, have since refined their application of Tonnies' theory in rural community studies (see Heberle 1941; Loomis & Beegle 1950; Wurzbacher 1955; Hofstee 1960). Finally, Tonnies' theory has had a strong and far-reaching influence because it is derived from certain universal experiences of social life. Fundamental contrasts in human relations that we sense more or less clearly are brought into focus by his concepts of sociopsychological types. These types are then employed to achieve a deeper understanding of contrasts in the structure of social systems. By providing a systematization of the basic phenomena of social life, Tonnies laid the foundation for a new kind of sociology that subsequently was further developed by such scholars as Durkheim, Simmel, Weber, and Maclver. RUDOLF HEBERLE [For the historical context of Tonnies' work, see SOCIOLOGY, article on THE DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIOLOGICAL THOUGHT; and the biographies of BACHOFEN; FERGUSON; GIERKE; HOBBES; MAINE; MILLAR; MORGAN, LEWIS HENRY; STEIN; WAGNER; WUNDT; for discussion of the subsequent development of Tonnies' ideas, see AGRICULTURE, article on SOCIAL ORGANIZATION; COMMUNITY-SOCIETY CONTINUA; and the biographies of DURKHEIM; MAC!VER; REDFIELD; SIMMEL; WEBER, MAX.] WORKS BY TONNIES (1887) 1957 Community and Society (Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft). Translated and edited by Charles P. Loomis. East Lansing: Michigan State Univ. Press. -> Contains a selected bibliography. First published in German. A paperback edition was published in 1963 by Harper. (1889a) 1928 TONNIES, FERDINAND (editor) Behemoth: Or, the Long Parliament, by Thomas Hobbes. Cambridge Univ. Press. -» The first edition of Behemoth was published in 1679. (1889b) 1928 TONNIES, FERDINAND (editor) The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic, by Thomas Hobbes. Cambridge Univ. Press. -» The first edition of The Elements of Law was published in 1650. (1896) 1925 Thomas Hobbes Leben und Lehre. 3d enl. ed. Stuttgart: Frommann. 1899-1900 Philosophical Terminology. Mind New Series 8:289-332, 467-491; 9:46-61. 1905 The Present Problems of Social Structure. American Journal of Sociology 10:569-588. (1909a) 1961 Custom: An Essay on Social Codes. New York: Free Press. -> First published as Die Sitte. 1909& Eine neue Methode der Vergleichung statistischer Reihen. Jahrbuch fur Gesetzgebung, Verwaltung und Volkswirtschaft im Deutschen Reich 33:699-720. -» Now called Schmollers Jahrbuch.
TOOKE, THOMAS 1922a Ferdinand Tonnies. Volume 3, pages 199-234 in Raymond Schmidt (editor), Die Philosophic der Gegenwart in Selbstdarstellungen. Leipzig: Meiner. 1922fa Kritik der offentlichen Meinung. Berlin: Springer. 1923 Zweck und Mittel im sozialen Leben. Volume 1, pages 235-270 in Erinnerungsgabe fur Max Weber. 2 vols. in 1. Edited by Melchior Palyi. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot. 1924 Korrelation der Parteien in Statistik der Kieler Reichstagswahlen. Jahrbucher fur N ationalokonomie und Statistik 122:663-672. 1925-1929 Soziologische Studien und Kritiken. 3 vols. Jena: Fischer. 1926 Fortschritt und soziale Entwicklung: Geschichtsphilosophische Ansichten. Karlsruhe: Braun. -» The second article in this collection was published as "The Concept and Law of Human Progress," in Social Forces, 1940, Volume 19, pages 23-29. (1931a) 1965 Einfiihrung in die Soziologie. Reprint with an introduction by Rudolf Heberle. Stuttgart: Enke. (1931k) 1966 Estates and Classes. Pages 12-21 in Reinhard Bendix and Seymour M. Lipset (editors), Class, Status, and Power: Social Stratification in Comparative Perspective. 2d ed. New York: Free Press. -> First published as "Stande und Klassen" in the Handworterbuch der Soziologie. 1932 Mein Verhaltnis zur Soziologie. Pages 103-122 in Richard Thurnwald (editor), Soziologie von heute. Leipzig: Hirschfeld. 1935 Geist der Neuzeit. Leipzig: Buske. Ferdinand Tonnies—Friedrich Paulsen: Briefwechsel, 18761908. Edited by Olaf Klose, E. G. Jacoby, and I. Fischer, with an introduction by E. G. Jacoby. Veroffentlichungen der Schleswig-Holsteinischen Universitatsgesellschaft, New Series, No. 27. Kiel: Hirt, 1961. SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY
BRENKE, ELSE 1936 Verzeichnis der Schriften von Ferdinand Tonnies aus den Jahren 1875 bis 1935. Pages 383-403 in Reine und angewandte Soziologie: Eine Festgabe fur Ferdinand Tonnies zu seinem achtzigsten Geburtstage am 26. Juli 1935. Leipzig: Buske. -» An almost complete chronological list of Tonnies' works. Festgabe Zum siebzigsten Geburtstage von Ferdinand Tonnies. 1925 Kolner Vierteljahrshefte fiir Soziologie 5, no. 1 & 2:1-496. FREYER, HANS 1936 Ferdinand Tonnies und seine Stellung in der deutschen Soziologie. Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv 44:1-9. HEBERLE, RUDOLF (1937)1948 The Sociological System of Ferdinand Tonnies: "Community" and "Society." Pages 227-248 in Harry E. Barnes (editor), An Introduction to the History of Sociology. Univ. of Chicago Press. -» This is a revised and expanded reprint of an article that was first published in Volume 2 of the American Sociological Review. HEBERLE, RUDOLF 1941 The Application of Fundamental Concepts in Rural Community Studies. Rural Sociology 6:203-215. HEBERLE, RUDOLF 1955 Ferdinand Tonnies' Contributions to the Sociology of Political Parties. American Journal of Sociology 61:213-220. HEBERLE, RUDOLF 1959 Ferdinand Tonnies. Volume 10, pages 394-397 in Handworterbuch der Sozialwissenschaften. Stuttgart: Fischer. -»• Contains a bibliography of works by and works about Tonnies.
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HOFSTEE, E. W. 1960 Rural Social Organization. Sociologia ruralis 1:105-117. JACOBY, E. G. 1955 Ferdinand Tonnies, Sociologist: A Centennial Tribute. Kyklos 8:144-159. LEEMANS, VICTOR 1933 F. Tonnies et la sociologie contemporaine en Allemagne. Paris: Alcan. LEIF, JOSEPH 1946 Les categories fondamentales de la sociologie de Tonnies. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. LOOMIS, CHARLES P.; and BEEGLE, J. ALLAN (1950) 1955 Rural Social Systems: A Textbook in Rural Sociology and Anthropology. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: PrenticeHall; London: Bailey & Swinfen. OBERSCHALL, ANTHONY 1965 Empirical Social Research in Germany, 1848-1914. Paris and The Hague: Mouton; New York: Humanities. -> See especially pages 51-63. Reine und angewandte Soziologie: Eine Festgabe fiir Ferdinand Tonnies zu seinem achtzigsten Geburtstage am 26. Juli 1935. 1936 Leipzig: Buske. SALOMON, ALBERT 1936 In Memoriam Ferdinand Tonnies (1855-1936). Soctai Research 3:348-363. STEINMETZ, SEBALD RUDOLF (1925) 1935 Wat is sociographie? Volume 3, pages 143-145 in Sebald Rudolf Steinmetz, Gesammelte kleinere Schriften zur Ethnologie und Soziologie. Groningen (Netherlands): Nordhoff. STRIEFLER, HEINRICH 1931 Zur Methode der Rangkorrelation nach Tonnies. Deutsches statistisches Zentralblatt 23:129-136; 161-168. WIRTH, Louis 1926 The Sociology of Ferdinand Tonnies. American Journal of Sociology 32:412-422. WURZBACHER, GERHARD 1955 Beobachtungen zum Anwendungsbereich der Tonniesschen Kategorien Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft. Kolner Zeitschrift fiir Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie New Series 7:443462. Zum hundertsten Geburtstag von Ferdinand Tonnies. 1955 Kolner Zeitschrift fiir Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie New Series 7:337-490.
TOOKE, THOMAS Thomas Tooke (1774-1858), English merchant, economist, and historian of prices, was born in Russia, where his father was a clergyman of the English church in Kronstadt and later chaplain of the English factory in St. Petersburg. He was for many years in the Russian trade as a partner in Stephen Thornton Brothers Co. and later in Asteel, Tooke, & Thornton. After retirement from active business in 1836, he served for over a decade as governor of the Royal Exchange Assurance Corporation and as chairman of the St. Katherine's Dock Company. Tooke began to participate in discussions of economic policy in 1819, when he was a witness before the Commons and Lords committees considering the resumption of cash payments. In 1820 he gave evidence in favor of free trade before the
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Lords committee and in 1821 before a similar Commons committee. Tooke made few contributions to the theory of international trade, but throughout his life he was an effective spokesman, in the business community and among men in public life, for the removal of trade barriers. He was the author of the London Merchants' Petition of 1820 in support of free trade, which was presented to the House of Commons by Alexander Baring. Largely in association with others who had been instrumental in the Merchants' Petition, he was a leader in founding the Political Economy Club in 1821 and was a member until his death. Important as Tooke's contemporary influence on behalf of free trade was, his permanent place in the history of economics rests primarily on his role in the British monetary and banking controversy and on his collection of price statistics. Testifying in 1819 before the parliamentary committees on the resumption of cash payments, Tooke had taken a view close to that of Ricardo—not only supporting the re-establishment of the gold standard but accepting a basically monetary explanation of price changes. In 1821 Tooke again gave evidence, this time before the Commons committee on the depressed state of agriculture, largely on the relation of monetary policy to agricultural prices. Although he never wavered in his defense of the gold standard, his study of prices led him gradually to the view that bank-created money is a result and not a cause of price changes. His first book, Thoughts and Details on the High and Low Prices of the Thirty Years, From 1793-1822 (1823), emphasized the influence of climatic conditions and changing demand on agricultural prices. Later publications, including the first two volumes of his History of Prices, which appeared in 1838 and incorporated most of his 1823 book, increasingly stressed the influences affecting individual prices but did not explicitly repudiate his earlier monetary explanation of price changes. In his extensive testimony before the Bank Charter Committee of 1832, Tooke's position shifted substantially from that of his testimony of 1819; but only when he appeared before the Select Committee on Banks of Issue of 1840 did he finally reject the idea that monetary changes induced by bank credit influence prices—an idea that was the basis of the Currency Principle, namely, that Bank of England notes should be made to fluctuate exactly as would a metallic currency. Indeed, Tooke became the leading advocate for the opposing view commonly known as the Banking Principle, namely, that note issue needs no rigid control. In the policy controversy of the time Tooke's opposition to the Currency Prin-
ciple concentrated on the monetary significance of deposits. But his argument had the wider implications that monetary policy is powerless to influence prices or economic conditions and that the Bank of England should not be subject to any rules other than the good judgment of its management. Before the passage of the Bank Act of 1844, Tooke urged these views in An Inquiry Into the Currency Principle (1844) and, after its passage, in testimony in 1848 before the parliamentary Secret Committees on the Commercial Distress that followed the suspension in 1847 of the Bank Act and in On the Bank Charter Act of 1844 (1856). The third and fourth volumes of his History of Prices, appearing in 1840 and 1848, incorporated, in addition to new statistics, much of his earlier writing and testimony. The fifth and sixth volumes, brought out in 1857 with William Newmarch as coauthor, added material on developments after the Californian and Australian gold discoveries but always within the same theoretical assumption—that the money supply is the consequence rather than the cause of economic changes. Tooke was an avid collector of figures, a persuasive polemical writer against the more mechanical concepts of the "currency school," and a discriminating and forceful critic of Bank of England actions in particular situations, but he had little ability to develop an organized monetary theory. Although he favored a discretionary rather than a rules approach to monetary policy, it would be easy, in the light of monetary controversy since 1930, to read modern interpretations into Tooke's views. The discretion that he favored was always within the limits of the gold standard. Although Tooke was critical of the idea that the Bank of England should be a lender of last resort, his insistence that the Bank keep larger reserves contributed to the forces that led in the 1870s to the adoption of the Bagehot Principle. (According to the Bagehot Principle, the Bank of England has the responsibility of holding larger reserves than do other banks so that in time of crisis it can lend freely on proper security to all who ask for credit.) Tooke and his collaborator, Newmarch, made no attempt to construct index numbers from their extensive raw data; but Stanley Jevons later used their figures in his pioneering work on price indices and described the History of Prices as "a unique work, of which we can hardly overestimate the value." Tooke was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1821. In 1833 he was appointed to the Royal Commission on the Employment of Children and in 1840 to a similar commission, and he played a prominent part in the work of both. The Tooke
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the proprietor of The Globe, a newspaper, nor as the instigator of the development of New South Wales (although we still have Lake Torrens) that he deserves a place in this encyclopedia. Torrens is important as a representative figure of the Ricardian era of English political economy. [For discussion of the subsequent development of Tooke's ideas, see MONEY; PRICES; and the biogIt is important to note that Torrens was born in raphy of BAGEHOT, particularly the article on ECOIreland, for the economic and social (including NOMIC CONTRIBUTIONS.] religious) problems of that country clearly dominated much of his thinking, especially with regard WORKS BY TOOKE to the causes and cures of poverty. (1823) 1824 Thoughts and Details on the High and Low Torrens was not of the same intellectual caliber as Prices of the Thirty Years, From 1793-1822. 2d ed. London: Murray. Ricardo or Senior, but he was unquestionably a cut 1826 Considerations on the State of Currency. London: above James Mill and McCulloch; and in monetary Murray. matters he ranks with the best economists of his 1829a A Letter to Lord Grenville, on the Effects Ascribed generation. However, after his death, his contributo the Resumption of Cash Payments on the Value of the Currency. London: Murray. tions were forgotten; here we must agree with 1829£> On the Currency in Connexion With the Corn Lionel Robbins' view: "There can be no rewriting Trade, And on the Corn Laws; to Which is Added, a the verdict that any direct influence that Torrens Postscript on the Present Commercial Stagnation. may have had, ceased almost altogether with his London: Murray. (1838-1857) 1928 TOOKE, THOMAS; and NEWMARCH, death; even in regard to the theory of tariffs and WILLIAM A History of Prices and the State of the the terms of trade, in some respects his most imCirculation From 1792 to 1856. 6 vols. London: King. portant theoretical construction, the main influence -> First published as A History of Prices and the State came from Mill rather than Torrens" (Robbins of the Circulation, From 1793 to 1837: Preceded by a 1958, p. 232). Brief Sketch of the State of the Corn Trade in the Last-Two Centuries. Value, production, and distribution. Torrens (1844) 1959 An Inquiry Into the Currency Principle: sided with Lauderdale and Samuel Bailey in arguThe Connection of the Currency With Prices, and the ing that it is useless to search for an absolute measExpediency of a Separation of Issue From Banking. ure of value, and he also objected to the simple 2d ed. London School of Economics and Political Science. labor theory of value as outlined in Chapter 1 of 1856 On the Bank Charter Act of 1844, Its Principles Ricardo's Principles. But undoubtedly his most and Operation, With Suggestions for an Improved original work in the sphere of price theory is found Administration of the Bank of England. London: in his analysis of the gains from trade. In The Longmans. Economist Refuted (1808) he came close to the SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY principle of comparative advantage, and in his EsGREGORY, THEODOR E. G. (1928) 1962 An Introduction say on the External Corn Trade (1815) the distincto Tooke and Newmarch's A History of Prices and of tion between absolute and comparative advantage the State of the Circulation From 1792 to 1856. Lonis unambiguous. Seligman, in his famous article don School of Economics and Political Science. "On Some Neglected British Economists" (1903), claimed for Torrens the discovery of comparative advantage; he certainly published the principle beTORRENS, ROBERT fore Ricardo did in his Principles of 1817. Robert Torrens (1780-1864), in a life span of Theory of colonization. Like his contemporaries, 84 years, encompassed successfully the occupations Torrens rejected the earlier view that colonies of professional soldier, newspaper proprietor, memwere of no economic value. He regarded colonizaber of Parliament, and promoter of schemes for the tion as basically a method of overcoming the probcolonization of Australia. He was also a founding lem of overpopulation, his particular concern being member of the Political Economy Club and took the the effect of Irish immigration to Great Britain. chair at its inaugural meeting. These activities Like Wakefield, he thought that giving free land to apart, he maintained throughout his career, begincolonial immigrants was fraught with danger, and ning in the early 1800s and ending in the late he advocated a system akin to Wakefield's "suf1850s, a vast literary output ranging from political ficient price" system to enable immigrant laborers tracts to economic treatises, and he even managed to have sufficient capital stock to enter the ranks to write two delightfully naive novels. of the independent cultivators, and so prevent the It is not, however, as the hero of Anhalt, nor as overdispersion of the labor force. professorship of economic science and statistics at the University of London was established in his honor. FRANK W. FETTER
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Commercial policy. In the field of commercial policy theory, Torrens is widely known—through the efforts of Jacob Viner—for his modification of the doctrine that a regime of free international trade is necessarily optimally advantageous for individual countries. He was among the first to point to the possibility that a country might alter the terms of trade in its favor by use of an import tariff. In a series of letters, reprinted as The Budget (1841-1842), he enunciated the theory of reciprocity; the climax of his exposition is to be found in Letter n, addressed to Lord John Russell. There he argued that if some countries had tariffs, unilateral free trade was a mistaken policy, and that in such circumstances reciprocal tariffs should be adopted. This modification of the orthodox free trade position brought charges that he was abandoning the central classical position entirely. He himself believed, however, that he was only applying the logic of the Ricardian position. Theory of money and banking. As an economist Torrens was probably best known to the public as a leader of the currency school, and he could justly claim to be one of the initiators of the scheme, made law in the Bank Charter Act of 1844, that separated the issue and the banking departments of the Bank of England. He also wrote a classic defense of that bizarre piece of legislative enactment, The Principles and Practical Operation of Sir Robert Peel's Bill of 1844 (1848). There is an unexplained break in Torrens' development as a monetary controversialist that has intrigued and worried students of his work. Torrens began his monetary writing as an extreme antibullionist: his 1812 Essay on Money and Paper Currency had a strong inflationist ring about it and emphasized vividly the virtues of a paper currency. However, he later appeared to make a complete about-face and to end his career as defender of the currency school. This contradiction has been partly resolved by the recent discovery by D. P. O'Brien of an unpublished paper written by Torrens in 1826 entitled "On the Means of Establishing a Cheap, Secure and Uniform Currency" (1826). Here Torrens outlined a modification of Ricardo's plan for a gold exchange standard, hoping thereby to achieve the elasticity of currency that he had hankered for as an antibullionist and avoid the dangers of excess that (presumably) had forced him into the bullionist camp. BERNARD CORRY [For the historical context of Torrens' work, see the biographies of LAUDERDALE; RICARDO; SENIOR; WAKEFIELD; for discussion of the subsequent devel-
opment of his ideas, see BANKING, CENTRAL; COLONIALISM; INTERNATIONAL TRADE CONTROLS, article On TARIFFS AND PROTECTIONISM.] WORKS BY TORRENS
(1808) 1858 The Economist Refuted. London: Longmans. 1812 An Essay on Money and Paper Currency. London: Johnson. (1815) 1829 An Essay on the External Corn Trade. 5th ed. London: Longmans. 1821 An Essay on the Production of Wealth, With an Appendix, in Which the Principles of Political Economy Are Applied to the Actual Circumstances of This Country. London: Longmans. (1826) 1965 On the Means of Establishing a Cheap, Secure and Uniform Currency. Economica New Series 32:286-301. -» Written in 1826; published posthumously. (1833) 1958 Letters on Commercial Policy. London School of Economics and Political Science, Series of Reprints of Scarce Works on Political Economy, No. 14. London School of Economics and Political Science. (1835) 1836 Colonization of South Australia. 2d ed. London: Longmans. 1841-1842 The Budget: A Series of Letters on Financial, Commercial, and Colonial Policy. London: Smith. (1848) 1858 The Principles and Practical Operation of Sir Robert Peel's Bill of 1844, Explained and Defended. 3d ed. London: Longmans. WORKS ABOUT TORRENS
FETTER, FRANK W. 1962 Robert Torrens: Colonel of Marines and Political Economist. Economica New Series 29:152-165. MENAI, S. A. 1956 Robert Torrens: 1780-1864. Economica New Series 23:49-61. O'BRIEN, D. P. 1965 The Transition in Torrens' Monetary Thought. Economica New Series 32:269-286. ROBBINS, LIONEL 1958 Robert Torrens and the Evolution of Classical Economics. New York: St. Martins; London: Macmillan. SELIGMAN, EDWIN R. A. 1903 On Some Neglected British Economists. 2 parts. Economic Journal 13:335— 363, 511-535.
TOTALITARIANISM Totalitarianism is a twentieth-century term that did not come into general or academic use until the late 1930s because the political phenomena meant to be described by it had not attracted specific attention until then. The Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences (1930-1935), for instance, has no entry entitled "totalitarianism." The first citation of the word "totalitarian" by the Oxford English Dictionary (Supplement) of 1933 comes from the Contemporary Review of April 1928: "Fascism renounces its function as a totalitarian regime, and enters the electoral field on equal footing with its adversaries." The Times (London) followed suit in November 1929: "A reaction against parliamentarism . . . in favor of a 'totalitarian' or unitary
TOTALITARIANISM state, whether Fascist or Communist." These first two occurrences recorded in the dictionary point to the association, still often made today, between totalitarianism, fascism and communism, and rule by a single party. Problems of definition The novelty of the term lends support to those students of the subject who regard totalitarianism as a unique creation of the twentieth century, without historical precedent. Friedrich, for example, defines totalitarianism as a "syndrome" of six mutually related clusters of characteristic features: a single mass party, usually led by a charismatic leader; an official ideology; party control of the economy, mass communications, and means of effective armed combat; and a system of terroristic police control. Several of these features evidently could not be developed without the instruments provided by the modern technology of communications, transportation, and armaments, for example, "a technologically conditioned near-complete monopoly of control . . . of all means of effective mass communication, such as the press, radio, motion pictures, and so on" (American Academy of Arts and Sciences 1954, p. 53). A similar monopoly of all means of effective armed combat and terroristic police control depend upon the same advanced technology. Even the official ideology of the single mass party could hardly focus on "chiliastic claims as to the 'perfect' final society of mankind" unless modern technology had let the perfection of human society appear to be feasible. From this point of view, the crucial difference between earlier forms of absolutism, tyranny, or dictatorship and contemporary totalitarianism is found in the totality of control achieved by the latter, previously unattainable, at least for large societies, without the instruments of modern technology. This definitional approach to totalitarianism as a historically unique system of government creates certain difficulties for systematic political analysis. If each of the interrelated traits must be present before a system can be labeled totalitarian, how can one classify political systems along a spectrum running from one extreme, the ideal type of totalitarianism, to the other, the ideal type of its opposite, perhaps constitutional democracy? And what could one say about developing countries that have not even begun industrialization but whose governments are accused of the widespread use of coercion and repression? A number of postcolonial regimes in the developing areas have been subject to such charges. Although they show some traits of the totalitarian syndrome, they lack the techno-
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logical base allegedly required to facilitate total control. In fact, such regimes often claim to be using aspects of the syndrome to further technological modernization. If they are totalitarian, it is not because they are industrialized but because they want to achieve industrialization. Among recent studies, Barrington Moore's avoids the difficulties of the definitional approach in the search for totalitarian elements in preindustrial societies (1958, chapter 2). Emphasizing the coercive or repressive aspects of totalitarianism and the tendency, suggested by the root "total," to control as many human activities as possible, Moore distinguishes between centralized and decentralized, or "popular," totalitarianism. Among preindustrial examples of centralized totalitarianism, he cites the regime of the Zulu chief Shaka, the Ch'in dynasty in China, and the Maurya dynasty in India. Calvin's Geneva had elements of both centralized and popular totalitarianism. In both situations, bureaucracy, espionage and denunciation, terror, and thought control are employed in the pursuit of a single goal, such as conquest, defense against the enemy, or the prevention or promotion of social change (Moore 1958, p. 75). John H. Kautsky in part adapts these suggestions to the analysis of totalitarianism and the future of politics in the developing countries (1962, chapter 4). He conceives of totalitarianism "merely as a set of methods used, under certain circumstances, by a group or several groups in control of a government in order to retain that control" (1962, p. 91). In developing countries, he distinguishes between the totalitarianism of the aristocracy and its allies and that of the intellectuals. Totalitarian systems The most promising way to gain an understanding of totalitarianism is to compare those systems to which the term is usually applied both to one another and to their nontotalitarian opposites. Nazi Germany under Hitler and the Soviet Union under Stalin are usually regarded as prototypal totalitarian systems, to which Communist China has been added more recently. Although the term itself was first applied by Mussolini to his fascist state, his rule of Italy—in retrospect, and in comparison with its National Socialist German and Communist Russian contemporaries—is not usually described as totalitarian. Nor does the term apply to other fascist or dictatorial regimes, such as those of Horthy in Hungary, Pilsudski in Poland, Franco in Spain, Salazar in Portugal, and Peron in Argentina. Disagreement prevails about the proper classification of smaller member states of the
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Soviet bloc. Are Poland, Hungary, North Vietnam, or Cuba genuinely totalitarian on their own or merely under the direct or indirect control of the totalitarian rulers of the Soviet Union or China? The futility of this question again points to the inherent difficulties of the definitional approach. Communists themselves naturally reject the label of totalitarianism, which scholars, publicists, and propagandists of the West have tried to pin on them. But the communists do not return the charge by calling their opponents "totalitarians." Rather, they call them "capitalists," "imperialists," or "colonialists" and call their systems of government "minority dictatorships of the bourgeoisie." Since the Marxists conceive of the first postrevolutionary stage toward socialism and communism as the dictatorship of the proletariat, the communists evidently object not to dictatorship itself but to minority dictatorship, which they regard as reactionary or nonprogressive. They remain silent on the issue of totality of control. In this they resemble some non-Marxists who consider the trend toward totality of political control a common feature of all industrial societies, regardless of ideological persuasion. Distinctive features. The most distinctive features of the three major political systems of the twentieth century that have generally been considered totalitarian may be listed, in descending order of distinctiveness: (1) commitment to a single, positively formulated substantive goal— such as industrialization, racial mastery, or proletarian unity—and a concomitant lack of commitment to maintenance of procedural stability; (2) unpredictability and uncertainty, resulting from the condition of procedural flux, under which yesterday's hero is today's traitor and today's loyal behavior becomes tomorrow's subversion; (3) the large-scale use of organized violence by military and paramilitary forces and uniformed and secret police; parallel efforts (4) to bring into line or suppress organizations and associations not geared to the substantive aim of the regime and (5) to enforce universal participation in public organizations dedicated to the single goal; and (6) universalization of the goal toward the remaking of all mankind in the image of the totalitarian system itself. Operational commitment to an ideology is omitted from the list, because this also characterizes systems not generally classified as totalitarian. Many democratic socialists, for example, seem as firmly committed to their ideology as Nazis or Stalinists to theirs. The difference lies not in the commitment to but in the content of the ideologies.
All three of these ideologies changed over time, although by different processes. Similarly, adherents of many organized religions also demonstrate ideological commitment. Moreover, in the cold war repeated efforts have been made, particularly in the United States, to fashion an ideology for the "free world" with which to combat the Soviet ideology. The aim of these efforts is to marshal popular commitment to the values incorporated in the new ideology, but it is not to further the establishment of totalitarianism in the West. Ideological commitment consequently does not appear to be a distinctive feature of totalitarianism. The six apparently distinctive features will now be examined in ascending order of distinctiveness. Universalism. Universalization of the single substantive goal of the system toward the reshaping of all mankind in its image is listed as the least distinctive aspect of prototypal totalitarianism because clearly nontotalitarian regimes have at times displayed a similar orientation. Like their occasional tendency toward ideologism, this seems related to economic, cultural, and social conditions increasingly prevalent in all modern or modernizing societies. Woodrow Wilson's negative and procedural goal of "making the world safe for democracy" seemed reasonable to many people of the Western world. After World War n, both the United States and the Soviet Union, and other modern industrial states, presented the more backward societies— whose elites eagerly responded—with different models of modernization. With varying degrees of success, both the Western powers and the Soviet bloc offered economic and technical aid to the developing countries to promote this transformation. Immediately after the war, both the United States and the Soviet Union worked more directly toward the goal of reforming in their own image those countries that they ruled by military occupation. In any case, the shrinkage of distances brought about by advances in the technology of communications and transport has been leading to a reduction of substantive economic, cultural, and social differences among political systems. In awareness of this, both of the great contenders in the cold war have naturally exerted themselves toward shaping the anticipated new, more or less homogenized character of all mankind in their own image rather than in their adversary's. Forced participation. Enforced general participation in public organizations is especially marked under totalitarianism. This would be particularly obvious if voting participation were taken as the only index, since both the Soviet Union and Nazi
TOTALITARIANISM Germany came close to enforcing almost 100 per cent participation at the polls, whereas in constitutional democracies only between 40 and 80 per cent of the electorate normally vote. Apart from such formal practices as voting, however, the technology of communications has not only facilitated but made inevitable inclusion of the entire population in the political, or at least the "public," process. In principle, it makes relatively little difference whether radio and television networks and the press are operated by the state and the single party, as in the Soviet Union, by private enterprise under government regulation, as in the United States, or under some mixed arrangement, as in Great Britain. In all modern societies, the tendency is toward forcing greater individual attention to public matters and eroding the sphere of privacy, although the Soviet Union has moved further in this direction than the United States, and the United States further than the United Kingdom. Suppression of associations. The suppression of organizations not dedicated to the substantive goal of the regime manifests itself as the concomitant of the enforced political coordination (Gleichschaltung) of associations whose existence antedates the establishment of the regime. The effort to coordinate is, in turn, an aspect of enforced participation. In constitutional systems, coordination and suppression are used mainly in crises and emergencies. In Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia, and Communist China, they were in constant evidence—although to varying degrees depending on the persistence and relative innocuousness, in different periods, of organizations like churches. But even in the United States during the cold war, efforts have been made to enlist a wide range of organizations—from churches and charitable associations, through economic interest groups, to sports clubs—in the anticommunist struggle. Communist organizations and their fellow travelers have been subjected to legal disabilities. In wartime, coordination and suppression are carried much further, even in constitutional democracies, which then in effect become constitutional dictatorships. In such circumstances, however, suppressed organizations are usually outlawed according to established, previously and publicly known procedures. By contrast, in Nazi Germany, for example, the suppression of private associations was achieved by a variety of procedures not previously known to the public, so that their future remained permanently unpredictable to members. This difference is meant to suggest that procedural instability, discussed below, is a more distinctive feature of
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totalitarianism than the suppression of private organizations. Violence. The widespread use of organized violence still more clearly distinguishes the systems most frequently designated as totalitarian. In the eyes of the leaders, military and police violence on a large scale is made necessary, and therefore justified, by the urgency with which they pursue the goal to whose attainment the whole system is geared. Nazi extermination camps and the liquidation of the kulaks under Stalin illustrate this point. Although the violence in the first instance is directed against classes of the internal population, like Jews or remnants of the bourgeoisie, these classes are usually identified by the regime with an external enemy. In constitutional systems in peacetime, violence has not been used by governments against segments of the domestic population on a scale anywhere approaching the cited illustrations. Even in wartime, when constitutional democracies found it necessary to set up relocation camps for population groups identified by race, nationality, or sympathy with the enemy (Japanese Americans in the United States, German refugees in the United Kingdom), due process was observed to varying degrees and few acts of brutality were recorded. Although the over-all internal use of violence is a function of totalitarian trends, this seems to be less true of the scope of police functions, which appear to be more closely connected with antecedent traditions of the polity than with the totalitarian orientation of a particular regime. Measured purely in terms of the scope of police functions, including the use of secret police and informers, France and Germany have been police states at least since the beginning of the nineteenth century, and France probably more so than Germany. But after Hitler came to power in Germany, the Geheime Staatspolizei (Gestapo), which had previously operated as an arm of the constitutional Prussian government, became a dreaded instrument of terror because it no longer operated according to known procedures, including a system of appeals to higher public authorities. It is, therefore, the style of police functions, rather than their scope, that distinguishes totalitarian regimes. Less distinctive of totalitarianism than the scope and style of internal violence is external violence, despite the effort to link the objects of both. In their foreign relations, totalitarian and nontotalitarian governments use similar types of force because both work with the same technological conditions and because they have generally expected to fight each other. As in the case of Western
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attempts to forge an ideology, it is felt that one must "fight fire with fire." It was the United States that first used the destructive power of the atomic bomb against Japanese cities. In the cold war, American and Soviet leaders have professed equal readiness to employ hydrogen bombs against each other, although neither has faced the possibility of nuclear war with as much equanimity as the Chinese Communists apparently have. The contemplation or actual use of massive violence against outside enemies tends to deaden sentiments against its internal application. When millions, including one's fellow citizens, are being slaughtered or kept in foreign prison camps during war, the liquidation or imprisonment in concentration camps of whole sectors of one's own society loses some of its monstrousness. When the extermination of hundreds of millions or, indeed, the total end to human life as the result of a nuclear holocaust becomes a realistic possibility, and when government planners think in terms of preserving in shelters the persons most valuable for the eventual regeneration of society after such a catastrophe, the use of total internal violence can be accepted more easily than was the case perhaps even during World War n. Thus, there seems to be a clear relation between the quality and quantity of international violence and prevailing trends toward totalitarianism. Since both totalitarian and nontotalitarian systems exist in the same international environment of potential massive violence, with its ramifications for internal politics, the use of organized violence on a wide scale is listed as a feature less distinctive of totalitarianism than unpredictability resulting from procedural instability. Unpredictability. Unpredictability and uncertainty was the rule of life for ordinary men and for both high and low members of the dominant party under Hitler and Stalin. Although Hitler never bothered to abrogate or replace the Weimar constitution, under which he came into office as chancellor, an enabling act passed by the Reichstag in March 1933 made it possible for him, under color of legality, to amend the constitution by decree to the point of its utter transformation. Hitler himself became supreme lawgiver (oberster Rechtsherr); his will was "law," and his mind provided such constitutional provisions as Germany had under his rule. Whenever he changed his mind, he could also have changed not only the personnel but the most basic institutions of party and state. And although Stalin, in 1936, elaborately provided the Soviet Union with the constitution named after him, he never allowed it to become the framework of political processes. Stalin not only constantly
changed his personnel and remade institutions but he also kept the interpretation of Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism in a condition of continuous flux, controlled only by himself. Communist China's Mao Tse-tung seems to have presided over a similar process, for example, by first promulgating and then revoking the doctrine of "letting a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools of thought contend." In none of these cases was there either a regular publicly known procedure for effecting change or means by which individuals could anticipate which institutions or policies would be changed, and when. Stalin, in particular, skillfully manipulated and exploited this uncertainty. He would, for instance, appear to be moving to the ideological left, thereby enticing others to go even further in that direction through attempted imitation of the leader, and then apparently execute an extreme swing to the right, leaving his former followers ideologically exposed and ready for liquidation. The feeling of uncertainty created by such maneuvers probably contributed much more to the atmosphere of terror, which is generally associated with totalitarianism, than did the massive internal use of organized violence. Uncertainty meant, among other things, that the victims of liquidation might not know the reasons for their fate and, more important, that those who wanted to avoid liquidation in the future had no rational means for doing so. They could escape from the dilemmas of uncertainty neither by withdrawing from politics, because of enforced participation, nor by mouthing the current party line, because that would expose them to condemnation for merely mechanical commitment. Repeated executions of chiefs of the secret police can serve as a paradigm for this process. In nontotalitarian police states, by contrast, one chief of secret police often serves for several decades in that post. Although unpredictability and uncertainty are the most distinctive features of the totalitarian characteristics discussed so far, they are also the ones most likely to be moderated, or even eliminated, in political systems that retain or develop the other totalitarian traits. And although nontotalitarian systems sometimes seem to be developing the other features discussed, even long-established totalitarian systems seem to move away from unpredictability and toward more constitutional methods. For example, the longest-lived of the prototypal regimes, the Soviet Union, has emphasized "socialist legality" in the post-Stalin period, and some students of Soviet affairs have noticed the emergence of more clearly discernible social groups— party, bureaucracy, the military, management, and
TOTALITARIANISM others—that may be trying to stabilize relations between one another and the internal operating procedures within each. This has been explained as a result of the objective demands of efficiency in any modern industrial system. Uncertainty may bring about greater productivity out of fear of reprisals, but once a point of diminishing returns has been passed, it may actually interfere with planning for the single, substantive goal and, in general, reduce the leadership's capacity for total control. The single goal. Ruthless pursuit of a single, positively formulated goal is the most distinctive common denominator of totalitarianism. Nontotalitarian systems, to the extent that they articulate their goals at all, are either committed to a plurality of goals, such as those listed in the preamble to the constitution of the United States, or concentrate on such procedural goals as the settlement of conflicts, or state their substantive goals negatively, for example, the prevention of foreign domination. Excessive preoccupation with procedural goals can lead to bureaucratic or parliamentary routinization, as when the parliamentry opposition goes through the motions of opposing every government proposal only for the sake of observing parliamentary procedures and irrespective of any actual interest in the substantive issue. This cannot lead to totalitarianism in its usual meaning. On the other hand, the single-minded pursuit of a positive substantive goal, such as racial hegemony, the dictatorship of the proletariat, or the rapid industrialization of a backward economy, in utter disregard of all other possible goals, is characteristic of totalitarianism. All the resources of the system are ruthlessly harnessed to the attainment of the one great goal. An ideology is constructed to explain all reality with reference to this goal and to the obstacles encountered on the road toward it. Whatever is considered efficient with respect to overcoming these obstacles is done. Whatever is considered distracting from this singlemindedness of purpose is condemned and eliminated. As a result, no procedures are worked out for the resolution of disagreements. All disagreement within the system is identified as evil. Internal politics is, therefore, banned. But when unanticipated new substantive problems arise, as they inevitably do in the ever-changing modern environment, then there is a lack of adaptive procedures by means of which these problems can be tackled and disagreements about them resolved. The elite, as well as ordinary people, lack experience with or commitment to such workable procedures. For the same reason, the leadership cannot admit the
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achievement of its original goal, since to pursue this aim is its only raison d'etre. Sigmund Neumann (1942) aptly described totalitarianism as "permanent revolution," since under totalitarianism the fundamental procedures of political adaptation are in continuous flux. The most distinctive aspect of constitutional systems, by contrast, is the comparatively procedural bias of sources of authority prevailing in them and the relatively strong procedural commitment of their leaders. These leaders rise to the top more because they are identified with the rules of the political game than because they have gained fame by bringing their supporters economic, cultural, or social advancement. It follows that the constitutional democracies most susceptible to totalitarianism are those in which top leadership is based upon substantive achievement, like military glory, cultural contributions to an ethnic group, great wealth. Germany and France illustrate the latter hypothesis; Great Britain and the United States, the former. Origins and causes Explanations of the rise of totalitarianism vary according to conceptions of the phenomenon. Those who focus on centralized, total control point to the complexities of modern societies and, more particularly, of modern economies. They often link socialism with totalitarianism and, for example, underline the inclusion of socialism in the title of Hitler's National Socialist German Workers' party. They also emphasize the totalitarian potential of the "creeping socialism" allegedly hiding behind the welfare policies of contemporary nontotalitarian states with mixed economies. Although this explanation may be consistent with assertions of the totalitarian distinctiveness of economic centralization and bureaucratization, it fails to account for the quite untotalitarian character of more or less socialist welfare regimes, such as those of Great Britain under the Labour party, India under the Congress party, Denmark and Sweden, and of various new African countries with governments committed to "African socialism." A second type of explanation relates totalitarianism to the rise of the masses to political participation and to the great military and economic catastrophes of the twentieth century. These disasters eroded whatever commitment to older values the masses may have had and, along with this, also weakened private organizations, thereby "atomizing" the masses and making them easy prey for totalitarian manipulators. Adherents of this theory usually emphasize the features of enforced participation and suppression of private organizations.
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The totalitarian distinctiveness of these features seems to be backed up by these explanations, but they do not account for the failure of similarly afflicted mass societies like the United States to develop the more distinctive and more vicious features of totalitarianism. A third category of explanation traces the origin of totalitarianism in the realm of political philosophy, for example, as the logical conclusion of doctrines of majority rule or as the final development of Rousseau's concept of the general will. Because Marxism belongs to both these lines of descent and the prototypal totalitarian ideologies have related themselves, either positively or negatively, to Marxism, a heavy burden of blame is placed upon Marxism. But such explanations exaggerate the independent influence of philosophies and ignore the ideological diversity of totalitarianism and, indeed, of the modern world. Why did neither the English-speaking countries, as heirs to the modern advocates of liberal majoritarianism, nor the French-speaking countries, as heirs to Rousseau, become totalitarian? Or, if all are believed to be moving in that direction, is not the concept of totalitarianism devoid of the minimal specificity of meaning required of useful tools of comparison and analysis? A fourth theory relates the origins of totalitarianism to anti-Semitism and to racial imperialism, especially in South Africa (Arendt 1951). It emphasizes the utter unpredictability of the Nazi and Soviet systems, stresses the role of secrecy and the secret police, and suggests that the dictators are not motivated by utilitarian pursuit of their stated goals but by a desire to eliminate the capacity to distinguish fact from fiction and to persuade mankind of the superfluousness of human beings. This interpretation, by assuming that the dictators intended to bring about the effects ascribed to their rule, overlooks the extent to which they themselves may have been victims of the uncertainty they created. This explanation of the origins of totalitarianism also fails to account for the rise of totalitarianism in some countries, say, Germany and Russia, and its absence in others, say, Great Britain, France, and Italy. These unsatisfactory explanations suggest that the greatest problem for future research on the topic of totalitarianism is the utility of the concept itself. The two systems that have so far provided subject matter for major case studies of totalitarianism—Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union —were strikingly dissimilar in many respects considered important by most scholars who use the concept. In many other important respects, each
of them resembled nontotalitarian systems. And this critique ignores Communist China, whose inclusion would go still further in showing the undiscriminating nature of the concept "totalitarianism." The word, which first gained popular currency through anti-Nazi propaganda during World War n, later became an anti-Communist slogan in the cold war. Its utility for propaganda purposes has tended to obscure whatever utility it may have had for systematic analysis and comparison of political entities. As the social sciences develop more discriminating concepts of comparison, as the developing political systems discover that the invention of new methods of modernization may obviate their need for slavishly copying more coercive methods from models whose experience is no longer relevant, and as, hopefully, the more glaring differences between the major parties to the cold war begin to wither away, use of the term "totalitarianism" may also become less frequent. If these expectations are borne out, then a third encyclopedia of the social sciences, like the first one, will not list "totalitarianism." HERBERT J. SPIRO [See also COMMUNISM; DICTATORSHIP; FASCISM; IDEOLOGY; NATIONAL SOCIALISM. Other relevant material may be found in DEMOCRACY; GOVERNMENT; and PERSONALITY, POLITICAL.] BIBLIOGRAPHY AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES 1954 Totalitarianism. Edited with an introduction by Carl J. Friedrich. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. -> Proceedings of a conference held at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, March 1953. ARENDT, HANNAH (1951) 1958 The Origins of Totalitarianism. 2d enl. ed. New York: Meridian. ARENDT, HANNAH 1963 Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. New York: Viking. BRZEZINSKI, ZBIGNIEW K. 1962 Deviation Control: A Study in the Dynamics of Doctrinal Conflict. American Political Science Review 56:5-22. COBBAN, ALFRED 1939 Dictatorship: Its History and Theory. New York: Scribner. FRIEDRICH, CARL J.; and BRZEZINSKI, ZBIGNIEW K. 1956 Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. KAUTSKY, JOHN H. 1962 Political Change in Underdeveloped Countries: Nationalism and Communism. New York: Wiley. MOORE, BARRINGTON JR. 1954 Terror and Progress— USSR: Some Sources of Change and Stability in the Soviet Dictatorship. Harvard University, Russian Research Center Studies, No. 12. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. MOORE, BARRINGTON JR. 1958 Political Power and Social Theory: Six Studies. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. NEUMANN, FRANZ L. (1942) 1963 Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National Socialism, 19331944. 2d ed. New York: Octagon Books.
TOURVILLE, HENRI DE NEUMANN, FRANZ L. 1957 Notes on the Theory of Dictatorship. Pages 233—256 in Franz L. Neumann, The Democratic and the Authoritarian State: Essays in Political and Legal Theory. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. NEUMANN, SIGMUND 1942 Permanent Revolution: The Total State in a World at War. New York: Harper. NOLTE, ERNST (1965) 1966 Three Faces of Fascism: Action Francaise, Italian Fascism, National Socialism. New York: Holt. -> First published in German. Ros SIXER, CLINTON L. 1948 Constitutional Dictatorship: Crisis Government in the Modern Democracies. Princeton Univ. Press. SPIRO, HERBERT J. 1962 Comparative Politics: A Comprehensive Approach. American Political Science Review 56:577-595. TALMON, J. L. 1952 The Rise of Totalitarian Democracy. Boston: Beacon. UTIS, O. 1952 Generalissimo Stalin and the Art of Government. Foreign Affairs 30:197-214.
TOURVILLE, HENRI DE Henri de Tourville (1842-1903), French sociologist, was the son of an eminent lawyer who belonged to the old aristocracy. De Tourville spent three years at the Paris faculty of law and one year at the Ecole des Chartes studying history before he decided, in 1865, to enter the seminary at Issy-lesMoulineaux. In 1873 he became vicar at St. Augustine's church in Paris and continued in his ecclesiastical career for eight years. The year 1873 also marked de Tourville's first encounter with Le Play, and he soon joined the circle of disciples that frequented Le Play's home. Beginning in 1876, de Tourville played a leading role in organizing a series of semipublic lectures designed to propagate Le Play's doctrines. These activities were terminated in 1881, when recurring illness forced de Tourville to abandon Paris for his family estate, where he spent most of the remaining years of his life. Le Play's monographs on individual families had frequently been criticized because they failed to develop any systematic linkage between the individual family and the rest of society. In an attempt to fill in what Le Play had left out, de Tourville developed what he called the Nomenclature of Social Facts. A general scheme for societal analysis, the Nomenclature is part of a long and continuing tradition. Its primary function is to provide a classification of the diverse "elements" and clusters of elements in a given society. The Nomenclature includes 25 major elements and over one hundred subelements; families may be classified according to their geographic location, occupation, property relationships, wages, education, and religion; they are placed in broader context through analysis of the neighborhood, the parish, the city, the province, the state, and the relations of the
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state with foreign societies. De Tourville thus avoided Le Play's more restricted focus on individual income and expense ledgers in the study of family life. The Nomenclature permits comparison of its elements (or variables) within subsectors of a single society and cross-national comparison of patterns of interrelationships. These comparisons will generate hypotheses that can be tested and that eventually produce two types of laws: laws of causality (if x, then y~) and laws of coexistence (if x varies, then y varies). Comparison of different types of family relationships in France, England, and the United States led de Tourville to a further conceptual innovation, again based on a revision of Le Play's ideas. Le Play believed that the instability (by which he often meant political instability) of most western European countries is related to an unstable family organization. In many traditional, more stable societies, family organization is essentially patriarchal: several sons, with their nuclear families, hold property in common and live under the father's authority. With the death of the father, property and authority are transferred in toto to one of the sons. Le Play held that such a patriarchal arrangement results in greater stability than does a pattern of isolated nuclear families, each of which inherits an equal share of the paternal estate. De Tourville, however, largely influenced by Paul de Rousiers's study of American society, American Life, felt that the pattern of child rearing and the general types of values inculcated in the younger generation are more important than the specific mode of transferring property. He consequently developed a classification of four types of families, based on childhood socialization patterns and types of values: (1) The patriarchal family emphasizes the importance of the family community over the individual; self-denial is taught, individuality is suppressed, and children are not expected to form new family communities on their own. Societies in which patriarchal families dominate are generally conservative and stagnant. (2) The quasi-patriarchal family develops a certain minimum of initiative in members of the younger generation, but on the whole maintains the patriarchal family organization; individual members may leave for a certain period of time, but since they generally lack the initiative to form their own family community, they often return. These first two types were dominant in eastern and central Europe. (3) The particularist family instills in its children a strong sense of individuality and personal initiative; children are expected to manage their own affairs at a relatively young age and to form their own separate nuclear families. The particularist
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family was dominant in most Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon countries. (4) The unstable family instills neither the respect for authority and tradition found in the patriarchal family nor the sense of individual initiative of the particularist family. To fill the void, the state must provide remunerative employment and moral direction; isolated individuals and unrelated nuclear families depend on a centralized governmental bureaucracy for support. Such families were found in France and Germany. This general typology continues to be used, although sometimes with modifications, by de Tourville's followers up to the present time. De Tourville became the leading theoretician and organizer of a dissenting cluster of Le Play's disciples who in 1885 broke with the more traditional group associated with the Reforme sociale, the official Le Playist journal. The dissenters not only founded a journal of their own, the Science sociale, but also organized field trips and courses of instruction in theory and method. De Tourville himself published relatively little, but from 1886 until his death in 1903 he carried on an active correspondence with his numerous disciples, whose work he influenced considerably. These followers—in contrast with most Durkheimian philosophy graduates of the Ecole Normale Superieure, who were of middle-class origin—were generally recruited from relatively conservative upper-class backgrounds and had studied law or science and engineering at one of the Grandes Ecoles. Aside from a devoted core— Edmond Demolins, Robert Pinot, and de Rousiers, among others—most of the Science sociale group did not become full-time scholars but followed careers in business, law, or diplomacy. After World War i the Durkheimians, long in control of the Sorbonne, came to dominate the entire national university system, while the ranks of the Science sociale group were decimated and it declined rapidly. Paul Bureau and Paul Descamps did continue important work in the Science sociale tradition after World War i, but, for the most part, French social science has largely neglected the contributions of de Tourville and his colleagues. Outside France, however, de Tourville's work has influenced a number of British social scientists (Victor Branford, Patrick Geddes, A. J. Herbertson), Canadians (Leon Gerin), and Americans (P. A. Sorokin, C. C. Zimmerman). TERRY N. CLARK [For the historical context of de Tourville's work, see the biography of LE PLAY.] WORKS BY DE TOURVILLE
None of de Tourville's writings appeared in book form during his lifetime. His Nomenclature was developed in
a series of articles in 1886. Another series of articles on the historical development of the particularist family was published posthumously in book form in 1905. 1886
La science sociale, est-elle une science? Science sociale 1:9-21, 97-109, 289-304; 2:493-546. (1897-1903) 1907 The Growth of Modern Nations: A History of the Particularist Form of Society. London: Arnold. -» First published between 1897 and 1903 as a series of articles in Science sociale. First appeared in book form in 1905. Henri de Tourville, d'apres ses lettres. With an introduction and notes by Marie Andre Dieux. Paris: Bloud & Gay, 1928. Lumiere et vie. With a preface by Felix Klein. Paris: Bloud & Gay, 1924. Ordre et liberte. With an introduction by Marie Andre Dieux. Paris: Bloud & Gay, 1926. Piete confiante. With a preface by Felix Klein. Paris: Bloud & Gay, 1949. Precis de philosophie fondamentale d'apres la methode d'observation. With an introduction by Pierre Mesnard. Paris: Bloud & Gay, 1928. SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY
BOUVIER, CLAUDE 1907 Un pretre continuateur de Le Play: Henri de Tourville 1842-1903. Paris: Bloud. BUREAU, PAUL 1903 L'oeuvre d'Henri de Tourville. Science sociale 35:465-496. CHAMPAULT, PHILIPPE 1913 La science sociale d'apres Le Play et de Tourville. Science sociale New Series Whole issue 109. CLARK, TERRY N. 1967 Empirical Social Research in France: 1850-1914. Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia Univ. DEMOLINS, EDMOND 1903 Henri de Tourville. Science sociale 35:186-188. DEMOLINS, EDMOND; PINOT, ROBERT; and ROUSIERS, PAUL DE 1904 La methode sociale: Ses precedes et ses applications. Science sociale New Series Whole issue 1. DESCAMPS, PAUL 1933 La sociologie experimental. Paris: Riviere. DESMONTS, ABBE 1903 Henri de Tourville. Science sociale 35:269-272. DIEUX, MARIE ANDRE 1931 L'abbe de Tourville, 18421903. Paris: Flammarion. LAZARSFELD, PAUL F. 1961 Notes on the History of Quantification in Sociology: Trends, Sources and Problems. Isis 52, part 2:277-333. ->• Reprinted in the same year on pages 147-203 in Harry Woolf (editor), Quantification: A History of the Meaning of Measurement in the Natural and Social Sciences. Indianapolis, Ind.: Bobbs-Merrill. [PERIER, P.] 1947 Deux humanites; Orient-Occident: Blocs mondiaux, by Jean Philippe Robert [pseud.]. Paris: Firmin Didot. Recueil d'etudes sociales d la memoire de Frederic Le Play. 1956 Paris: Picard. ROUSIERS, PAUL DE 1892 American Life. London: Cassell. -> Published in French in the same year.
TOYNBEE, ARNOLD The first intellectual influence of importance in the life of the English economist Arnold Toynbee (1852-1883) was his father, Joseph, a surgeon and fellow of the Royal Society. Guided by his father, Toynbee developed a taste for the finer
TOYNBEE, ARNOLD models of English prose, especially the Bible, Milton, Gibbon, and Burke. Among the poets, Toynbee esteemed the Elizabethans, Shelley, and Keats. Scott and Thackeray were his favorite novelists. He was early handicapped by fragile health and, in the words of his close Oxford friend Alfred Milner, had "a strange, solitary, introspective youth, for he was never long at school, nor had he ... the love of games, the careless mind, or the easy sociability which make school life happy" (1901, pp. 11-12). At 19 he enrolled in Pembroke College, Oxford, largely because it was one of the cheaper colleges. But he speedily aroused the interest of Benjamin Jowett, master of Balliol College, who had him transferred to Balliol. Although Toynbee's health was too precarious to permit him to read for honors and he earned in consequence only an ordinary pass degree, his essays were so extraordinary and his personal qualities so outstanding that in 1878 he was made lecturer and tutorial fellow at Balliol. Toynbee's impact was partly the effect of what Jowett termed "his transparent sincerity," the absence of "any trace of vanity or ambition." Milner, who shared few of Toynbee's opinions, recalled nevertheless that he "fell at once under his spell and . . . always remained under it" (1901, p. 15). Toynbee combined intense religious conviction, saintly character, and dedication to the improvement of the working classes. In 1875 he came to political economy out of the same desire to do good that motivated his immediate Balliol successor, Alfred Marshall. As Milner said, "for the sake of religion he had become a social reformer; for the sake of social reform he became an economist." In his brief life Toynbee campaigned relentlessly for worker housing, parks, free libraries, and "all the now familiar objects of municipal socialism." He became a guardian under the poor law, a supporter of cooperatives, and a church reformer. One of his major activities was lecturing to working-class audiences on social reform, first in industrial cities like Newcastle and Sheffield and then in London. This aspect of his work was memorialized after his death by the founding of Toynbee Hall in Whitechapel, the first university settlement house. At Oxford, "the apostle Arnold," as he was affectionately called, did much to combat laissez-faire doctrine among both undergraduates and dons. The Industrial Revolution (1884), published posthumously, was Toynbee's single book. As his nephew, the historian Arnold J. Toynbee, has said of its detailed findings, "Toynbee's work has been superseded long ago." Nevertheless, Toynbee invented the term itself and supplied the argument for considering the industrial revolution as a "single
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great historical event." The younger Toynbee's judgment, in his preface to the 1956 edition of the book, is just: "As a masterly first reconnaissance of a very important field of historical study, this pioneer work by a young man is still as much alive as ever it was" ([1884] 1956, p. ix). The volume has a second significance. In it Toynbee challenged the dominant economics of his time, allied himself with Walter Bagehot and T. E. Cliffe Leslie in the formulation of an alternative technique, and assisted in the development of an English version of the German arguments over the relative claims of history and analysis (the Methodenstreit). Never an extremist in this controversy, always willing to concede that deductive economics had its place, he nevertheless criticized a "wrong use of deduction . . . a neglect on the part of those employing it to examine closely their assumptions and to bring their conclusions to the test of fact." No wonder the deductive theorists produced such "absolutely untrue" doctrines as the wages fund. Historical method, on the other hand, was capable not only of tracing the "actual causes of economic development" but of identifying the "stages of economic development," comparing them with "those which have obtained in other countries and times," and ultimately evolving "laws of universal application." As an example of good historical method, Toynbee cited approvingly Maine's researches on the evolution of contract. Toynbee believed economic policies should be related to historical circumstances. Hence, the relative merits of laissez-faire and state action cannot be judged a priori. Although Toynbee's socialism was not of the collectivist variety, he favored extensive social legislation, relied heavily on the type of municipal socialism with which the Fabians were to be identified, and held high hopes for such voluntary workers' associations as trade unions, cooperatives, and friendly societies. Toynbee neither won nor lost the methodological argument. As the contemporary historian of economic thought T. W. Hutchison has said, "the inquiries of Bagehot, Toynbee, and Leslie . . . were scarcely followed up in subsequent decades" (1953, p. 429). Alfred Marshall, England's leading economist between 1890 and 1920, incorporated just enough historical material in his work to blunt the edge of controversy between marginalists and historians. But the methodological issues were discussed only casually and were scarcely settled convincingly by either Marshall or his followers. Toynbee died suddenly of a "brain fever" in his thirty-first year. His widow, Charlotte, survived him by nearly a half century. ROBERT LEKACHMAN
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[For the historical context of Toynbee's work, see ECONOMIC THOUGHT, article on THE HISTORICAL SCHOOL; and the biographies of BAGEHOT; LESLIE; MAINE. For discussion of the subsequent development of Toynbee's ideas, see INDUSTRIALIZATION.] WORKS BY TOYNBEE
(1884) 1956 The Industrial Revolution. With a preface by Arnold J. Toynbee. Boston: Beacon. -» First published as Lectures on the Industrial Revolution of the Eighteenth Century in England. 1910 TOYNBEE, JOSEPH; and TOYNBEE, ARNOLD Reminiscences and Letters of Joseph and Arnold Toynbee. Edited by Gertrude Toynbee. London: Glaisher. SUPPLEMENTARY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
HUTCHISON, T. W. (1953) 1962 A Review of Economic Doctrines: 1870-1929. Oxford: Clarendon. -> See especially Chapter 1. MILNER, ALFRED 1901 Arnold Toynbee. London: Arnold.
TOZZER, ALFRED M. Alfred Marston Tozzer (1877-1954), American anthropologist and Mesoamerican specialist, is best known as an archeologist, although his earliest work was in ethnology and linguistics. His subsequent work in archeology, particularly his Maya research, is marked by an integrated anthropological view of extinct cultures. He did his first field work, a study of California Indian languages, following his graduation from Harvard in 1900; in the summer and fall of 1901 Tozzer did ethnological and linguistic work among the Navajo in the Pueblo Bonito area of New Mexico. Late in 1901 Tozzer took his first field trip to Yucatan, as a traveling fellow of the Archaeological Institute of America. At this time the American consul and amateur archeologist E. H. Thompson owned the site of Chichen Itza, where Tozzer spent four months studying the Maya language. Thompson had begun to dredge the Cenote of Sacrifice at Chichen, thus providing Tozzer with his first exposure to Maya archeology. C. P. Bowditch, a patron of the Peabody Museum and a member of the Archaeological Institute, had suggested that the Maya hieroglyphic writing could perhaps be deciphered through study of an extant Maya group which had had no contact with Europeans and which might have preserved some knowledge of the ancient culture, perhaps of the writing system itself. Tozzer spent four years on a traveling fellowship of the Archaeological Institute, with the objective of locating and studying such a group. His ethnographic and linguistic work with the Lacandon Maya in the Lake Petha region of the Usumacinta —a group whose existence had previously been reported by Teobert Maler—and among the more
acculturated but linguistically related Yucatec Maya provided the material for his doctoral dissertation, submitted at Harvard in 1904 and published in 1907 by the Archaeological Institute of America. In the fall of 1904 he studied with Franz Boas at Columbia University, where he worked on a grammar of the Maya language which was published in 1921 (see 1921a). He did additional field work in 1905, exploring the Lacandon area and studying the Tzeltal, Choi, and Chintal dialects. Tozzer returned to teach a seminar in Maya anthropology at Harvard in 1905 and went on to spend a summer at the Archives of the Indies at Seville. His first basically archeological field work was undertaken in 1907 in New Mexico, on an expedition sponsored jointly by the Peabody Museum and the Archaeological Institute and under the direction of E. L. Hewitt; among Tozzer's colleagues were S. G. Morley and A. V. Kidder. In 1909-1910 Tozzer became director of the Peabody Museum Central American Expedition in Guatemala and published reports of the expedition's work at Tikal (1911) and at Nakum (1913). These studies were concerned with the correlation of dated inscriptions with changes in architectural styles; another achievement of this project was the discovery of the important site of Holmul, subsequently analyzed and reported by R. E. Merwin and G. C. Vaillant (see 1932). For the next few years, Tozzer taught at Harvard and traveled and collected specimens in Mexico and Yucatan for the Peabody Museum. In 1910 he became a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and in 1913 he was appointed curator of Middle American Archaeology and Ethnology at the Peabody Museum. Tozzer then took a leave of absence from Harvard in 1913-1914 to succeed Boas as director of the International School of Archaeology and Ethnology in Mexico. His excavations at the Valley of Mexico site of Santiago Ahuizotla, which defined the characteristic Early Toltec ceramic type known as Coyotlatelco, were reported in 1921 (see 1921£>). This was Tozzer's last field work in Mesoamerica. After two years in the Air Services during World War i, Tozzer returned to Harvard and shortly thereafter became chairman of the department of anthropology. In the years 1928 and 1929 he was president of the American Anthropological Association and at various times served as representative of the Association on the National Research Council and the Social Science Research Council. He continued his teaching and his work at the Peabody Museum; in 1942 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.
TOZZER, ALFRED M.
Tozzer's annotated and indexed translation of Bishop Diego de Landa's 1566 Relation de las cosas de Yucatan (see 1941) stands as a definitive work of Maya ethnohistorical scholarship. Landa's work, comparable in importance to Bernardino de Sahagun's sixteenth-century study of Aztec culture (see Sahagun, General History of the Things of New Spain) is probably the most important source dealing with the ethnology of sixteenth-century Yucatan and provided the key to those Maya glyphs, principally chronological and divinatory, that can at present be read. During World War n Tozzer served in Hawaii with the Office of Strategic Services. He had married Margaret Castle of Honolulu in 1913, and frequent trips to the Pacific had given him considerable familiarity with the area. Following his return to Harvard in 1945, he continued in teaching and administrative posts until his retirement. In 1948 he was named professor emeritus. Shortly before his death in 1954 he completed the study, published posthumously (1957), of the Chichen Itza Cenote of Sacrifice, the collections from which were then at the Peabody Museum. This work is a major synthesis of the preconquest history of Yucatan, drawing upon Maya codices, the ethnology of contemporary Maya groups, sixteenthand seventeenth-century documents in Maya and Spanish, and archeological data from the Maya area as a whole and from central Mexico. Tozzer defined five phases of the growth and decline of Chichen Itza, beginning with its Maya foundations and continuing through its political dominance of Yucatan under Toltec invaders from Tula, Hidalgo. After the foundation of the site of Mayapan, Chichen lost its supremacy and retained importance only as a pilgrimage site. Representations of Maya and Toltec in sculpture and painting and architectural changes at the site provided the basis for Tozzer's analysis of the changing relationships of these two groups in Yucatan. While rejecting many of the conclusions of nineteenth-century unilineal evolutionists, such as L. H. Morgan, Tozzer accepted several of the major tenets of this school. In Social Origins and Social Continuities (1925) he stressed the superorganic nature of culture, as did Spencer and Tylor. He asserted that culture, as socially learned behavior, is distinct from biologically inherited traits and therefore must be studied independently of biological phenomena. He also rejected diffusion and migration of peoples as necessary and sufficient explanations of culture change at a time when such theories were popular in anthropological thinking. The body of Tozzer's work shows his emphasis on
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the need for integrated study of all aspects of culture: ethnological, archeological, and linguistic. Tozzer was a respected and popular teacher. A Festschrift entitled The Maya and Their Neighbors, presented to him in 1940, offers evidence of the wide influence he exerted on his students and contemporaries. BARBARA J. PRICE [For discussion of the subsequent development of Tozzer's ideas, see URBAN REVOLUTION, article on EARLY CIVILIZATIONS OF THE NEW WORLD; and the biography of VAILLANT.] WORKS BY TOZZER
1907 A Comparative Study of the Mayas and the Lacandones. New York: Macmillan. 1911 A Preliminary Study of the Prehistoric Ruins of Tikal, Guatemala: A Report of the Peabody Museum Expedition, 1909-1910. Harvard University, Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology, Memoirs, Vol. 5, No. 2. Cambridge, Mass.: The Museum. 1913 A Preliminary Study of the Prehistoric Ruins of Nakum, Guatemala: A Report of the Peabody Museum Expedition, 1909-1910. Harvard University, Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology, Memoirs, Vol. 5, No. 3. Cambridge, Mass.: The Museum. 192la A Maya Grammar: With Bibliography and Appraisement of the Works Noted. Harvard University, Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology, Papers, Vol. 9, No. 16. Cambridge, Mass.: The Museum. 1921fo Excavations of a Site at Santiago, Ahuitzotla, D. F., Mexico. U.S. Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin No. 74. Washington: Government Printing Office. 1925 Social Origins and Social Continuities. New York: Macmillan. 1941 LANDA, DIEGO DE Landa's Relacion de las cosas de Yucatan. A translation, edited with notes by Alfred M. Tozzer. Harvard University, Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology, Papers, Vol. 18. Cambridge, Mass.: The Museum. -> Written in 1566 and first published in Spanish in 1864. 1957 Chichen Itza and Its Cenote of Sacrifice: A Comparative Study of Contemporary Maya and Toltec. Harvard University, Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology, Memoirs, Vols. 11—12. Cambridge, Mass.: The Museum. -» Published posthumously. SUPPLEMENTARY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The Maya and Their Neighbors. 2d ed. (1940) 1962 Salt Lake City: Univ. of Utah Press. -* A Festschrift presented to Tozzer. MERWIN, RAYMOND E.; and VAILLANT, GEORGE C. 1932 The Ruins of Holmul, Guatemala. Harvard University, Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology, Vol. 3, No. 2. Cambridge, Mass.: The Museum. PHILLIPS, PHILIP 1955 Alfred Marston Tozzer: 18771954. American Antiquity 21:72-80. -> Contains a comprehensive bibliography of Tozzer's works compiled by the Peabody Museum.
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SAHAGUN, BERNARDINO DE (ca. 1538) 1950— General History of the Things of New Spain. Florentine Codex, translated from the Aztec into English, with notes and illustrations by Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble. Monographs of the School of American Research, No. 14, Parts 2-6, 9-13. Santa Fe, N.M.: School of American Research. -> First written in Spanish and Aztec. The manuscript is kept in the Laurentian Library, Florence. First published in book form in the original languages in 1829-1830. Books 1-5, 7-10, and 12 have been published to date in English.
TRADE See INTERNAL TRADE; INTERNATIONAL TRADE; TRADE AND MARKETS.
TRADE, INTERNATIONAL See INTERNATIONAL TRADE.
TRADE AND MARKETS Trade may be defined as a repeated sequence of exchanges of goods; markets, as the economic institution created by regular trade between a multiplicity of traders. A looser use of the latter term is common in referring to the place or day for traders' meetings, but this usage will be avoided. Trade began early in human history, as evidenced by the presence of exotic materials in archeological deposits. Traders, regular trade, and markets figured importantly in the early documents from Near Eastern civilizations of the third millennium B.C. But price-setting or "open" markets, where large numbers of buyers and sellers establish the rate of equivalence between commodities in the course of trade, are more recent. Aristotle wrote about their beginnings in Greece; in some emerging nations of modern times market places with flexible prices have had to await the advent of centralized polities and a wider use of money; price setting outside the market is common in industrial society. Economists traditionally focus analysis on open markets and the relation of prices to volume of trade, and treat other forms of trade as variants. Ideally, in an open market the large number of traders gives a situation of "perfect competition," where the relations between price, supply, demand, and transactions made are worked out. In situations where exchanges occur at prices other than the competitive one, this is attributed to "imperfect competition." Sources of imperfection may be monopolies by buyers or sellers, government intervention, cartel agreements, inadequate communication among buyers or sellers, or weak bargaining posi-
tions—for example, by sellers of perishable goods (see Robinson 1933). In contrast, anthropologists describing trading practices outside price-setting markets have focused on the relative social positions of traders in the general social structure (e.g., Mintz 1959). Some convergence has occurred, however, since economists do analyze prices paid for services which are hidden in visible trade exchanges (good will, political support, etc.), and anthropologists have increasingly concerned themselves with prices. Anthropological studies of trading practices show an even greater convergence, in that the models of calculation used in nonindustrial societies that exist outside the open market help in understanding many trading situations in industrial societies. Five main types of trade have been reported by ethnographers: (1) market-place trade, (2) trading partnerships between individuals, (3) intercommunity barter, (4) successive distributions within communities, and (5) ceremonial gift giving. Market-place trade. In peasant societies with densely settled populations, market places are common when there is widespread use of money and where there are many small farmers who produce for subsistence and for exchange against goods sold by numerous small urban producers and sellers. Trading closely follows the open market model; prices vary with demand and supply but are generally uniform in any one market. Anomalies occur but are explicable. Variations in price result from the performance of economic services such as bulking of small quantities to permit uniform grading, or bulk breaking—e.g., packages of cigarettes sold by the unit. (For examples, see Dewey 1962, chapters 6 and 7.) Double pricing (e.g., one price for tourists and one for locals) reflects different degrees of knowledge of the market and of ability to bargain. When sellers and buyers have equal knowledge of the market, they interact universalistically, and not as members of social groups (Dean 1963). Each transaction is completed on the spot (i.e., caveat emptor applies). Buyers and sellers have no enduring relationship because of the sale, although general legal obligations may apply (e.g., to use fair weights and measures). Although bargaining is not universal, it is often seen as the main price-setting mechanism in market places. Frequently, however, sellers estimate a prevailing or market price before arrival, on the basis of previous prices and known changes in supply and demand. They roughly check estimates when they arrive. Underestimators sell rapidly and disappear from the market; overestimators may
TRADE AND MARKETS eventually reduce prices but usually wait to see if all lower-priced goods sell out. Prices rarely change, and when they do, the direction is mainly downward within one market. Bargaining, when found, enables sellers to make larger profits from unskilled buyers (especially when wealthy buyers are too status-conscious to bargain). The seller's asking price is a multiple of his estimate of market price but is lowered to that estimate if the buyer bargains well. Overeager or unskilled buyers permit sellers to sell above their estimated market price, and even to raise that estimate. Bargaining, then, facilitates upward changes in price. Prices are fixed basically by aggregate market conditions of supply and demand and by sellers' estimates of these. Trading partnerships between individuals. Partnerships exist when relationships between two traders persist apart from each specific transaction. They are found in peasant market places associated with open market trading (see Mintz 1961). In areas without market places (e.g., Melanesia) they are the major avenue of trade, with individuals traveling far to exchange specialty products with friends or categories of kin. Long-term credit relationships are a common form of partnership. The often-used term "preferred customer" is inappropriate in referring to trading partnerships. Terms of trade (or prices) do not consistently favor one partner in comparison with open market prices, but for each transaction they are settled in the light of the open market price and of the value placed on continuing the relationship. Economic analysis interprets each transaction as involving payment of a price for goods and a price for services performed. The service most commonly performed is the elimination of risk. Typically trader A accepts whatever goods trader B offers, on the understanding that trader B will either accept whatever trader A offers later or will continue to supply him when goods are scarce. Both traders insure against total failure to sell or complete cessation of supplies. Thus partnerships are found when goods fluctuate markedly in supply and demand (are perishable, produced far away or seasonally, or used irregularly in small amounts) yet are essential for the buyers or unusable by the sellers. To eliminate risk each partner must have sanctions available to force the other to behave predictably. Disruption of the relationship may be a sufficient threat. For example, a "special customer" in a Barbadian market may count on obtaining a scarce variety of banana each week, but he must also take any other fruits offered with the comment "I saved these for you," or else he will have his
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supplies cut off. Social or physical sanctions may be invoked, however. In Melanesia a man must accept any "gift" from a partner or be publicly branded as uncivil; he must also later make an equivalent return gift of his own choice or allow the original donor to demand any of his possessions. The "court of public opinion" that often influences members of a common ethnic group may compel partners to live up to informal contracts, even at immediate personal loss. They can afford to deal in risky commodities when unpartnered traders cannot (Dewey 1962, pp. 44-51). Similar sanctions apply in inherently risky situations in industrial societies. Long-term credit relationships are a common type of partnership, especially where a peasant producer sells his crop to a marketing agent who also supplies him with consumer goods. Without an assured market for his product—which may be quite specialized—the peasant could not risk starvation by abandoning subsistence cultivation; the agent must supply consumer goods as demanded or risk not being sold the product which provides his main income. Most cash crops are really credit crops (Ward 1960). Trade through credit relationships facilitates the risky transition from subsistence production to a cash economy. Credit relationships also illustrate how terms of trade for each transaction are settled in partnerships. Debtors rarely quibble about prices of goods supplied on credit and frequently keep no records as long as quantities meet their needs. Popular descriptions of credit relationships stress the high prices charged (or fraudulent accounting) by expatriate credit merchants. They rarely note the merchants' obligations to accept debtors' produce as partial repayment, to continue supplying goods on credit as needed, and never to demand complete repayment. These obligations can be modified only slightly, and then in terms of the debtor's credit standing, not his current ability to pay. Thus the terms for each transaction are decided by one trader alone, in the knowledge that his partner will decide for the next one. Both demand as much as possible, within the limits set by "fairness" or the long-term need to satisfy the partner. Arensberg (1937) gives a description of this system in rural Ireland; to some extent the installment system, with its reluctance to repossess goods, provides a parallel in industrial society. Intercommunity barter. Intercommunity barter involves communities exchanging goods over a long period, at agreed or customarily fixed rates which do not vary at each transaction. "Administered trade" (Polanyi et al. 1957) is that variety in which
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traders are political representatives of their communities; silent trade occurs when exchanges are made without discussion at customary rates; monopolistic or oligopolistic export and import trading (see Bauer 1954) follow a similar pattern. Goods so bartered are produced at a distance from their consumers, and demand for them is "lumpy" or widely varying, absolutely small but insistent. Examples are the demand for salt in inland continental areas, for manufactured tools and cloth by farmers, or for exotics and precious metals in early empires (Schafer 1963). In Bauer's terms, these are "standardised staples" or "complex durable goods with a small number of buyers"; in these cases there is little need for "judicious gauging of the requirements of individual customers." The long-term community agreement on fixed rates despite temporary scarcities or gluts may on occasion disadvantage either party, and individuals may try to exploit the situation by open market trading. Communities act to prevent such "black market" trade by isolating potential traders. One mechanism for this is the "port of trade," or the enclave where foreign traders freely meet appointed local representatives, but within which they are confined. This practice was common in ancient Babylon and is similar to modern governmental trading missions. Differential currency exchange rates and import licensing are legal mechanisms of isolation. Another practice has been to centrally control the production of goods for barter. Royal monopolies (through guilds) of gold, ivory, spears, and slaves were techniques used in west Africa. A further isolating mechanism is to distribute the goods received in barter by central allocation. The goods may be allocated as stipends, as rewards for political services (as when only meritorious officials receive import licenses for cars), through rationing or free distribution, or by sale at standardized prices. Such prices, and the agreed terms of barter, are often phrased as "fair prices" or "equivalences." Alteration of them is morally condemned as "unfair." In economic terms, maintaining a regular flow of such goods entails many fixed costs for transport facilities, storage, and the training of technicians to produce and service goods. Guaranteeing demand and spreading it over a long period permit an even allocation of such costs. Barter agreements have some flexibility. Quantities may be defined flexibly (e.g., as all output greater than home consumption). New Guinea villages which annually barter surplus nuts for oil threaten to break relations only when quantities depart too radically from a "fair equivalent." Agree-
ments then are renegotiated, or a new agreement is made with a different village. Alternatively, a limited free or black market may be tolerated to relieve temporary short-run disadvantages. If black markets persist and grow, it indicates that the conditions for community barter no longer apply. Successive distributions within communities. Successive distributions within communities are made by individuals to all members of a community, with the expectation of being recipients of equivalent goods in later distributions. Most often involving food, they constitute trade because an individual receives goods different from those he supplies, and he trades a current surplus for a guaranteed future return when it is needed. Contributory insurance and taxation coupled with welfare payments are monetary forms of successive distribution. Such systems have sometimes been described as "primitive communalism." The label is inaccurate. Only basic necessities are usually so traded, but they are also distributed through other channels— people retain quantities sufficient for household consumption, and they may also exchange some surpluses in market places or with trade partners. Individual property rights prevail but are surrendered in exchange for a generalized claim against a community, not for specific claims over any one individual. Distributions are found, not under conditions of extreme or persistent shortage (during a famine the Eskimo abrogate the normal rule of distributing a hunting catch ) but, rather, when it is reasonable to expect that everyone may distribute in turn. Given relative affluence, individuals may insure against temporary shortages or fortuitous disasters. Distributions also solve storage problems, especially when preservation techniques are inadequate. Detailed accounting for every transaction between individuals would be invidious, difficult, and timeconsuming. This type of trade requires an approximate balance between what one supplies and what one receives, but the actual balance is never exact (Henry 1951). Productive people give more on balance than they receive; a few needy people are net receivers. All people keep a rough account of net balances, with creditors being judged as generous and socially responsible; debtors, as improvident and shiftless. Unless social esteem ceases to be an incentive, the effect of such distributions is not inefficient production or reduced effort. Consistent underproducers are scorned, but average producers, free from threats of starvation, can neglect extreme
TRADE AND MARKETS risks and gear production to over-all needs. Where possible, a farmer plants slightly more than his family needs in an average year, not twice as much. He harvests in bulk, rather than in inefficient small amounts, and relies on others for daily needs between harvests. Overproducers need not fear inability to dispose of surpluses or depression of prices, for distributions convert surpluses into prestige. There is a continual slight pressure to increase aggregate consumption and to reward industry by esteem. Overproduction may then occur and successive distributions may lose their function. Alternatively, periodic large accumulations may be channeled through political authorities and "redistributed" (Polanyi et al. 1957, p. vii) to finance public works. Ceremonial gift giving. Gifts presented in public on ceremonial occasions constitute trade insofar as they tend to be reciprocated. Mauss (1925) analyzed the pressures on recipients to reciprocate, the major one being that the recipient is minister to the magister donor until he does so. Economically, it is easier to see each gift as a two-sided transaction in which the donor gives goods and the recipient performs services. For example, the services are those of a bride when the goods form bridewealth, of immunity from revenge at peacemakings, or of providing an audience for boasting. Return gifts are, then, repurchases of the right to services. Thus ceremonial gifts allocate and distribute political rights where legal jurisdictions do not apply. Goods presented, or "valuables," are usually nonutilitarian or of primarily ritual significance (e.g., cattle in southeast Africa), but they may be decorative (e.g., shells in Melanesia) or utilitarian goods in quantities far greater than can be used (e.g., blankets among the Kwakiutl). Aboriginal Australia illustrates the extensiveness of such trade, for there varieties of stone, ocher, and resin and wood from special trees were found hundreds of miles from their provenience, passed from hand to hand in innumerable ceremonial presentations. Eventually utilitarianism may result from the aggregate flow of goods. But for donors unable to use valuables in personal consumption, the problem is to find recipients who will surrender political rights for goods. They try to speed purchases and to increase the size of gifts. Thus, if a standard bridewealth of 20 shells buys rights to a bride and some prestige, a gift of 25 shells should buy more prestige. Recipients may refuse 25 shells as "ostentatious" and more than they could pay in future bridewealths; they may accept 21 as "reasonable." The next bridal payment may be 22 shells. The
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continual pressure for this sort of price inflation is held in check only by the scarcity of valuables. Scarcity means that donors can usually recover valuables only by surrendering rights, and so they can gain only small net balances of power. Political differentiation is limited (Salisbury 1963), unless some individuals consent to become politically inferior in exchange for a net flow of valuables. But politically powerful men may then recoup their valuables through taxation or enforced contributions. Alternatively, while donors stress the political claims symbolized by their gifts, recipients may try to ignore the political claims and stress utilitarian aspects. Donors may call gifts (or foreign aid) "charity" or "enlightened generosity" and expect gratitude; recipients may talk of the donors' need to dispose of surpluses and to encourage trade. In the classic description of ceremonial gifts—the Trobriand hula (Malinowski 1922)—both attitudes occur together. Various commentators wrongly assume that one or the other aspect of gift giving is primary. Moderate increases in the supply of valuables mean rapid increases in the size of ceremonial gifts (as in the examples of bridewealth inflation and of the trade in Hudson Bay blankets among the Kwakiutl [Codere 1950] and in shells in New Guinea [Salisbury 1962]). Increased leisure may also increase the frequency of ceremonials and gifts and, thus, the velocity of circulation. This alters the balance of political rights which ceremonial gifts regulate, by increasing social mobility or by enabling financiers to consolidate empires. During early periods of prosperity in industrial societies, the increase in philanthropy, conspicuous consumption, and extravagant entertaining and gift giving has a similar function. A permanent imbalance in access to valuables, despite speedier distribution through gifts, may cause a permanent imbalance in political rights, perpetuated by gifts. Recipients may then persistently refuse to recognize the symbolism of gifts, so that donors grow tired of presenting, or they may find other valuables to use in achieving a balance of "trade, not aid." Often valuables become so common as to lose their symbolism and are replaced by money. This may happen after ceremonial gift giving has provided some of the initial incentive for accumulation, entrepreneurship, and even cashcrop production. (The use of money to purchase political rights in times of affluence needs additional analysis.) Many authors have tried to arrange the above mechanisms of trade as an evolutionary progression
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TRADE ASSOCIATIONS
(see Herskovits [1940] 1952, p. 183; Pearson 1957; Polanyi 1957), using trading as an index for the level of whole societies. This is inadmissible and is the result of inadequate functional descriptions of total societies. A single trading mechanism can never be the only form of distribution. All can occur together when different market conditions apply to different commodities or at different stages of distribution. Regularity of the market, the risks involved, and the relative power positions of traders are major determinants of the pattern of trade found. Nevertheless, in the course of world history there has been an increase of population, technological complexity, ease of communication and transport, and the size of domains of uniform law and order. Market conditions have changed accordingly. For long-distance trade, progressively wider and more regular markets, in which risk can be treated probabilistically and the power positions of buyers and sellers are equal, indicate a sequence of ceremonial gifts, intercommunity barter, trading partnerships, and market-place trade. In local trade the change from self-sufficiency to specialization demands more exact accounting and a change from successive distributions to partnerships and market places. Yet specialization creates new risks, and new goods and services for which the immediate market is limited. Bulk-breaking, futures, credit, and money itself are ways of adapting to new conditions. Political integration, fostering security within borders, creates new risks for external trade. Reactions to state control, vertical or monopoly integration of industry, subsidies, etc., do not fit theories of unilinear evolution, but can be analyzed in terms similar to those used to analyze trade and markets in the nonindustrial world.
RICHARD F. SALISBURY [See also ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY; ECONOMY AND SOCIETY; and the biography of POLANYI.] BIBLIOGRAPHY
ARENSBERG, CONRAD M. (1937)1950 The Irish Countryman. Gloucester, Mass.: Smith. BAUER, PETER T. (1954) 1963 West African Trade: A Study of Competition, Oligopoly and Monopoly in a Changing Economy. London: Routledge. -> An exhaustive microanalysis by an economist. BELSHAW, CYRIL S. 1965 Traditional Exchange and Modern Markets. Englewood Cliffs, NJ.: Prentice-Hall. CODERE, HELEN F. 1950 Fighting With Property: A Study of Kwakiutl Potlatching and Warfare, 17921930. American Ethnological Society, Monograph No. 18. New York: Augustin. DEAN, EDWIN R. 1963 Social Determinants of Price in Several African Markets. Economic Development and Cultural Change 11, no. 3, part 1:239-256.
DEWEY, ALICE G. 1962 Peasant Marketing in Java. New York: Free Press. -> An anthropological study Of widely ramifying marketing types. HENRY, J. 1951 The Economics of Pilaga Food Distribution. American Anthropologist New Series 53:187-219. HERSKOVITS, MELVILLE J. (1940) 1952 Economic Anthropology: A Study in Comparative Economics. 2d ed., rev. & enl. New York: Knopf. -> First published as The Economic Life of Primitive Peoples. A classic compilation of examples. MALINOWSKI, BRONISLAW (1922)1950 Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea. London School of Economics and Political Science, Studies, No. 65. London: Routledge; New York: Dutton. MAUSS, MARCEL (1925) 1954 The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. -» First published as Essai sur le don: Forme et raison de I'echange dans les societes archaiques. MINTZ, SIDNEY W. 1959 Internal Market Systems as Mechanisms of Social Articulation. Pages 20-30 in American Ethnological Society, Annual Spring Meeting, Proceedings. New York: The Society. MINTZ, SIDNEY W. 1961 Pratik: Haitian Personal Economic Relationships. Pages 54-63 in American Ethnological Society, Spring Meeting, Columbus, Ohio, 1961, Symposium: Patterns of Land Utilization, and Other Papers. Seattle, Wash.: American Ethnological Society. PEARSON, HARRY W. 1957 The Secular Debate on Economic Primitivism. Pages 3-11 in Karl Polanyi et al. (editors), Trade and Market in the Early Empires: Economies in History and Theory. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. POLANYI, KARL 1957 The Economy as Instituted Process. Pages 243-270 in Karl Polanyi et al. (editors), Trade and Market in the Early Empires: Economies in History and Theory. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. POLANYI, KARL; ARENSBERG, CONRAD M.; and PEARSON, HARRY W. (editors) 1957 Trade and Market in the Early Empires: Economies in History and Theory. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. ROBINSON, JOAN (1933) 1961 The Economics of Imperfect Competition. London: Macmillan; New York: St. Martins. SALISBURY, RICHARD F. 1962 From Stone to Steel: Economic Consequences of a Technological Change in New Guinea. London and New York: Melbourne Univ. Press; Cambridge Univ. Press. -> A study of nonmonetary trade in Melanesia. SALISBURY, RICHARD F. 1963 Ceremonial Economics and Political Equilibrium. Volume 2, pages 255-259 in International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, Sixth, 1960, Proceedings. Part 1: Ethnologie. Paris: Musee de THornine. SCHAFER. EDWARD H. 1963 The Golden Peaches of Samarkand: A Study of T'ang Exotics. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press. WARD, BARBARA E. 1960 Cash or Credit Crops? Economic Development and Cultural Change 8, no. 2: 148-163.
TRADE ASSOCIATIONS See CARTELS AND TRADE ASSOCIATIONS.
TRAITS TRADE CYCLES See BUSINESS CYCLES.
TRADE UNIONS See LABOR UNIONS; for related material, see INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS, article on THE SOCIOLOGY OF WORK; LABOR RELATIONS.
TRAINING See ADULT EDUCATION; EDUCATION; LEARNING; TEACHING; UNIVERSITIES.
TRAITS The "trait" concept represents an attempt to account for consistencies within personality as well as to provide personality study with a long-needed, scientifically sound taxonomy. If one is to use a theory which states that personality has altered between occasion A and occasion B, through such an influence as cultural pressure or therapeutic effort, then one must know how to describe and measure the personality before and after this alleged influence has been at work. Most sciences have had a distinct taxonomic stage, in which they have set out to describe their subject matter accurately and to designate the units by which phenomena and their changes are to be measured. If personality is the central topic of psychology, then a glance at psychology's history will show that it has been an immature and even a problem science. It has always been eager to get at the ostentatious theories before it has done the humble work of describing and measuring the subject matter. Admittedly, any taxonomy can become the playground of pedants, and naturally such a perversion has occasionally occurred in science. But the faults of psychology, and of social psychology in particular, have certainly not developed in this direction. Through the centuries there admittedly has been considerable activity in describing personality, on the one hand by literary folk and on the other by medical men. The literary contribution has consisted overwhelmingly of what has been called an ideographic approach, concerned with depicting an individual personality in all its idiosyncrasy for purely aesthetic ends, without any regard for scientific principles. Occasionally, as with the literary characterologists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, there have been explicit efforts to generalize about personality description, but these are of only historical interest to psychologists today. But the second source, the medical profession, beginning with Galen's description of the four tem-
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peraments and their relations to four humors— choleric, melancholic, sanguine, and phlegmatic— has provided descriptions that have developed steadily over centuries. The most decided development occurred when Emil Kraepelin recognized the entity that is now called schizophrenia, and when Eugen Bleuler further recognized that psychotics, as well as normal individuals, could be arranged on a continuum from cyclothymic to schizothymic temperament. Naturally, most medical work has been concerned with abnormal forms of behavior, and medical concepts have crept into the description of normal behavior only through the popularization of clinical notions, as by psychoanalysis, and through the literary "sophistication" of describing as paranoid or psychotic individuals with whom one does not agree! [See the biographies of BLEULER; KRAEPELIN.] Types and traits. As one moves into modern treatments, which, by contrast to the clinical sources of trait description, go hand in hand with advances in measurement and statistical analysis, one must at the outset recognize the alternative technical paths of personality description constituted by "types" and by "traits." A type means a whole pattern that is repeated with a striking frequency and that can be distinguished from a number of other patterns that also have a noteworthy frequency of representation among individuals in the population. Thus, one may speak of a hero or a scoundrel, a schizophrenic or a hysteric. In speaking of type, one employs a noun; in dealing with traits, one basically uses an adjective. Thus, a certain fruit may be described, in terms of a type, as "an orange," and in terms of traits, as an object that is spherical, about three inches in diameter, orange in color, and soft to palpation. However, these two approaches should not be regarded as utterly distinct, but rather as two ways of conveying the same kind of information. Of course, it is true that people frequently employ the word "type" when they are using a categorical or Aristotelian mode of thinking, admitting no degrees of anything: a certain animal can be designated either a dog or a cat. When one uses the notion of "trait," on the other hand, there is invariably implied a definite characteristic of which one can have more or less. This is, nevertheless, not a fundamental distinction, since in any adequate use of the notion of "type," it is first defined in terms of positions on continua; for instance, horses and dogs can be described on a continuum of length. In recognizing two types, one merely admits that there are two "modes," in statistical terms; for example, values in a certain range occur very frequently for
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horses and values in another range occur very frequently for dogs, while intermediate values are infrequently found for either species. Fundamentally, therefore, one must consider that a type is a pattern in trait measures falling at certain modal values. Consequently there is, in general, always a path of translation between description by types and description by traits. Incidentally, what has been said here about personality description by traits and types applies to the description of any object by any attributes. The theory and the statistics used in personality description belong, in principle, to any taxonomy; and the mathematical and statistical concepts that psychologists have recently developed likewise have the highest generality. Three approaches to traits. When the psychologist sets out to describe a personality by traits, he has three alternatives. First, he can define a trait as an absolutely specific and narrow aspect of behavior : for instance, canceling letters on a page of print at the fastest possible speed, biting one's fingernails, or disliking Siamese cats. Second, he can define a trait as a whole pattern or collection of such specific behaviors, as is done with such general characteristics as courage or sensitivity. This second alternative supposes that there is a whole aggregate of "trait elements" that "go together"; for example, that the courageous person will be brave at the dentist's and also firm in dispute. But in this second sense, the trait may be an invention of the psychologist's own mind, corresponding with nothing in nature. For example, it may turn out that the person who is courageous in climbing tall trees is not courageous at the sight of blood, or morally courageous in disagreeing with his neighbor. By following the first course and avoiding this uncertainty through referring to an absolutely specific bit of behavior and setting out to measure it, the psychologist certainly is in a scientifically safe position, provided people vary in the specified characteristic. But he is also in a scientifically depressing situation, for there will be a virtually infinite number of such specific traits and a limited number of psychologists—who may choose to operate with different traits and names and, like parallel lines, never come together in common researches. If the psychologist chooses to follow the second path—that of locating broad patterns—he may begin by stating, perhaps with the precise accompanying definition, what behaviors are considered to be covered by the trait he uses. Such a procedure may seem "operational" and, as such, of good scientific respectability. But the psychologist who follows this course is an unconscious humbug, since there is no
proof whatever that things will go together in the way that he says; and his ostentatious procedures of measurement actually guarantee only a hodgepodge of different units and miscellaneous contributions. The third course is the only one that satisfies the requirements of economy, of reality, and of conceptual clarity for experimental purposes. In this case, one first demonstrates or discovers the real "going together," or functional unity, of the elements of the constellation of behavior that will be covered by the trait named. Thus, one might measure thirty different kinds of specific courageous behaviors and put two hundred people in rank order on each one of them. If one finds the same ranking is obtained for a dozen out of these thirty forms of behavior—that is, that the twelve forms of behavior correlate highly—then one accepts this group of twelve behaviors as defining a useful trait. Of course, one may have to abandon the word "courage" and use some more technical term to describe these twelve forms of behavior that do not belong with the remaining eighteen. The general public has the right to keep its word "courage" for the entire group of thirty behaviors, if it so wishes, just as the psychologist has the right to use quite a new technical term for what he finds in a technically more sophisticated examination of personality structure. Indeed, he will do better if he invents a new technical term for anything that he can truly demonstrate, for he will thus avoid the trailing clouds of confusion that will forever dog the popular term. The psychologist uses the correlation coefficient to establish the degree of going-togetherness. He needs such a graduate index because in the complex realm of behavior there is seldom an all-ornothing relationship, but rather a tendency of two things to go together to a high degree or to a negligible degree [see MULTIVARIATE ANALYSIS, articles on CORRELATION]. Surface traits and source traits. In the third approach, there are still two alternatives that the psychologist can consider: he can use either a surface trait or a source trait. When a group of behaviors correlate from individual to individual, one is initially only entitled to call this functional unity a surface trait. When correlation coefficients between behaviors are arranged in a correlation matrix, the surface trait is recognized and denned by a correlation cluster; i.e., by a cluster of variables, each of which correlates with every other variable in the cluster to a marked degree. Such a cluster of variables may have no correlation with another cluster of variables and thus enjoys a certain independence.
TRAITS Methodological refinement occurs when it is recognized that the correlations among a set of variables may be a result of more than one influence. For example, if one takes a random sample of men in the street and tests them on vocabulary, speed in arithmetic, knowledge of American history, and knowledge of geography, it is likely that these four different kinds of performances will correlate positively and appreciably in all six possible subject pairings. In other words, the individual who is much better in one task will have a greater-thanaverage probability of being better in the others; and one can speak safely of a surface trait. However, this tendency of the four performances to go together springs from two sources. On the one hand, it is caused partly by individual differences in intelligence, so that although all the men may have been equally exposed to the same school subjects, one will have learned much more in all four areas than will another. On the other hand, it also springs from differences among the individuals in length of schooling, since all four areas happen to be simultaneously taught in school. These two influences are said to be source traits, since they are basic sources, or causes, of common variance and therefore account for the observed correlations. Factor analysis. The discovery of such underlying source traits among observed correlations has become possible through the method of factor analysis, which was devised by Charles Spearman (1927) and continued by L. L. Thurstone (1935; 1947) and others and which is today one of the most refined and flexible technical methods for analyzing trait structure. If the mathematical psychologist is presented with the complete intercorrelation matrix for many forms of behavior measured in many people, he can, by factor analysis, arrive at the number and to some extent at the nature of basic sources of variance, which are necessary to account for the correlations [see FACTOR ANALYSIS]. Common and unique traits. Another distinction among trait concepts, which cuts across the surface-source differentiation, is that between common traits and unique traits. A common trait is one that everyone can be said to possess in some amount, such as intelligence, pugnacity, or sensitivity. A unique trait, on the other hand, is something on which no one but the person being described can be measured. An extensive discussion of this distinction has been made by Allport (1937), but not necessarily in statistical terms. It should be noted at the outset that one can, if necessary, abandon unique traits without abandoning at all the idea of the unique individual. One has only to think of any common trait as a set of coordinates,
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and to remember that the individual can be placed as a unique point in space in regard to a set of such coordinates (which normally would lie in hyperspace). Furthermore, in the same terms one can handle not only the uniqueness of the person but also what many people are thinking of when they speak of the "uniqueness of a trait." Indeed, it should be noted that in general the same absolute level of performance in any specific task can always be reached by many different combinations of the same pure common traits. Some statistical psychologists have been inclined to dismiss the whole notion of unique traits, saying that the ideographic approach in personality really belongs to art and, unlike the nomothetic approach, has no relation to science. Science is concerned with what is generalizable, and is interested in explaining every individual case in terms of common concepts. To explain the individual case in terms of individual concepts is to gain no economy whatsoever, in terms of either concepts or laws, and is a chimera. However, there are actually senses in which a unique trait, if precisely defined, has scientific meaning. First, in the whole area of dynamic traits and interests, such as the clinician is most concerned with, one often encounters traits on which relatively few people can be scored; for instance, a passion for Brazilian butterflies. It is in the nature of interests, especially trivial interests, that they can be very specific and peculiar; and it is indeed true that there is no way of handling them other than by that seeming paradox, a "relatively unique" trait—a trait of which only a few people have some amount. Second, and more important, if one correlates thirty aspects of one person's behavior over a hundred days, measuring these same thirty aspects of behavior each day, one can obtain, by what is called P-technique factor analysis, a pattern that represents a trait in the sense of a set of behaviors that covary from day to day. Such a pattern might be unique to an individual. For example, by such an approach anxiety can be clearly recognized as a factor within an individual; and in each individual this anxiety will express itself through slightly different means and object avoidances. Although this concept of anxiety refers to something unique to the individual, it still has scientific value, since through its use one may discover laws and make generalizations about the way this trait behaves over time in an individual. Trait modalities. It has long been customary to speak of three "modalities" of traits: abilities, or cognitive traits; temperament traits; and dynamic traits, or interests. The definition of the way in which these three kinds of traits differ has been
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left mainly at a popular level, but an exhaustive technical definition has been attempted by Cattell (1957) in terms of whether the measurement made is most sensitive to changes in the complexity of the stimulus, in which case the trait is called an ability, or to changes in the environmental incentives, in which case it is called a dynamic trait. A temperament trait, largely independent of the stimulus complexity and of the level of motivation at the time, represents some kind of readiness to respond. It is a "stylistic" kind of attribute. (The implication that temperament traits are inherited is a secondary, not an essential, characteristic.) Normally, all three modalities of traits will contribute to any given piece of behavior, although in order to get a good measure of a trait that is primarily of one modality, one should try to choose those extreme examples in which the measure becomes largely independent of the other two modalities. Thus, in measuring the trait of intelligence, one tries to avoid measures that would reflect temperament differences and to control the motivation level of those taking the test. When one deals with common factor source traits as defined above, the interactions of different traits and different modalities in determining any specific behavior or performance can be expressed in what is called the specification equation, which is written
Here, the p, means a performance in response to the situation, j, which reaction is of the same nature for all people but differing in magnitude. Generally the T's are source traits which have the particular value, in a standard score, with which the individual is endowed; T t represents an ability trait, TT a temperament trait, T,, a dynamic trait. The T.s. represents a factor specific to the test situation. The s's are weights which indicate how the particular situation, j , provokes and involves these traits for people in general. These weights are obtained by the factor analysis, or simply by correlating the magnitude of the response, Pj , with the magnitude, of the trait, T, over a suitable sample of people. The i attached to the T's and to p indicates the score of a particular person i. The k, I, and m represent the number of the respective traits. This specification equation thus states that the given response or performance p is determined by the individual's endowments in ability, temperament, and dynamic (motivational) traits, and that these will operate with weights which can be determined factor-analytically for the given perform-
ance, showing the extent to which that situation involves the traits. Methods of discovering traits. The history of discovery and interpretation of particular traits is, of course, scarcely half written. The field of abilities, because of its intense interest to the educationist, has been most explored. Beginning with the location of a general ability factor by Spearman (1927), and the discovery by Thurstone (1935) of such primary abilities as number ability, spatial ability, verbal ability, and perceptual speed, and continuing into Guilford's recent work with cognitive traits that involve productive performance rather than judicious decision, perhaps thirty traits have been located (1959). Personality traits have been pursued most systematically through the rating and questionnaire media of observation and measurement. There are systematic differences between the oblique factor system used by Thurstone (1947) and Cattell (1957) in this field and the orthogonal system used by Guilford and Zimmerman (1956), among others. Typically, some twenty independent source traits or dimensions have been found through factor analysis, as exemplified in the Guilford-Zimmerman (G-Z) scales and in the Institute for Personality and Ability Testing (IPAT) 16 Personality Factor Scales (16 P.P.). Incidentally, the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) questionnaire differs from the 16 P.P. in that it deals with surface traits, long traditionally established in psychiatric work, rather than with source traits, which were first confirmed in the normal range of behavior. All of the scales mentioned have by now been related to an appreciable number of real-life criteria, both normal and abnormal. The traits in the 16 P.P. and the High School Personality Questionnaire (HSPQ), for example, have shown themselves capable of a substantial degree of prediction in everyday life. The weakness in the questionnaire test medium is that it lends itself to faking or distortion through dishonesty or lack of self-knowledge. In response to this problem there has been considerable development of tests in which the person's behavior in a miniature situation is measured without his knowledge of what is really being measured. Correlating and factor-analyzing such behaviors reveals a set of source traits that can now be measured in tests, such as the Objective-Analytic Personality Test Batteries (O-A) (Hundleby et al. 1965). The relationship of the traits found in this type of objective test to those found in questionnaires (which are objective only in their scoring and are best called conspective—i.e., such that two examiners see the same score) is somewhat com-
TRAITS plicated. So far, what are called first-order factors in the objective tests have been revealed to correspond to second-order factors in the questionnaires. Approximately, one may state that a second-order factor is a broad influence that organizes primary factors. Thus, anxiety is a trait that shows itself in the questionnaire at the second order, accounting for variability in ego weakness, ergic tension, guilt proneness, and so on; but in the objective test realm (O-A), it emerges as a first-order factor, accounting for low skin resistance on the GSR, unwillingness to venture in a new situation, and large startle reaction to the cold pressor test. Consequently, one may measure the trait of anxiety with equal facility through either questionnaire or objective test. Trait stability and generality. As soon as a trait is clearly located and confirmed by research on different samples, the first questions one is likely to ask concern how the trait changes with age; whether it is largely inborn or largely due to environment; and what particular influences, in the latter case, will affect it. The applied psychologist is also immediately interested in knowing what predictive value the trait will have for him in clinical diagnosis, in predicting industrial personnel fitness, or in enabling one to select scholarship recipients more reliably. Spearman's general ability factor, for example, has been shown to hold as a unitary entity through all age ranges, although it changes its pattern steadily in going from, say, five years of age to fifteen years (1927). Nevertheless, this "identity in change" can be reliably and validly measured at any age level; its magnitude is found to climb steeply in the early years and to flatten out around fifteen years. It has similarly been shown repeatedly that the main personality traits—such as ego strength, cyclothymia-schizothymia temperament, dominance-submissiveness of disposition, surgency-desurgency, and radicalism-conservatism —as rated or as measured in the 16 P.P., the HSPQ, and the G-Z scales, maintain a continuity with age, and that one can measure the same factors at any age. There are a few traits that emerge in adults but do not appear in children; there are also a few factors on which children vary a good deal that contribute only trivial variance in adults. The dozen or so main factors, however, seem to persist very steadily. [See PERSONALITY, article on PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT.]
This continuity of personality trait structure is true for both the questionnaire and the objective test. The Early School Personality Questionnaire (ESPQ) and the O-A Battery for young children measure the same traits as do the HSPQ and the
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regular O-A Battery—at decidedly lower levels of age. What is perhaps of greater interest to the anthropologist and the sociologist is the research demonstrating the degree of stability of these traits across cultures. It was theoretically possible that the results obtained through factor analysis in any medium—questionnaire responses, ratings, or objective tests—in, say, Japan or India would prove to be very different from those in America or France. Actually, recent work has shown quite clearly that the majority of general personality traits persist with considerable stability across cultures. Ego strength, schizothymia, superego strength, anxiety, and surgency, among other traits, seem to show themselves as basic personality dimensions in most cultures. The measurement of dynamic traits—i.e., of interests and motivation—by objective test methods has been pursued by many (Kuder, Strong, Guilford, Cattell, Eysenck, and others) but perhaps is still in its infancy. However, there are strong indications that the correlational analysis of traits in the dynamic field yields primarily what have long been recognized as basic drives, such as sex, fear, hunger, parental protectiveness, self-assertion, and curiosity. Additionally, there appear certain structures that have been called sentiments, or attitude aggregates, and that correspond to the individual's learning simultaneously whole sets of emotional attitudes and ways of behaving. This learning presumably occurs in response to the impress of some single social institution, such as a religion or the family. The dynamic structures that correspond to drives, or ergs, as they have been more recently defined, are expected to prove to be basic across cultures; the sentiment traits are almost certainly peculiar, to a considerable degree, to specific cultures. Thus the conclusion is reached that although it may be possible to compare certain traits across cultures, it is virtually certain that there are other traits in which it is meaningless to try to make a quantitative comparison. States and roles. Two concepts that clearly must be theoretically distinguished from traits are those of states and of roles. Failure to make this distinction also brings doubt and inaccuracy in the field of measurement. A state is defined as a pattern of covarying elements (as in surface traits and source traits) that does not show consistent, significant covariation in individual-difference measurements. A state is a pattern that shows differences only within one person, over time, and even then must be distinguished from a fluctuating trait. By a role, the psychologist (at least when he gets to precise measurement) must refer to a pattern of
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behavior, or an emphasis in behavior, that occurs only in a set of specific situations. In general terms, it can be said that a personality trait refers to a factor that operates over a wide array of situations, whereas a role factor is quite specific to a certain limited group of situations. The psychometrician is quite as prepared as the sociologist or the anthropologist to conceive that in principle an individual never performs an act outside of a role. However, the psychometrician is more skeptical than the anthropologist and the sociologist that one can detect, merely by inspection, what particular role the individual is acting. He prefers, instead of claiming to "know" a role, to locate role factors, just as one locates personality factors by actually correlating a set of performances and showing that certain stimulus situations tend to evoke similar behavior. The scientific study of roles in this sense is in its infancy, but the model is reasonably clear. In short, to detect a role, one looks for persisting correlations across situations that call forth many different traits; to detect a trait, one looks for a single behavior factor that runs across many different roles. Instrument factors. Related to the idea of role is the idea of "instrument factor." It has been found that in attempts to measure traits, there is apt to be a particular effect attributable to the kind of instrument or mode of observation used; for example, behavior rating, questionnaire, or objective test. Certain pervasive instrument factors therefore must be recognized, and their effects removed, before one can hope to get a clear concept of the trait or an uncontaminated measurement of it. The person as a functional unity. Misgivings are sometimes expressed that the notion of traits is an "atomistic" concept that succeeds in taking the individual apart but typically fails to put him together again. It is true that certain ad hoc trait scales with which psychologists have concerned themselves excessively are of this kind, in that, being arbitrarily set up, there is no way to combine the different scales and alleged "traits" in a rational fashion; they do not correspond to any real structures in the organism. However, if measures of traits are based on prior structural research that provides well-defined source traits, the individual can in fact be described as a single functional unity. Further, his total pattern as an individual can be expressed as a gestalt by a profile of scores on the basic source traits. The only limitation to this integration lies in the possibility that in some cases traits do not interact additively, but have a relationship expressible by a higher power. Actually, with quite minor exceptions, nonadditive treat-
ment has not yet been clearly demonstrated as a necessity, and the scientist should continue to use the simpler model unless it breaks down. At present, one adds a person's score on an intelligence trait to his score on a personality trait, such as ego strength, and to his score on a dynamic trait, such as interest in intellectual work. With this total, one can make a fairly good prediction of an individual's performance in some concrete intellectual endeavor. RAYMOND B. CATTELL [Other relevant material may be found in APTITUDE TESTING; FACTOR ANALYSIS; PERSONALITY; PERSONALITY MEASUREMENT; ROLE; VOCATIONAL INTEREST
TESTING; and in the biographies of SPEARMAN; THURSTONE.] BIBLIOGRAPHY ALLPORT, GORDON W. 1937 Personality: A Psychological Interpretation. New York: Holt, CATTELL, RAYMOND B. 1957 Personality and Motivation Structure and Measurement. New York: World. CATTELL, RAYMOND B.; and SCHEIEK, I. H. 1961 The Meaning and Measurement of Neuroticism and Anxiety. New York: Ronald Press. EYSENCK, HANS J. (1953) 1960 The Structure of Human Personality. 2d ed. London: Methuen. GUILFORD, JOY P. 1959 Personality. New York: McGrawHill. GUILFORD, JOY P.; and ZIMMERMAN, W. S. 1956 Fourteen Dimensions of Temperament. Psychological Monographs 70, no. 10:1-26. HALL, CALVIN S.; and LINDZEY, GARDNER 1957 Theories of Personality. New York: Wiley; London: Chapman. HUNDLEBY, JOHN; PAWLiK, KURT; and CATTELL, RAYMOND B. 1965 Personality Factors in Objective Test Devices: A Critical Integration of a Quarter of a Century's Research. San Diego, Calif.: Knapp. JUNG, CARL G. (1921) 1959 Psychological Types: Or the Psychology of Individuation. London: Routledge. -> First published in German. ROBACK, ABRAHAM A. (1927) 1952 The Study of Character, With a Survey of Temperament. 3d ed., rev. & enl. London: Routledge; Cambridge, Mass.: Sci-Art Publishers. SPEARMAN, CHARLES E. 1927 The Abilities of Man: Their Nature and Measurement. London: Macmillan. SPEARMAN, CHARLES E.; and JONES, LLEWELYN W. 1950 Human Ability. London: Macmillan. -> A continuation of Spearman's The Abilities of Man, 1927. THURSTONE, Louis L. 1935 The Vectors of Mind: Multiple-factor Analysis for the Isolation of Primary Traits. Univ. of Chicago Press. THURSTONE, Louis L. 1947 Multiple-factor Analysis. Univ. of Chicago Press. ->• A development and expansion of Thurstone's The Vectors of Mind, 1935.
TRANSFORMATIONS OF DATA See
under
STATISTICAL
PROBLEMS OF.
TRANSHUMANCE See PASTORALISM.
ANALYSIS,
SPECIAL
TRANSPORTATION: Social Aspects TRANSPORTATION i. SOCIAL ASPECTS ii. ECONOMIC ASPECTS in. COMMUTATION
Joel Smith John R. Meyer Leo F. Schnore
SOCIAL ASPECTS
The term "transportation" is used variously to designate the process, the means, or the systems whereby socially meaningful objects are conveyed through space. Transportation involves the relocating of such objects, by an energy-consuming mechanism, through an environmental medium; the social consequences of transportation may be both intended and unintended. This breadth of reference indicates a concept that is not easily definable, for it does not refer to a clearly delimited aspect of social reality. When the objects being transported are human beings, or when humans move by self-locomotion, in conceptual terms transportation merges with mobility. At another extreme, when objects are messages composed of meaningful symbols, transportation blends with communication. Perhaps this definitional ambiguity reflects the fact that transportation is the basic process by which direct physical contact and exchange among social units is attained and maintained. Given that transportation is a basic support to social organization and communication, it requires systematic organization in the interest of reliability. Scholars in various fields have been concerned with one or more of the elements involved in transportation: the character and distance of the space to be traversed; the technological and energy resources available for and actually in use; personnel and skills; motives, decision-making processes, and knowledge that bear on use, operation, and other related activities and decisions; the organizational characteristics of systems; and the diverse social consequences of system qualities and use. Historical development The inability to mass at one point in space all resources, persons, and related activities essential for minimal social life necessitates movement. Movements have varied in frequency, distance, timing, temporal extension, and function among different societies in different epochs, according to variations in environmental contingencies, aspirations, and levels of knowledge. Furthermore, the ability to achieve economical movement has been a condition necessary to the maintenance of any stable culture.
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Early men were largely nomadic. Having only minimal cultural attainments, they survived by living off relatively inhospitable and easily exhausted environments. Survival required periodic movement from depleted to more sustaining areas. Prior to the domestication of animals and basic transportrelated inventions, such as the wheel, this movement was difficult and dangerous; however, there is evidence that even then the more advantaged groups also organized some movement for trade purposes (Brew 1950). All movement depended on the availability of passable routes, environment being the key determinant of direction, speed, and distance. With the development of permanent settlements, nomadic wandering declined, but a different type of movement remained an essential part of the way of life. The agricultural, hunting, and pastoral economies of these settlements required regular movements, functionally akin to the modern journey to work, away from clustered residences to the locations of sustenance activities. Together with other factors, inefficient and high-energy-consuming transportation and production technologies kept the populations and land areas of these first permanent settlements small by modern standards. Technological innovations facilitated developing complexity and specialization in social organization. As isolated societies accumulated surpluses in goods, services, personnel unneeded for primary economic activities, and transportation resources, and as tastes were developed for unavailable goods and services, regular trading over established longdistance routes increased markedly in scope and quantity (Childe 1942, chapters 3-4). While technical skills, transport capacity, and related knowledge of transport principles and environments were adequate for the establishment of such routes, transportation was neither easy nor always successful. Means of transportation that permit uninterrupted movement on land, water, or in air, in any combination, or through all the markedly different conditions that exist within a medium, have never been contrived. Hence, the conduct of long-distance trade required the establishment of settlements wherever environmental variations along routes required the transfer of goods and travelers from one mode of transportation to another. A number of the major cities of the world originated as settlements at what were break-in bulk points for the transportation systems of the time. This is not intended as support for a single-cause theory of urban settlement and location, nor does it imply that the effect of transportation on urban
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settlements is always growth and development. As Cottrell's apt title "Death by Dieselization" (1951) suggests, improvements in technology or routes may result in urban decay or abandonment. Settlements with origins in the provision of transportation-requiring services are most likely to thrive and survive when, for whatever reason, their functional bases expand and/or when their locations have been determined by very drastic environmental barriers, such as the shift from land to water or from plains to mountains (Chinitz 1960). The early empires. The sociopolitical epoch of small city-states was followed by the period of large nation-states and empires which exploited their transportation resources—in conjunction with combined population, military, and diplomatic advantages—in order to establish integrated rule over vast areas containing many formerly independent units linked only by trade relations. These large political units owed their success and stability in large part to the development, maintenance, and operation of improved transport nets, which facilitated rapid movement of the considerable quantities of military, political, and economic goods and personnel so necessary to a large integrated nation. To a degree no longer the case, the transportation networks of the time were also the communication networks. The road systems of the Romans, the Incas, and the Mayas provide classic illustrations of these systems (Cooley 1894), although mastery of water transport was often equally critical. Within the borders of such nations space represented a cost of ordered integration, being paid for in the value of resources committed to transportation. In fact, the boundaries of these early empires were determined to a great extent by their relatively primitive means of transportation; seas, mountains, and rivers set natural limits to expansion. Modern empires. After the period of the early great empires and a period of decline or arrested growth in the West during the Middle Ages, came the period of newer territorially diffused empires of Western nations. In this modern era, initiated by trade revivals and characterized by more advanced levels of social organization and cultural accomplishment, transportation was, as the case of Great Britain so well exemplifies, a key to empire. At least in its inception, the course to empire was intertwined with knowledge of and capacity for marine transportation. While contiguous segments were linked by road, canal, and, later, rail nets, maintenance of effective central organization and control of dispersed colonies depended upon reliable and dependable navies and merchant marines. Toward the end of the period of imperialism, inno-
vations in rail and road transportation had so enhanced the ability of imperialist nations both to organize the mother country and to exploit a few particularly desirable colonies that large empires were no longer as advantageous as they were in the nineteenth century (Wolfe 1963, pp. 70-91). Of course, the assertion by most former colonies of their independence left the imperialist nations little choice in this respect. Modern air transport technology, in a world in which major powers conduct their foreign affairs with subtle and covert techniques of influence and exploitation, has all but obviated recent geographic patterns of empire and spheres of control by affording rapid access to any point on the globe. Not only may such empires no longer be desirable or necessary, but aircraft, as yet, cannot sustain indefinitely the large-scale movements of goods and persons necessary for building and maintaining them. In contrast, modern transportation innovations have enabled expansion of the land boundaries of the larger, more powerful nations, often permitting them to surmount former environmental barriers. However, even today, major barriers like the Pamir Knot or the Andes, particularly when approached through equally difficult environments for land or water transport, act as restraints on expansion into contiguous areas. The study of transportation Social scientists of all disciplines, interested in such diverse problems as settlement patterns, international politics and warfare, spatial organization of societies and their economies, and land values, repeatedly find themselves concerned with some aspect of transportation. A synthesis of their efforts permits the statement and critical assessment of certain propositions concerning transportation. Technological innovation. Transportation technology includes vehicles and fixed routes imposed on free space, as well as assorted service, control, and administrative complexes. The latter sustain and increase the speed, range, and load capacities of the former. As a human creation, technology is potentially completely alterable within natural limitations; change is restricted largely by ignorance, inertia, and scarcity of resources. However, man has failed to invent vehicles with large load capacities that can efficiently pass from one medium to another. In fact, no operational vehicle has yet been contrived that can operate uninterruptedly under all conditions that may be encountered in a single medium. Innovations in technology are generally less expensive and more manageable than alterations in environments. However, costly environ-
TRANSPORTATION: Social Aspects mental alterations, by such means as tunneling, bridging, canal digging, and regrading, have often been undertaken as a result of technological innovations (railroads, for example) that offered substantial gains in speed or load capacity (O'Dell 1956). Adoption of possible transportation innovations is not necessarily a direct function of financial returns. In some cases, innovations that raise costs and/or reduce returns are adopted out of sheer miscalculation or for military, political, or other considerations. In other cases, as inaction on proposals for tunnels under the English Channel and slowness in installing safety devices in automobiles exemplify, economically feasible innovations remain unimplemented because they raise fears or run counter to long-established public tastes. Feasible innovations sometimes await developments in related nontransportation technologies for implementation. For example, because a destroyed bridge might block a vital harbor mouth, bridges were not built over strategic harbor entrances until improved salvage skills had enabled rapid unblocking of harbors or until innovations in military technology had antiquated the once strategic installations that might have been isolated. Thus the process of innovation in transportation depends not only on knowledge and resources for direct manipulation of the environment and transportation technologies, but also on tastes, irrational fears and desires, and innovations in related skills and technologies. Rationality in transportation systems. Most of the considerable monetary cost of transportation systems is incurred by creating, operating, and maintaining various technologies. In addition, there are always some psychic costs entailed in making decisions regarding innovations and use, as well as indirect costs that may arise in diverting resources from other potential uses. Social scientists generally adopt some form of rationalistic model for handling these various costs in analyzing solutions to transportation problems or decisions involving transportation. One example of this is the "transportation model" developed by mathematical statisticians for solving a class of managerial problems involving the optimum allocation of resources over a set of means to attain a set of ends (Churchman et al. 1957, pp. 283-292; Ferber & Verdoorn 1962, pp. 190-194). However, even if we grant intrinsic rationality, considerations of consumer behavior and route location make it clear that no simple model is adequate and that only highly elaborated complex models will make many aspects of transportation appear rational (Garrison I960; Haggett 1965, pp. 24-25, 32-33).
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In one sense, transportation systems in operation are reflections of the decisions and actions of individuals with optional means of movement. The resultant complexities can be illustrated by considering the resident of a large metropolis who must travel to work. While public rapid transit is most economical both of time and of money, large and increasing proportions of suburbanites drive to work in private automobiles despite the high and rising personal and social costs (Elias et al. 1964, pp. 150-165; Gottmann 1961, pp. 631-690; Smith 1959, pp. 20-24; Great Britain 1963). This behavior is not necessarily a result of ignorance or irrationality. Other explanations are suggested by the finding that among Chicago suburbanites an average payment of 20 cents a trip would be required to divert 37 per cent of the drivers to a public transit system for the trip to work (U.S. Congress 1962, p. 49). For example, social prestige may be at stake. However, in what fashion? Does nondriving diminish prestige, or does driving increase it? This example illustrates some of the major difficulties of rationalistic models in dealing with the behavioral aspects of transportation. Nonfiscal and nontemporal considerations—comfort, convenience, prestige, and so forth—are unidentified or difficult to quantify in comparable units of measurement (Lang & Soberman 1964, pp. 90-99; Lansing &. Mueller 1964, pp. 63-95). Rationally, routes would follow lines that minimize the time and money costs of distance. In a homogeneous passable environment, they would be straight lines (Taaffe 1956). Environmental difficulties will of course induce various deviations for different means of transportation. However, transportation routes and the networks they comprise deviate from minimal distance arrangements even more than environmental and technical considerations demand. If route location is viewed as the outcome of free competition for available desirable space, a number of other considerations are suggested (Mayer 1944). For example, competitors with greater power may force route deviations for reasons not basically relevant to transportation, such as fear of noise or dirt nuisances. Prior property rights sustained by social tradition may result in circuitous routes. Road improvements in downtown Boston, for example, are hindered by the location of Boston Common and various historic sites (Firey 1945), and in the American Midwest local roads run largely at right angles owing to the original principles of surveying and parceling out land in quarter sections. The intrusion of historical residues, differential social power, and conflicting social values into a situation already complicated
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by environmental, technological, and economic considerations can result in transportation routes and networks that have no visible rationality (Levin 1950). Competition for space. In the competition for scarce, valuable space, the effectiveness of the transportation sector varies. Transportation enterprises, having great financial resources, are usually able to claim space as desired in inexpensive open areas. The greater the density, the more intense the use, and the greater the number and variety of competitors, the less advantaged are transportation enterprises in the competition (Wingo 1961). In the city these conditions coalesce, and transportation is therefore at its greatest disadvantage. Nonetheless, it has been reported, from an analysis of land-use studies conducted in 53 American cities between 1935 and 1952, that streets and railroads occupy 33 per cent of the available space (Bartholomew 1955, p. 170, table 3). If this estimate had also included space used for bus depots, offices, airports, docks, and the wider rights of way of modern streets and expressways, the proportion would have been considerably larger. Under these circumstances, the success of transportation services in satisfying additional space needs might force out the other land users who generate these needs. Moreover, to the extent that transportation reduces the supply of space available to other consumers, it increases their willingness and need to commit greater resources to the competition for space. This suggests that the space demands of transportation in the large city have generated an unstable disequilibrium that is not portrayed adequately by a simple rational model. Any apparent stability is often a historical legacy of an uneconomic pattern that has been frozen because of the large investments committed and the sheer difficulty of destruction and construction in the central city. Systematization. The fixity of routes is but one aspect of the patterned order of transportation systems; orderliness is also reflected in priorities of user claims in any given system, and temporal cycles in the amount and composition of traffic (Foley 1954; Mitchell & Rapkin 1954, pp. 20-177). Generally, the more restricted and expensive a path, the more regular, restricted, and patterned is the movement of vehicles in a system. Cyclical changes in traffic magnitude and composition are a function of such interrelated factors as requirements of cargoes; conventional desires and customs of passengers as to travel conditions and timing; and daily or seasonal changes in such factors as hours of daylight, climate, and weather. The over-all sys-
tematization of transportation arises from the interaction among the aforementioned constraints; the concern of management with protecting property and regular returns on large investments; and the general social demand for reliable, dependable, and usable transportation systems. Transportation and social control A system of transportation, like any other kind of system, cannot work without rules; moreover, the rules have to be enforced. This has been true throughout history; but modern nations resort to legal codes and formally constituted administering and enforcing agencies to a much greater degree than was once the case. The more expensive, complex, and potentially dangerous the technology and the more socially significant the system, the greater the likelihood that every aspect of the system will be subject to such control (Meyer et al. 1959, pp. 203-273; U.S. Congress 1961). As nations have developed, folkways, mores, customs, and conventions covering such system aspects as rights of way, maintenance of way, and direction of travel have been reinforced by formal laws. The variability in the thoroughness with which laws cover system operation is considerable. For example, walking and bicycling seem like free movement in contrast to railroading, where every aspect of operation is covered by law. Nonetheless, such laws as those which regulate street crossing, walking on expressways and bridges, and rights of way at intersections assure that even relatively free systems operate in an adequately orderly and predictable fashion (see Labatut & Lane 1950). The agencies of control span the range from police agencies and ordinary multifunctional courts that enforce and punish transgressions of laws governing the relatively free systems to independent, complex, interlocking bureaucratic agencies that administer rules governing the more completely controlled systems (U.S. Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations 1961). As societies grow in size and complexity and become increasingly dependent on transportation for survival, control has moved from the sphere of the informal and individual to that of the formal and social. As the major representative of the public interest, government has often assumed not only control rights but also ownership of public transportation facilities (Bauer & Costello 1950, pp. 230-260). This has occurred even in societies that are otherwise ideologically committed to free enterprise economies. At a minimum, streets and highways are almost always owned by governments. In addition, it is not uncommon for some or all rail, air, and
TRANSPORTATION: Social Aspects maritime transportation to be operated under government ownership. The importance of control in maintaining and insuring dependable transportation is also indicated by the pattern of penalties invoked for the transgression of rules and operating failures. While extreme and unusual, the former practice of hanging horse thieves in the American West is vivid testimony to this concern. In another vein, the varied legal powers invested in ship captains, airplane pilots, and railroad conductors are unmatched in other roles involving responsibility for operating complex machinery. Business failures in transportation are also handled differently: whereas most other failing businesses can dissolve, bankrupt transportation enterprises usually must be reorganized. Frequently the government will assume ownership at this point. Social consequences. The manifest functions of any transportation system are to move goods and persons. From the perspective of users, since such movement is costly, these functions are rarely viewed this narrowly. Rather, they are viewed in conjunction with motives—the ends for which transportation activities are undertaken. Commonly recognized ends involve all aspects of human life .the economic, political, military, social, and so forth (Cooley 1894). In essence, regardless of whether actual movement produces intended ends, transportation systems are ordinarily considered facilitating agents for integrating or maintaining society. Raw materials are moved to factories, manufactured goods to markets, troops and military supplies to threatened borders or vulnerable sectors of enemy land, labor surpluses to labor shortage areas, and so on. There seems little doubt that the social role ascribed to transportation is a highly valued one. It is not uncommon to describe transportation innovations as "revolutionary." Judgments of this kind depend largely on hindsight, since it is the range and magnitude of unanticipated consequences that strike the imagination. The automobile, for example, is credited with initiating and sustaining metropolitan decentralization, fragmenting the family, strangling central cities, increasing sexual promiscuity, creating a significant new source of mortality, and much more. Expanding railroad nets have been given credit variously for the settlement and integration of many nations, including the United States. William F. Ogburn (1946) argued that changes from horse and wagon to railroad, from railroad to automobile, and finally from automobile to airplane have repeatedly reduced the number and enlarged the sizes of areas of urban
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dominance, thus altering the entire structure of the hierarchical system of cities (see also Ogburn et al. 1946). The unanticipated consequences of the more subtle aspects of transportation may be equally significant. In the United States the first telling blow against segregation occurred when the federal government used its reserved right to control interstate commerce as license to end segregated seating and service in all facilities employed in such movement. On the international level, national dependencies on international trade and travel have produced cooperative agreements and discourse on many transportation problems between otherwise hostile governments. This brief scanning of the many diverse consequences of transportation systems only suggests how widely transportation infiltrates almost all aspects of social life. In so doing, it clarifies the repeated convergence of interest in transportation among professionals in all the social sciences. JOEL SMITH [See also CENTRAL PLACE; CITY, articles on METROPOLITAN GOVERNMENT and On COMPARATIVE URBAN STRUCTURE; PLANNING, SOCIAL, article On REGIONAL AND URBAN PLANNING; REGIONAL SCIENCE; SPATIAL ECONOMICS.] BIBLIOGRAPHY
ALONSO, WILLIAM 1964 Location and Land Use: Toward a General Theory of Land Rent. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. BARTHOLOMEW, HARLAND 1955 Land Uses in American Cities. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. BAUER, JOHN; and COSTELLO, PETER 1950 Transit Modernization and Street Traffic Control: A Program of Municipal Responsibility and Administration. Chicago: Public Administration Service. BREESE, GERALD W. 1949 The Daytime Population of the Central Business District of Chicago: With Particular Reference to the Factor of Transportation. Univ. of Chicago Press. BREW, JOHN O. 1950 The Highway and the Anthropologist. Pages 3-9 in Jean Labatut and Wheaton J. Lane (editors), Highways in Our National Life: A Symposium. Princeton Univ. Press. CHILDE, V. GORDON (1942) 1960 What Happened in History. Rev. ed. Baltimore: Penguin. CHINITZ, BENJAMIN 1960 Freight and the Metropolis: The Impact of America's Transport Revolutions on the New York Region. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. CHURCHMAN, CHARLES W.; ACKOFF, RUSSELL L.; and ARNOFF, E. LEONARD (1957) 1961 Introduction to Operations Research. New York: Wiley. COOLEY, CHARLES H. (1894) 1930 The Theory of Transportation. Pages 15-118 in Charles H. Cooley, Sociological Theory and Social Research, Being the Selected Papers of Charles Horton Cooley. With an introduction and notes by Robert Cooley Angell. New York: Holt.
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COTTRELL, W. F. 1951 Death by Dieselization: A Case Study in the Reaction to Technological Change. American Sociological Review 16:358-365. ELIAS, C. E. JR.; GILLIES, JAMES; and RIEMER, SVEND (editors) 1964 Metropolis: Values in Conflict. Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth. FERBER, ROBERT; and VERDOORN, P. J. 1962 Research Methods in Economics and Business, New York: Macmillan. FIREY, WALTER I. 1945 Sentiment and Symbolism as Ecological Variables. American Sociological Review 10:140-148. FOLEY, DONALD L. 1954 Urban Daytime Population: A Field for Demographic-Ecological Analysis. Social Forces 32:323-330. GARRISON, WILLIAM L. 1960 Connectivity of the Interstate Highway System. Regional Science Association, Papers and Proceedings 6:121-137. GILMORE, HARLAN W. 1953 Transportation and the Growth of Cities. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. GOTTMANN, JEAN (1961)1964 Megalopolis: The Urbanized Northeastern Seaboard of the United States. Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press. GREAT BRITAIN, MINISTRY OF TRANSPORT 1963 Traffic in Towns: A Study of the Long-term Problems of Traffic in Urban Areas. London: H.M. Stationery Office. GREER, SCOTT 1961 Traffic, Transportation, and Problems of the Metropolis. Pages 605-650 in Robert K. Merton and Robert A. Nisbet (editors), Contemporary Social Problems. New York: Harcourt. HAGGETT, PETER 1965 Locational Analysis in Human Geography. New York: St. Martins. ISARD, WALTER 1956 Location and Space-economy: A General Theory Relating to Industrial Location, Market Areas, Trade and Urban Structure. Cambridge, Mass.: Technology Press of M.I.T.; New York: Wiley. KAIN, JOHN F. 1962 The Journey-to-work as a Determinant of Residential Location. Regional Science Association, Papers and Proceedings 9:137-160. KANSKY, K. J. 1963 Structure of Transportation Networks: Relationships Between Network Geometry and Regional Characteristics. University of Chicago, Department of Geography, Research Paper No. 84. Univ. of Chicago Press. LABATUT, JEAN; and LANE, WHEATON J. (editors) 1950 Highways in Our National Life: A Symposium. Princeton Univ. Press. LANG, A. SCHEFFER; and SOBERMAN, RICHARD M. 1964 Urban Rail Transit: Its Economics and Technology. Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press. LANSING, JOHN B.; and MUELLER, EVA 1964 Residential Location and Urban Mobility. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan, Institute for Social Research, Survey Research Center. LEVIN, DAVID R. 1950 The Permanence of the Right of Way in a Changing Environment. Pages 281-289 in Jean Labatut and Wheaton J. Lane (editors), Highways in Our National Life: A Symposium. Princeton Univ. Press. LIEPMANN, KATE K. (1944) 1945 The Journey to Work: Its Significance for Industrial and Community Life. London: Routledge. MAYER, HAROLD M. 1944 Localization of Railway Facilities in Metropolitan Centers as Typified by Chicago. Journal of Land and Public Utility Economics 20:299315.
MEYER, JOHN R. et al. (1959) 1964 The Economics of Competition in the Transportation Industries. Harvard Economic Studies, Vol. 107. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. MITCHELL, ROBERT B.; and RAPKIN, CHESTER 1954 Urban Traffic: A Function of Land Use. New York: Columbia Univ. Press. NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY, TRANSPORTATION CENTER 1964 Sources of Information in Transportation. Evanston, 111.: Northwestern Univ. Press. -» An extensive bibliography, particularly helpful in identifying important nongovernmental sources of transportation statistics. O'DELL, ANDREW C. 1956 Railways and Geography. London: Hutchinson's University Library. OGBURN, WILLIAM F. 1946 Inventions of Local Transportation and the Patterns of Cities. Social Forces 24:373-379. OGBURN, WILLIAM F.; ADAMS, JEAN L.; GILFILLAN, S. C. 1946 The Social Effects of Aviation. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. SMITH, JOEL 1959 Some Social Aspects of Mass Transit in Selected American Cities. Institute for Community Development and Services, Special Research Monograph No. 1. East Lansing: Michigan State University. TAAFFE, EDWARD J. 1956 Air Transportation and United States Urban Distribution. Geographical Review 46: 219-238. U.S. ADVISORY COMMISSION ON INTERGOVERNMENTAL RELATIONS 1961 Intergovernmental Responsibilities for Mass Transportation Facilities and Services in Metropolitan Areas: Commission Report. Washington: Government Printing Office. U.S. CONGRESS, SENATE COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE 1961 National Transportation Policy. 87th Congress, 1st Session, Senate Report 445. Washington: Government Printing Office. -» Report of the Committee on Commerce by its study group on transportation policies in the United States. U.S. CONGRESS, SENATE COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE 1962 Urban Mass Transportation: Hearings. 87th Congress, 2d Session. Washington: Government Printing Office. WINGO, LOWDON JR. 1961 Transportation and Urban Land. Washington: Resources for the Future. WOLFE, ROY I. 1963 Transportation and Politics. Princeton, N.J.: Van Nostrand. II ECONOMIC ASPECTS
A most salient economic characteristic of transportation throughout the world is that the provision of transportation services is almost invariably a matter of substantial public concern. In the United States this is reflected by the fact, among others, that transportation was the first industry to be subjected to formal government regulation and is still probably the most stringently regulated industry within the American economy. In the rest of the world the more direct approach of outright government ownership often has been adopted. Government ownership is, in fact, more the rule than the exception in rail and airline operations outside the United States.
TRANSPORTATION: Economic Aspects The distinction between nationalized and regulated transportation industries, however, can easily be overemphasized. It is remarkable, in fact, how similar the public complaints about transportation difficulties are in western Europe, with heavily nationalized transportation industries, and the United States, with no government ownership. The pronouncements by government officials, the comments by financial pundits, and the critiques made in the business press are strikingly similar under the different sets of circumstances. In a sense this is not too surprising. Obviously, regulation and government ownership are somewhat interchangeable devices for achieving public goals or aspirations. Indeed, it is surely significant that the United States, which has more formal government regulation of almost all business activities and requires considerably more exposure of private business affairs to public scrutiny than almost any other country, is also less prone to desire public ownership of economic facilities. [See NATIONALIZATION; REGULATION OF INDUSTRY.] The similarities of transportation problems in different parts of the world also derive from the simple fact that the same basic factors almost invariably influence transportation economics and policy, and these influences are essentially invariant whether the industry is nationalized or privately owned. They are, moreover, at work in all modes of transportation to a greater or lesser degree. Accordingly, understanding and devising appropriate policy solutions for transportation problems under almost any circumstances involve analyzing the effects of these fundamental influences. Essentiality. Probably the most important overall consideration is the idea that there is something inherently essential about transport services. This essentiality has been expressed in many different ways. In newly industrializing societies, for example, transportation is spoken of as being part of the "infrastructure" that is prerequisite to proper industrial and economic development [see CAPITAL, SOCIAL OVERHEAD]. In the more advanced parts of the world the concept of social need or social service is often invoked in connection with transportation. In both cases the notion is, simply, that transportation is somehow more basic to the proper conduct of economic and social affairs than are most other activities. The logic of this special concern with transportation derives from the circumstance that if transportation services are suspended, it is usually difficult to conduct other activities. As well as intrinsic essentiality, this reflects that transportation is a service and therefore not storable. Indeed, the
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argument can legitimately be made that there are many other needs that are almost equally essential to society but, since they are storable, their suspension is not so immediately damaging. In short, it is the fact that transportation is both a service and essential that brings it to the special attention of governments. In this sense, transportation is in a special category shared by only a few other economic activities, such as the provision of medical services and the public utilities that supply gas and electricity. Transportation is, of course, also an important economic activity in and of itself. Establishing precise estimates of the volume of expenditures for transportation is difficult in most Western economies, mainly because so much of it is conducted by very small private concerns or by business firms as an adjunct to their principal manufacturing or commercial activities. Such undertakings are difficult to reflect in national income accounts and statistics. However, making duly rough allowances and ignoring expenditures made on private automobile transportation, it would appear that the provision of transportation services consumes somewhere between 5 and 10 per cent of gross national product in most advanced industrialized countries. Add in the amounts spent on private automobile transportation, and these figures would be considerably larger, particularly in the United States; and, needless to say, every year this private automobile expenditure has tended to increase in most Western countries. In less developed countries transport investments can account for 40 per cent or more of the total public investment budget. The problem of peak demand. A dominant technological and economic feature of most transportation systems is that their service capacities are fully utilized only a small fraction of the total time that they must usually be available. Rush hours or peak periods normally set the pattern for the whole transportation system. Capacity is designed or engineered to meet these peak demands; and it is this characteristic, more than any other, that usually establishes basic boundaries to possible economies of operation in transportation. Unbalanced use of capacity is most obvious in urban passenger transportation systems that often receive well over 50 per cent of their use during only 25 or 30 of the 168 hours in the week. While not quite so apparent, this is almost equally true of most other transportation activities. For example, intercity passenger travel tends to increase significantly in holiday or vacation periods. Freight operations also display pronounced "peaking." For example, agricultural products generally
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tend to move in greatest volume shortly after harvest, and harvests are not spread uniformly throughout the year even in a large continental country like the United States, which has a rather wide range of climatic conditions. Timber and forest product shipments are subject to much the same set of considerations, and climate also plays a significant role in clustering nonagricultural bulk shipments of such commodities as coal and iron and other ores. Even general merchandise shipments have reasonably pronounced seasonal characteristics. For obvious reasons merchandise movements tend to precede peak sales periods, and Americans and Europeans confine a very considerable amount of their shopping activity to the months just before Christmas, Easter, and the return to school. Similarly, many important lines of industrial production tend to take place only in certain months of the year, with an accompanying unevenness in the demands they place on transportation of material inputs and finished product outputs. Furthermore, even if production activity is dispersed over the year in a reasonably uniform fashion, general merchandise shippers, as every rail and truck traffic manager knows, often want to send their loads out in the evening, shortly after the conventional workday is finished, and expect it to arrive, even at somewhat distant points, early the next morning, before work begins. One result, of course, is to overload carriers' merchandise handling facilities in the early evening and morning hours. Solutions. Imbalances are not difficult to handle, of course, if the peaks occur at different times of the year and if the same equipment can be used for meeting different demands. While transportation operators are constantly searching for ways to balance their operations, solutions are rarely discoverable in sufficient measure to completely eliminate all peaking problems. Furthermore, they can seldom be eliminated without paying a price in the form of higher operating costs. Specifically, equipment with more uses usually has performance characteristics inferior to that which is highly specialized. The tendency, in fact, under modern conditions of considerable competition between different modes of transportation, is toward greater use of specialized equipment to reduce costs and, even more importantly in many instances, to improve service. Any device that would permit storage or discretionary postponement of transport services would, of course, help ameliorate demand imbalances. Indeed, it is this very factor of nonstorability, typical of all services, that gives rise to the inability to utilize available transport capacity more effectively. Storability of transportation, however, is not
completely impossible but, rather, is a matter of degree. For example, larger manufacturing and retail inventories are one obvious method of storing freight transportation. Similarly, any act that can induce people to travel before or after peak demands is one way of "storing" passenger travel. In fact, any device that increases off-peak or decreases on-peak use of a transport system often will be economically beneficial. One obvious way of attempting to correct or eliminate imbalance by economic methods is to charge different rates for use of a transport facility in different seasons or at different times of the day, that is, to practice "price discrimination." For example, persons using urban transit during commuter rush hours might be charged discouragingly high rates, while business was encouraged by lower fares during the slack daytime hours, say from 9 A.M. to 4 P.M. (Urban transit is, incidentally, a splendid example of the situation, so common in passenger transportation, in which the demand peaking problem is intensified by the fact that it is usually impossible or uneconomic to curtail services severely during all off-peak periods, so that extra operating and capital costs are created by the bunching of demands.) It is probably politically unrealistic, though, to think that price discrimination can be instituted in many situations where no historical pattern of price discrimination has been established. Furthermore, there are often serious administrative problems involved in using price discrimination. It is also not always obvious that a price reduction in off-peak periods will bring in enough new business to offset losses caused by charging lower fares for already existing off-peak travel. Technological means of fitting available capacity more closely to demands can often be implemented at surprisingly little cost in either capital or performance characteristics. For example, the pronounced peaking of some urban commuter traffic suggests that many new urban throughways should be designed to include reversible lanes. Another excellent example of a technological device for improving capacity utilization is the use of deflatable neoprene bags for converting truck trailers or rail boxcars to tank trucks or tank cars. In general, an important implication of traffic peaking is that any decision on what constitutes the most efficient or economical form of transportation will depend heavily on the uses to which the facility can be put during off-peak periods. For example, a major economic disadvantage of urban rail rapid transit is that it usually has few alternative off-peak uses. By contrast, an urban highway is likely to be heavily used by noncommuting traf-
TRANSPORTATION: Economic Aspects fie during off-peak hours. Another important implication of peaking is that it puts a premium on being able to adapt service offerings to needs or demands. In this connection, ubiquity, flexibility, and a small basic unit of operation are advantageous. Thus, the commercial bus with unit loads of about 50 passengers and airplanes with between 50 and 150 seats clearly have a divisibility advantage over rail passenger operations, which normally are uneconomic for loads much under 200. Both the bus and the airline have, moreover, greater geographic coverage than rail does. The net effect is much greater adaptability in tailoring capacity provided to capacity needed. Similarly, much of any truck advantage over rail boxcar in the moving of general merchandise results from the greater coverage and divisibility of truck operations, which permit provision of a better quality of service at a lower cost at many less central points. Over-all systems. Another basic tenet of transportation economics is that every form of transportation has certain inherent technological and economic advantages and disadvantages, so it is a very rare situation in which it can be said that one transportation form is uniquely superior to all others. Because of the complexities of integrating different technologies into a cohesive entity, designing the most efficient over-all system usually is considerably more complex than simply identifying and adding together the most efficient techniques for performing each subfunction; that is, the advantages of greater efficiency in performing a particular function can often be dissipated in high costs of integration into a complete system. (Another important implication is that cost-finding procedures used in the United States by transport regulatory agencies and courts reviewing regulatory proceedings are almost invariably oversimplified, since they rarely look at the transport function as a complete system when making cost comparisons.) Among the more important considerations in designing an efficient over-all transport and distribution system are (1) the total volume of traffic to be carried; (2) the geographic distribution or dispersion of traffic over points of origin and termination; and (3) the rate of technological change or development expected in the near future. The volume and dispersion questions arise because, as already noted, different transport systems differ sharply in their divisibility, flexibility, and geographic coverage. These differences are functions of several considerations. For example, a rail system is generally considered (not always with full justification) to involve a relatively large overhead investment in highly specialized and relatively indivisible capital equipment, while com-
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mercial highway transport does not (at least not on private account, because the highway investments are made by public agencies). The larger the volume of business, therefore, the more likely it is that rail installations can spread their capital costs thinly enough so as not to make them unduly burdensome. Moreover, once rail overhead costs fall below those of competitive technologies, a rail system is usually the more efficient because its direct operating costs per unit of service provided are usually somewhat below the comparable costs of other systems (though not nearly as far below, especially if service considerations are held constant, as is often believed). The rail operating-cost advantage accrues mainly from the fact that rail requires less labor per unit of transportation service performed than do most other forms of carriage. However, this labor advantage is found only in the performance of actual line-hauls—that is, between geographic points—ignoring the costs of getting the load onto and off the vehicle. In fact, loading and unloading usually will be at least as expensive by rail as by other modes, and often more expensive. To be precise, rail uses a good deal of capital and relatively little labor per unit of linehaul output of transport services and tends to be relatively inefficient in originating and terminating shipments. An important consequence is that in areas of extremely high traffic density, rail usually will have an efficiency advantage as long as relatively long hauls must be made. On the other hand, with shortdistance shipments the cost advantage of rail in line hauling may be offset by a cost disadvantage in loading and unloading. Expectations about technological change influence choices between different forms of transportation because the different modes usually use capital equipment of different durability. Thus, if one extrapolates a rapid development of new technology, less durable investments will be favored, everything else being equal. In general, the more specialized and capital-intensive rail technologies usually involve more durable capital equipment than do other transportation systems. It is difficult, of course, to know with any degree of accuracy what the future holds. However, it should be noted that if all other considerations are about equal— e.g., operating and overhead costs—then the less durable investment provides more room for maneuver or adaptation if the future will be characterized by substantial improvements in transportation technology. In sum, good systems designs in transportation are not readily identifiable and, above all, are impossible on the basis of isolated comparisons be-
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tween different system components. Nor are simple static comparisons based on rigidly fixed and unimaginative assumptions about technological capabilities likely to be productive of the best results. In particular, volume and geographic dispersion must be considered in system design, because they crucially influence the scale of operations possible at particular geographic points and the relative weights to be placed on different cost characteristics. While general principles can be stated fairly easily, actually finding the best blend of different transportation technologies to serve a particular purpose at a particular point in time is likely to be a highly complicated task, and almost invariably must be based upon some uncertain forecasts about the future. Perhaps the only reasonably certain factor is that the best scheme usually will involve synthesizing some elements of different technologies and rarely will comprehend the application of one specific or pure technology to an entire transportation problem. Subsidization. A third fundamental of transportation economics is that the operation of almost any transportation system will involve subsidizing some customers at the expense of others; that is, some customers will pay less than the costs (either long-run incremental or full) of the services that they consume while others will pay substantially more. Such an outcome is an almost inevitable result of the complexities of determining costs of the wide diversity of services normally offered in most transportation operations, and of the administrative difficulties associated with any effort to apply different charges to every individual customer. The fact that many transportation services are considered, rightly or wrongly, as "socially necessary" and therefore potentially as justifying government subsidy only heightens these tendencies. Informal "cross-subsidization" of the socially desired services by charging more than costs for other services is often considered politically more expedient than direct government subsidy. However, direct government subsidies are occasionally used, as with local service airlines and many urban transit services in the United States, and they are an obvious method of subsidizing one transport activity without recourse to charging substantially more than costs for another. Whether direct government subsidy or crosssubsidies are used, the net result of conducting some transport activities at a loss is, usually, an income transfer from one group in society to another. Income redistributions effected by government action are, of course, not uncommon in democratic or, for that matter, in other societies.
In democratic societies, though, decisions to make income transfers are generally considered the subject for the fullest sort of political consideration or public discussion. It is therefore highly pertinent that income transfers effected through transportation operations are seldom even recognized or defined, let alone submitted to decision by normal political processes. All too often such income transfers tend to be the rather capricious and accidental effect of the day-to-day workings and historical patterns of development of the transportation system. Obviously, this is particularly true of situations where cross-subsidies within transportation operations occur. However, the same is true to only a slightly lesser degree in most instances of direct government subsidy. These have usually developed in a piecemeal fashion over time and very often are given to a transport system as an entity, with only vague recognition of the exact purposes for which they are intended. Furthermore, because direct subsidies historically have developed mainly after cross-subsidy schemes have failed, the direct subsidies are normally superimposed on an existing and confused scheme of cross-subsidies. In the United States there are several identifiable examples of income transfer attributable to transportation functions. Probably the most important quantitatively is that people living in rural locations and using lightly traveled highways, railroads, and airlines almost always pay less than the full cost of the services they utilize, with the difference being financed by returns above costs on operations between or within large urban centers. For example, short-distance passengers on local service commercial airlines are almost invariably transported at a loss, with the subsidy being rendered either directly by government or indirectly from earnings on the carriage of passengers traveling longer distances. From a purely commercial view, moreover, urban highways in and around the major cities of most states tend to be the "breadwinning investments" that finance most state highway departments, in the sense that state gasoline and other highway user charges realized from travel over urban highways far exceed the capital and maintenance costs on such facilities; the contrary is usually true of rural secondary roads. Many other examples could be cited of income transfers that are effected by transport operations. Obviously, to a large extent these transfers are a reflection of the fact that transportation produces a very large variety of slightly differentiated outputs, many of which are by-products of other operations. Making an accurate assessment of the costs of rendering these many different services, and
TRANSPORTATION: Economic Aspects therefore of taxes and transfers effected by them, would be extremely difficult. Even identifying all transfers would be a quite complex chore. Even without definitive information, however, it seems highly improbable that there is a particular logic or pattern to these income transfers. For example, it might be considered comforting if it could be proved that transportation operations result in a transfer of income from the rich to the poor on the widely accepted political premise that such transfers are advantageous in a democratic society. Such simple solace is difficult to justify, however, because many of the income transfers that can be identified from transportation operations actually result in a quite contrary redistribution. For instance, rail commuters into large cities sometimes do not pay even the direct operating costs of the services that they consume, and they normally represent at least a slightly above-average group of income recipients in their societies. There are, of course, probably some income transfers effected by transport operations that are progressive in character. Furthermore, some regressive transfers may be incidental to achieving other socially desired ends, such as bringing geographically isolated areas into closer contact with the rest of the nation. Still, more explicit treatment and recognition might be afforded to these transfers and their relationship to social objectives. Quality of service. A fourth basic characteristic of transportation economics, actually implicit in the preceding discussion, is that defining a product or service provided by transportation agencies is an exceedingly difficult matter, involving comparison of several different and often incommensurate qualities or dimensions of service. This holds, moreover, both when dealing in inanimate items such as freight cargo and when considering the highly animate human cargo involved in passenger transportation. Overlooking this factor of product or service differentiation is one of the most common fallacies to be found in transportation analyses. For example, railroad traffic managers in virtually all parts of the world have been prone to ignore the fact that rail transportation of general merchandise usually differs substantially in several important service characteristics from truck transportation. This, in turn, has led them into the very serious error of thinking that they could compete with truck transportation on a simple basis of rate parity. Under a regime of equal rates for rail and truck transportation, the almost inevitable result is a steady erosion of traffic away from rail to highways because several important cost savings are
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effected by the better service provided by highway transport. Truck operators have been quick to recognize their service advantage and have been only too willing to set their rates equal to rail rates as long as the rail rates were above the truckers' relevant costs. The result has been aptly described as the holding of a "rail rate umbrella" over the competing truck rates; the "rate umbrella," of course, protects truckers against railroad competition. The fallacy of ignoring service differentials also bedevils discussion of urban transportation. Specifically, much has been made of the fact that several forms of public transit, particularly rail transit, are cheaper than private automobile transportation in urban areas. From this observation, the conclusion has commonly been derived that individuals who use private automobiles as a form of urban transportation are obviously foolish and have not really understood the price that they are paying for insisting on the use of their cars. Rarely, though, are these comparisons of public and private urban transportation costs adorned by any accompanying comparison of the relative qualities of the different transportation modes. Absent is any mention of such factors as relative schedule flexibility, the degree to which different modes will provide a complete door-to-door service, the comparative comforts and privacy of private and public transportation, and the speed with which different modes can complete an entire commuter trip. These omissions are all the more perverse because the rapid spread of automobile ownership throughout the Western world, despite the substantial costs involved, would seem to be explainable only in terms of widespread indulgence of conspicuous consumption or of rational pursuit of a superior transportation service. While conspicuous consumption has probably played a role, it seems highly doubtful that it can provide a complete explanation of the popularity of automobile ownership or justify the costs of such ownership to the large number of consumers now in possession of such vehicles. The rise of the commercial airliner in supplantation of the railroad is also explicable partly in terms of service improvements. The airliner obviously has a substantial speed and often a comfort advantage over rail. These qualities apparently are highly valued by the business traveler, who constitutes a remarkably large percentage of the market for first-class intercity public passenger transportation. Several important quality dimensions can also be identified in freight services. Among the more important are speed, gentleness (in the sense of limited damage while en route), the size of the
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shipment that can be conveniently accommodated, and the timing of departures and arrivals. Service performances in freight transportation, in very large measure, can be translated into rather specific cost savings in other parts of the production or distribution process. For example, greater speed and smaller unit sizes for each shipment are desirable because normally they will effect a reduction in the cost of holding inventories. Gentleness quite obviously has favorable effects on insurance, packing, and related costs. Proper timing of arrivals and departures can be advantageous by permitting a reduction in inventory, warehousing, and production labor costs. In sum, several subtle interrelationships are observable between different transportation service characteristics and ability to perform or effect cost savings in other parts of the production processes. Their existence re-emphasizes the importance of analyzing transportation characteristics in a broad systems approach or context. The essential advantage of superior transport service is that it permits modifications elsewhere, in patterns of living, production, and distribution, that either reduce economic costs or directly increase the satisfactions of individual consumers. JOHN R. MEYER [See also PRICES, article on PRICING POLICIES; REGULATION OF INDUSTRY.] BIBLIOGRAPHY
BECKMANN, MARTIN J.; McGuiRE, C. B.; and WINSTEN, CHRISTOPHER B. 1956 Studies in the Economics of Transportation. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press. CAVES, RICHARD E. 1962 Air Transport and Its Regulators: An Industry Study. Harvard Economic Studies, Vol. 120. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. CHERINGTON, PAUL W. 1958 Airline Price Policy: A Study of Domestic Airline Passenger Fares. Boston: Harvard Univ., Graduate School of Business Administration. COOKENBOO, LESLIE JR. 1955 Crude Oil Pipe Lines and Competition in the Oil Industry. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. BEARING, CHARLES L.; and OWEN, WILFRED 1949 National Transportation Policy. Washington: Brookings Institution. FERGUSON, ALLEN R. et al. 1961 The Economic Value of the United States Merchant Marine. Evanston, 111.: Northwestern Univ., Transportation Center. FROMM, GARY (editor) 1965 Transport Investment and Economic Development. Washington: Brookings Institution, Transport Research Program. KUHN, TILLO E. 1962 Public Enterprise Economics and Transport Problems. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press. MEYER, JOHN R. et al. (1959) 1964 The Economics of Competition in the Transportation Industries. Harvard Economic Studies, Vol. 107. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press.
MEYER, JOHN R. et al. 1965 The Urban Transportation Problem. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. OWEN, WILFRED (1956) 1966 The Metropolitan Transportation Problem. Rev. ed. Washington: Brookings Institution. PEGRUM, DUDLEY F. 1963 Transportation: Economics and Public Policy. Homewood, 111.: Irwin. TAFF, CHARLES A. (1950) 1961 Commercial Motor Transportation. 3d ed. Homewood, 111.: Irwin. Transportation Economics: A Conference of the Universities—National Bureau Committee for Economic Research. 1965 New York: National Bureau of Economic Research. TROXEL, CHARLES E. 1955 Economics of Transport. New York: Rinehart. WALKER, GILBERT J. 1942 Road and Rail: An Enquiry Into the Economics of Competition and State Control. London: Allen & Unwin. WILSON, GEORGE W. 1962 Essays on Some Unsettled Questions in the Economics of Transportation. Bloomington: Indiana Univ., Bureau of Business Research. WINGO, LOWDON JR. 1961 Transportation and Urban Land. Washington: Resources for the Future. Ill COMMUTATION
Commutation refers primarily to the daily movement of the employed person between residence and workplace. The term is sometimes applied to daily trips between home and school and to weekend trips between city and country residences. More often, however, it is restricted to the journey to work, and this is the meaning adopted in the following discussion. When such work-related movements are viewed in the aggregate, they can be studied from two points of view: as dispersal from the dwelling area or as confluence at the workplace. These movements impart a distinct rhythm to the daily life of the modern urban community, displaying a temporal regularity that is closely related to the spatial order, or land use pattern. History. Commutation is essentially a modern development, dating from the rise of the factory system in the course of the industrial revolution. Earlier periods were characterized by a virtual identity between residence and workplace. The home was the place of work for the vast majority of the population engaged in handicraft production. It was only as agriculturalists traveled short distances each day between centrally located village residences and outlying fields that any regular daily movement took place. The industrial revolution brought about massive changes in land use, especially within cities. Centrally located workplaces, powered by inanimate forms of energy, came to employ dozens and even hundreds of workers. The decline of "cottage industries" and similar forms of production meant a sharp separation between home and work. At first,
TRANSPORTATION: Commutation the dwellings of workers were clustered near the factories in tenements and other high-density arrangements, and the trip to work was correspondingly short. With progressive improvements in intraurban transportation—including horse-drawn vehicles, electric trolleys, steam railways, and the automobile—the work trip lengthened substantially, and it became common for the worker to reside at a considerable distance from his job. The labor market thus came to be widely extended in space. In its contemporary form, the zone of commutation extends far beyond the limits of the modern city itself. Outlying places—"bedroom towns" or "dormitory cities"—contain large numbers of people who regularly commute to the central metropolis and other major employment centers. With the decline of agriculture as a source of employment in industrial nations, a large number of part-time farmers and other rural residents participate in the daily ebb and flow of commuters to the city. In addition to the main streams of worker traffic, flowing centripetally from peripheral areas and converging on the main center, there is considerable lateral motion, represented by crosscurrents of movement between outlying homes and workplaces. Modern transportation has meant that commutation has tended to supplement and even to supplant migration as a means of adjustment to shifts in the location of job opportunities in the more advanced countries. Commutation is virtually unknown in the nonindustrial nations of the world, although seasonal migration provides an approximate counterpart. The study of commutation. Commutation may be analyzed from the standpoint of the individual commuter, his family, or that of the community as a whole. Some attention has been directed toward the possibility of rather severe physiological and psychological strain upon individual employees who must travel long distances to work. The cost of transportation to work also enters into analyses of family budgets, where it often represents a major class of expenditures. Far more attention, however, has been focused upon commuting as an aggregate phenomenon, amenable to study and interpretation in the context of the community at large. Within sociology, human ecologists have accorded commuting the greatest amount of attention. The human ecologist regards the regular systole and diastole that it generates as prime evidence of a temporal order in the collective life of the modern community. Moreover, the human ecologist sees this circulatory movement as linked
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to the general pattern of land uses in the community. The separation of home and work itself implies a rudimentary segregation of dissimilar land uses, and it is postulated that the continued functioning of the modern community as a whole requires the regular exchange of persons between spatially separate areas. The differentiated pattern of land uses is seen as expressive of the interdependence of the various specialized activities carried on within the community. Moreover, the maintenance of the existing equilibrium is assumed to depend upon the dynamic mechanism of recurrent movements, including commutation, but also to encompass other flows and exchanges of people, goods, and information. Commutation and land use. One can think of the modern urban community area as divided into three broad types of land use—industrial, commercial, and residential. From the standpoint of commuting to work, the first two types (industrial and commercial) reduce to one, for they are essentially attracting areas, with daily streams of commuters flowing into them. In contrast, residential areas are dispersing areas—reservoirs of manpower, so to speak—containing the dwelling places of those who go out to staff the enterprises located in other parts of the community. Thus the community can be abstractly viewed as containing only two types of areas—employing and residential—and workers flow between these areas in visible, measurable streams. One can examine these streams from the standpoint of their size (the sheer number of workers involved), their orientations (centripetal, centrifugal, lateral), and their composition (e.g., their occupational make-up). One can also examine the relationship between these broad characteristics of commuter movements and characteristics of communities. Finally, one can examine trends over time in various aspects of commuting. Sources of data. Because commutation is not a universal practice, most of what we know about it comes from studies recently conducted in modern urban-industrial countries. Not only is the phenomenon limited in time and space, but the very means for observing and measuring it are confined to a relative handful of nations. There are four general sources of information on commuting that have proved to be useful to social scientists interested in the problem: transit statistics, which include ticket sales and traffic counts on "mass" means of conveyance; employer records, which may be supplemented by special interviews at the workplace; origin-and-destination traffic surveys, wherein a sample population is queried concerning
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vehicular movements; and periodic censuses. Each of these sources of data exhibits peculiarities making it appropriate for a different type of inquiry. Moreover, not all sources are available for every geographic area, so that our knowledge is extremely uneven. For example, the 1960 census of population in the United States was the first in American census history to include questions on workplace and method of travel to work; in contrast, many European countries have included such items in their census schedules for some years. The German census of 1900 included a question on workplace. In general, the origin-and-destination survey is an American development, while European studies have placed far more reliance on employer records and transit statistics, supplemented by census tabulations. The European materials have been well summarized by Liepmann (1944); for that reason, the following summary draws more heavily upon American studies, for which no comparable synthesis exists. Research findings. Commuter trips appear to make up about 40 to 50 per cent of all daily vehicular movements in urban areas. More important, they are temporally concentrated; as a consequence, physical facilities must be designed to accommodate peak-hour loads, even though they may be underused at other times (Kain 1967). The amount of daily movement is such that the distribution of population over the entire urban area is constantly undergoing change. We have come to recognize important differences, for example, between daytime and nighttime population; the latter distribution is the one that is commonly recorded in a de jure census, but certain parts of the urban complex, and especially the central business district and other important employing centers, have daytime population concentrations far exceeding their residential populations. In general, commuter movements flow from widely dispersed residential areas to highly localized concentrations of jobs. Distance traveled. With respect to distance traveled, there appears to be a direct relationship between it and a person's socioeconomic status; in other words, the higher the social standing, the longer the journey to work. In part, this is a function of the spatial arrangement of residences by social class; the higher-status groups tend to live at the periphery (at least in larger urban areas), while groups of lower standing tend to occupy the center. Since many of the business and professional people in the upper strata work in the heart of the city, longer trips are required. But central workers seem to travel farther, regardless of their social
status, when compared with employees at other sites. Workers at outlying factories, offices, and stores tend to live much nearer their places of employment (Carroll 1952). Travel time. Despite the differences in the length of the worktrip, the time spent in travel seems to be roughly constant between the various socioeconomic strata and also appears to be about the same regardless of workplace. The explanation is not difficult. The wealthier persons, who travel greater distances, have faster and more flexible means of transportation at their disposal. As for central workers, they enjoy the benefit of mass transit systems which are strongly oriented toward the center; workers at dispersed locations throughout the remainder of the urban area presumably lose considerable time in lateral "cross-town" commuting, despite a shorter average worktrip. Method of travel. The above matters are considerably clarified when one examines differences in the method of travel employed by different subgroups within the population. By and large, the frequency of automobile travel increases with higher socioeconomic status; there is far less use of mass transit facilities by those in the very highest strata than by those who are less fortunately situated (Kain 1967). Commuting by automobile is not only faster, it is also far more flexible, in the sense that times of departure and arrival are more readily controlled and routes are less fixed. As we have noted, however, workers in central areas make heavier use of mass transit facilities. It appears that the frequency of service to the center offsets the time that would be otherwise sacrificed by the generally slower travel times offered by public transportation. Hence, the disadvantages of commuting by public carrier are largely avoided by central workers. Individual characteristics. There are other differentials that have been less firmly established by research. There appears to be a difference between the sexes, for example, with employed women (and especially married women) traveling shorter distances than males do. Women also tend to make greater use of public transportation; among employed couples owning only one car, the male tends to drive while the female depends upon mass transit facilities to get to and from work. When workers are compared according to their length of employment, those with higher seniority tend to live nearer, while newer employees travel greater distances. Similarly, younger workers tend to travel farther to work. Characteristics of communities. Another important class of differentials in commuting has to
TRANSPORTATION: Commutation do with characteristics of communities rather than characteristics of commuters. For example, there is a systematic and positive association between the length of the average worktrip and city size. Method of transportation also varies rather consistently with city size (Schnore 1962). Still another characteristic of the community that appears to be significant is its age. In particular, there is a striking difference between preautomobile and postautomobile cities. The character of transportation available in the era in which the city "grew up" seems to have implications for patterns of commutation years afterward. Older cities which entered their periods of florescence during the age of mass transit have well-established facilities, but newer cities tend not to install the expensive overhead and underground routes that are needed for efficient mass transportation. As a consequence, one finds 58 per cent of New York workers in 1960 commuting by public transportation, compared with 12 per cent in Los Angeles, a much "younger" city. Similarly, 83 per cent of the persons entering New York's central business district on a typical weekday in the early 1950s traveled by mass transit; in Los Angeles, this figure was 31 per cent. Such differences have an impact on family budgets; only 8.5 per cent of the total family expenditures in New York went for transportation in 1950, while families in Los Angeles devoted 16.4 per cent of their budgets to this purpose. The importance of the availability of mass transportation is seen in data on automobile registrations; in 1950, Los Angeles had 363 automobiles per 1,000 inhabitants of all ages, while the comparable figure was 152 for New York. Trends in commutation. Our knowledge of historical trends is rather imprecise because of the absence of bench-mark data for earlier years. Nevertheless, the following assertions can be made with some confidence. There has been a trend in the direction of longer journeys to work as cities have grown and spread; with this increasing commuting distance, the functional boundaries of the community have been extended considerably. Despite improvements in transportation, including greater speed and flexibility, much more time is now spent in commuting than in the past. In fact, the amount of time spent may roughly offset the shortening of the work day that has accompanied the progressive mechanization and rationalization of industry and commerce. The monetary costs of transportation have also increased over time, in the sense that a greater proportion of the family budget is devoted to this class of expenditures. Many costs are hidden, of course, and they elude exact calcu-
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lation; in addition to the direct costs represented by transit fares and the purchase of vehicles, fuel, and insurance, the indirect costs (such as those incurred in building highway and parking facilities) have mounted enormously (Liepmann 1944). Finally, there is the well-known trend toward greater use of the private automobile in commuting. This is especially easy to document in the United States, where it has received a great deal of publicity, but apparently it is also under way in many other parts of the world where the costs of vehicles and fuels were formerly prohibitive. There is no urban-industrial nation in which automobile ownership has not risen dramatically since World War ii and where the commuting driver is not on the increase. Research needs. The major gaps in our knowledge concerning commutation stem from the limited coverage achieved in the studies that have been conducted. The pressing needs are for more comparative and historical investigations. In the following paragraphs, we will suggest some broad hypotheses and areas of research on which work is required. Historically, it appears that a shift in the orientation of commuter streams has occurred. One of the features that distinguishes the twentiethcentury metropolis from large cities of the past is the ease and rapidity of movement. However, even the smaller cities of the contemporary Western world enjoy the advanced transportation and communication facilities of the metropolis, and thus share this ease of movement. The unique features distinguishing movement in the metropolis appear merely to reflect the enhanced complexity associated with a system of interdependent nuclei. Thus physical movement in the metropolitan area has become much less simple with respect to direction and over-all orientation. In contrast with the simple in-and-out movement between center and periphery of earlier cities, the contemporary metropolitan area appears to have a very high proportion of lateral movements, in complicated crosscurrents and eddies. Commuting, in particular, is not merely a matter of centripetal and centrifugal flows morning and evening, but a confusing compound of variously oriented threads of traffic, superimposed upon the older and rudimentary center-oriented pattern. As the underlying patterns of functional and areal interdependence have become more complex, the manifest patterns of movement have become progressively less simple. As for comparative studies, there is one outstanding problem requiring research. We need to test the notion that older cities of Europe, together with
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other urban areas in the non-Western world, tend to be organized in "quarters" within which people live and work, frequently walking to work and rarely leaving their own areas. This pattern is often contrasted with that in the United States, where people are thought to move about the entire urban area in the course of the average day. The actual contrasts may not be as sharp as is commonly supposed. With respect to the individual commuter, we know next to nothing. There are hypotheses in the literature to the effect that long-distance commuting results in higher rates of illness and absenteeism, but they have yet to be tested in rigorous fashion. Much more also needs to be known about the linkage between occupational and residential mobility, and their joint impact upon the length and character of the journey to work. Finally, we have very little sound knowledge concerning attitudes toward commuting. More generally, there is much to be done on the psychological aspects of commutation. LEO F. SCHNORE BIBLIOGRAPHY AHLMANN, HANS W. et al. 1934 Stockholms inre differentiering. Stadtskollegiets utlatanden och memorial, No. 51. Stockholm: Beckman. BREESE, GERALD W. 1949 The Daytime Population of the Central Business District of Chicago: With Particular Reference to the Factor of Transportation. Univ. of Chicago Press. CARROLL, J. DOUGLAS JR. 1952 The Relation of Homes to Work Places and the Spatial Patterns of Cities. Social Forces 30:271-282. CHOMBART DE LAUWE, PAUL H. et al. 1952 Paris et I'agglomeration parisienne. 2 vols. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. DUNCAN, BEVERLY 1957 Intra-urban Population Movement. Pages 297-309 in Paul K. Hatt and Albert J. Reiss, Jr. (editors), Cities and Society: The Revised Reader in Urban Sociology. 2d ed. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. FLAUS, LUCIEN 1953 Lieux de travail et zones d'habitation dans le Departement de la Seine. Journal de la Societe de Statistique de Paris 94:98-124. FOLEY, DONALD L. 1954 Urban Daytime Population: A Field for Demographic-Ecological Analysis. Social Forces 32:323-330. GERARD, ROY 1958 Commuting and the Labor Market Area. Journal of Regional Science I , no. 1:124-130. HAWLEY, AMOS H. 1950 Human Ecology: A Theory of Community Structure. New York: Ronald. HOLMBERG, STEN 1947 Stor-Stockholm: Dess uppkomst och kommunikationer. Stockholm: Stockholms Sparvager. KAIN, JOHN F. 1967 Urban Travel Behavior. Pages 161192 in Leo F. Schnore and Henry Fagin (editors), Urban Research and Policy Planning. Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage Publications. KANT, EDGAR 1957 Suburbanization, Urban Sprawl, and Commutation: Examples From Sweden. Pages 244-
309 in David Hannerberg et al. (editors), Migration in Sweden: A Symposium. Lund University Studies in Geography, Series B, No. 13. Lund (Sweden): Gleerup. K0BENHAVN
TRAFFICKKOMMISSIONEN
1949
Bolig—Ar-
bejdssted unders0gelse samt traffiktoelling i K0benhavn 1945. Copenhagen: Udgivet af Stadsingeni0rens Direktorat. LIEPMANN, KATE K. (1944) 1945 The Journey to Work: Its Significance for Industrial and Community Life. London: Routledge. LYNCH, JOHN T. 1944 Origin and Destination Surveys in Urban Areas. National Research Council, Highway Research Board, Proceedings 24:239-254. MACGREGOR, D. RONALD 1953 Daily Travel: A Study in Time and Distance Around Edinburgh. Scottish Geographical Magazine 69:117-127. MENZLER, F. A. A. 1952 An Estimate of the Day-time Population of London. Town Planning Institute, London, Journal 38:116-120. MITCHELL, ROBERT B.; and RAPKIN, CHESTER 1954 Urban Traffic: A Function of Land Use. New York: Columbia Univ. Press. OWEN, WILFRED (1956) 1966 The Metropolitan Transportation Problem. Rev. ed. Washington: Brookings Institution. Die Pendelwanderung zwischen Wohnung und Arbeitstatte in Hamburg 1950 und 1939. 1952 Hamburg, Statistisches Landesamt, Hamburg in Zahlen 37:425-444. SCAFF, ALVIN H. 1952 The Effect of Commuting on Participation in Community Organizations. American Sociological Revieiv 17:215-220. SCHNORE, LEO F. 1954 The Separation of Home and Work: A Problem for Human Ecology. Social Forces 32:336-343. SCHNORE, LEO F. 1960 Three Sources of Data on Commuting: Problems and Possibilities. Journal of the American Statistical Association 55:8-22. SCHNORE, LEO F. 1962 The Use of Public Transportation in Urban Areas. Traffic Quarterly 16:488-498. VAN DER HAEGEN, H. 1953 Les migrants alternants bruxellois. Societe Beige d'Etudes Geographiques (Brussels), Bulletin 22:441-449. WATANABE, YOSHIO 1953 The Urban Region of Sendai: A Study of the Urban Concentric Zoning in Its Actual Pattern in Japan. Tohoku Daigaku, Sendai, Japan, Science Reports, 7th Series 2:30-52. WINGO, LOWDON JR. 1961 Transportation and Urban Land. Washington: Resources for the Future.
TREATIES See INTERNATIONAL LEGISLATION.
TREITSCHKE, HEINRICH VON Heinrich von Treitschke (1834-1896), German historian and political publicist, was born in Dresden, the son of an army officer. He had planned a military career but was disqualified by an ear affliction that affected his hearing, and so he took up the study of political science and history instead. He also dabbled in poetry and playwriting and for a time thought of devoting himself to literary pursuits. His lectures and writings bear dis-
TREITSCHKE, HEINRICH VON tinct traces of the poet and dramatist, just as their militant spirit reflects his earlier interest in a soldier's career. Treitschke's interest in politics was first awakened when he was a high school student. Deeply disappointed by the failure of the revolution of 1848, he devoted much thought and study to the cause of German unification. As a student at the University of Bonn, he was influenced by his teacher Friedrich Christoph Dahlmann and by the writings of August Ludwig von Rochau, the creator of the concept of Realpolitik, and he came to the conclusion that unification could be achieved only by a combination of national enthusiasm and power and that Prussia alone could generate both. He became a contributor to, and later editor of, the Preussische Jahrbucher, a monthly dedicated to the Prussian-led unification of Germany. To the embarrassment of his family and at great risk to his academic career, he also advocated that cause after he had become Privatdozent at the University of Leipzig. Initially, Treitschke hoped that Prussia would win its role as leader of Germany at least partly through "moral conquests," and he objected strongly to the appointment of Bismarck as Prussian minister-president. But he became an ardent supporter of Bismarck after Prussia's victory over Denmark in 1864 had convinced him of the effectiveness of power politics. By then he had become assistant professor of political science at Freiburg (Breisgau). Forced to leave Freiburg at the outbreak of the Austro-Prussian war of 1866, he became professor of history at the University of Kiel and, later, at the universities of Heidelberg, in 1867, and Berlin, in 1874, receiving these appointments more because of his political views than his scholarly attainments. Treitschke was an eloquent and exciting teacher in spite of his growing deafness. In the early 1860s Treitschke had sided with the liberal supporters of German unification, but he had always been essentially conservative, especially in his social views. After unification (in 1871) he became increasingly conservative politically too. Elected a deputy to the Reichstag on the National Liberal ticket, he eventually broke with that party and ran as an independent; he later withdrew from politics altogether. He came to detest liberalism as the embodiment of economic interests; he fought the Roman Catholics during the Kulturkampf on the grounds that they were weakening the state with their insistence on civil and religious liberties; and he turned on the Jews because, in his view, they refused to become wholehearted Germans and injected a dangerous ma-
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terialistic, unheroic element into the German mind. As one who had always felt that the country should be ruled by an elite of birth and education, Treitschke also fought violently against the political aspirations of the workers, embodied in the emerging Social Democratic party. To Treitschke, the only effective counterweight to these corrupting and demoralizing forces was a strong monarchy resting on a nonpartisan bureaucracy and a powerful army. The army's domestic function would be primarily educational; it would teach idealism, discipline, and dedication. The parliament, in addition to its legislative function, would guard the country against possible abuses by the bureaucracy, but its power of the purse would be severely curtailed. In his lectures and in his writing, Treitschke tried to fight selfishness and materialism. His famous course on politics (see 1897-1898), a "must" for students from all departments, extolled the state as the iron framework within which selfish interests are controlled, and he saw war as the great purifier of the nation. In his main work, the uncompleted History of Germany in the Nineteenth Century (1879-1894), he provided the nation with an inspirational guide to its past, describing Prussian determination and discipline as having triumphed over the egotism and complacency of the Austrians and South Germans. Treitschke was not unaware of moral and spiritual values, but in his preoccupation with national strength and self-discipline his view of the state as a moral community was overshadowed by his emphasis on its power. He thus implanted in his students a spirit of arrogant, uncouth nationalism, which he was the first to deplore when it became the dominant theme of German policy under William n. As the admired teacher of thousands of other teachers, judges, administrators, and politicians, Treitschke helped to mold the political and social atmosphere of Germany from the 1880s to the 1920s, as many of his students and readers— for example, Max Weber, Friedrich Meinecke, Heinrich Class, Admiral von Tirpitz, and Prince Bernhard von Biilow—have testified. He was not a direct spiritual ancestor of National Socialism, but by his stress on the need for authoritarianism and power he helped to make the nation receptive to Nazi ideas. Most of Treitschke's works are now interesting only as historical documents. His German History, however, is still read both for its literary value and, in parts at least, as an important source of scholarly information. ANDREAS DORPALEN
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TRIALS
[For the historical context and subsequent development of Treitschke's ideas, see DICTATORSHIP; NATIONAL SOCIALISM; NATIONALISM.]
Traditional views. Evolutionary writers of the last century attempted to distinguish between tribal and modern society in terms of imputed differences in their legal and political institutions. MorWORKS BY TREITSCHKE gan (1877) saw tribal society as having social, (1865-1867) 1896-1897 Historische und politische Aufbut not political organization, a judgment echoed sdtze. 5th ed. 4 vols. Leipzig: Hirzel. (1874) 1897 Zehn Jahre deutscher Kampfe: Schriften by Sidgwick (1891) and some later authorities on zur Tagespolitik. 3d ed. 2 vols. Berlin: Reimer. -> politics. Both Morgan and Maine (1861) conVolume 1: Von 1865-1870. Volume 2: Von 1871trasted the territorial foundations of the modern 1879. The first edition had the subtitle 1865-1874. state with what they considered to be the kinship (1879-1894) 1915-1919 History of Germany in the Nineteenth Century. 7 vols. New York: McBride. -> First basis of tribal societies. Maine regarded tribal empublished in German. phasis on the status structure (ascribed through 1896 Deutsche Kampfe; neue Folge: Schriften zur Tagesbirth) to be dominant over relations of voluntary politik. Leipzig: Hirzel. contract that could be achieved by skill or effort. (1897-1898) 1916 Politics. 2 vols. London: Constable. -» From university lectures covering thirty years. HarThis assessment, of course, formed the basis for court published an abridged edition in 1963. the great legal historian's famous aphorism express(1913-1920) Heinrich von Treitschkes Briefe. 3 vols. in ing the transition from tribal to modern institu4. Edited by M. Cornicelius. Leipzig: Hirzel. tions in terms of the "movement of the progressive SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY societies" from status to contract. BUSSMANN, WALTER 1952 Treitschke: Sein Welt- und The remarkable advances that have been achieved Geschichtsbild. Gottingen: Musterschmidt. in the empirical study of tribal societies in recent BUSSMANN, WALTER 1954 Treitschke als Politiker. Hisyears make these judgments in many respects untorische Zeitschrift 177:249-279. tenable. It is true that no one seriously questions CURTIUS, FRIEDRICH 1900 Treitschkes Politik. Deutsche Rundschau 105:196-216. the importance of kinship organization in most DORPALEN, ANDREAS 1957 Heinrich von Treitschke. tribal societies, but the conclusion that this imNew Haven: Yale Univ. Press. plies the exclusion of territorial ties can no longer HAUSRATH, ADOLF (1901) 1914 Treitschke: His Docbe maintained. Almost all sedentary tribal societies trine of German Destiny and Internal Relations, Together With, a Study of His Life and Work. New York: have well-defined groupings based on common ocPutnam. -> First published in German. cupation of territory, and even where these are KOHN, HANS (1946) 1952 Prophets and Peoples. New lacking, kinship is not coterminous with the politiYork: Macmillan. cal cohesion of a tribe. LEIPPRAND, ERNST 1935 Heinrich von Treitschke im On the other hand, Maine's emphasis on the deutschen Geistesleben des 19. Jahrhunderts. Stuttgart (Germany): Kohlhammer. paucity of contractual relations in tribal society has been widely sustained, particularly by such anthropologists as Gluckman (1955, p. 28) and TRIALS See INTERNATIONAL CRIMES; JUDICIAL PROCESS; Schapera (1938), who have made fundamental LAW, article on THE SOCIOLOGY OF LAW; POLITICAL contributions to the study of tribal legal instituJUSTICE; PUNISHMENT. tions. Yet here much naturally turns on what is meant by "contract." Davy (1922), who seriously attacked the question, regarded status and contractual relations as inseparably intertwined in TRIBAL SOCIETY tribal society and saw what Maine took to be the In general usage, the word "tribe" is taken to complete replacement of the first by the second as denote a primary aggregate of peoples living in a a gradual process of separation and specialization. primitive or barbarous condition under a headman Evidence supporting this position may be cited or chief. The unnecessary moralistic overtones that from the pastoral Somali nomads of the Horn of this usage implies can be avoided or minimized by Africa, where contract is explicitly employed as a the use of the expression "tribal society," which political device for the purpose of supplementing, is to be preferred to such synonyms as "primitive curtailing, or defining the range of blood solidarity society" or "preliterate society." At the same time, (Lewis 1961, pp. 161 ff.). Even in the Lozi kingthe word "tribe" need not be discarded. Indeed, it dom of central Africa (Gluckman 1955), contrachas become a technical term denoting a territorially tual relations of a kind can be discerned, cloaked denned political unit, a usage that recalls the origithough they may be in the idiom of kinship. nal Latin use of the word for the political divisions It is evident, therefore, even from this brief or patrician orders of the Roman state. discussion, that neither contract nor territoriality
TRIBAL SOCIETY provide in themselves adequate criteria for distinguishing between tribal and modern society. Nor, indeed, is it easy to find any other acceptable criteria of this order. What is necessary is an entirely different approach, for it is not the presence or absence of particular principles of social grouping that is significant here, but the form, shape, and design of society itself. Characteristics of tribal society. While taking account of the implications of such homely synonyms as "simple society," "preindustrial society," or "folk society," a satisfactory characterization of tribal society must therefore concentrate upon criteria of form rather than of content. Here the most useful general criterion is that of "scale" (Wilson & Wilson 1945). Ideally, tribal societies are small in scale, are restricted in the spatial and temporal range of their social, legal, and political relations, and possess a morality, religion, and world view of corresponding dimensions. Characteristically, too, tribal languages are unwritten, and hence, the extent of communication both in time and space is inevitably narrow. At the same time, tribal societies exhibit a remarkable economy of design and have a compactness and self-sufficiency lacking in modern society. This is achieved by the close, and sometimes unilateral, connections that exist between tribal institutions or principles of social organization, and by the concentration of a multiplicity of social roles in the same social persons or offices. There is a corresponding unity and coherence in tribal values that are intimately related to social institutions and are endowed with an intensity characteristic of all "closed" systems of thought. Tribal societies are supremely ethnocentric. Economic relations are usually of the subsistence type, although trade and barter often extend outside the community. At the same time, economic differentiation and specialization are not developed, and by modern standards technological knowledge and environmental control remain restricted. Ideally, indeed, a position of socioeconomic equilibrium has been attained in relation to environmental conditions. In these circumstances social change tends to be on a limited scale, reproducing rather than drastically altering the existing order, and innovations are profoundly affected by the established institutions of society. Yet the isolation and unchangingness of tribal communities must not be exaggerated; above all, it must be remembered that knowledge of tribal life derives mainly from studies made at a particular point in time. Even where the history of a tribal society is not known with any certainty, the ebb
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and flow of contact and influence between cultures is too widespread a phenomenon to be denied on the basis of negative evidence alone. As Forde (1934, pp. 466 ff.) very properly emphasized, the diffusion of technical, moral, and aesthetic ideas is something that all societies have experienced to some degree. Indeed, contact by either peaceful penetration or conquest, has, in many cases, wrought far-reaching, and often radical, changes in material techniques, values, and social institutions. Hence, if tribal societies are to be regarded as having achieved a state of balance with their physical and social surroundings, they must be understood to be in dynamic rather than static equilibrium. Only when these qualifications are accepted is "tribal society" a useful working concept that applies to a wide range of actual communities, existing as they do in reality in both time and space. The concept applies best to such small, relatively isolated and self-contained societies as the Trobriand Islanders of Melanesia (Malinowski 1922), the Tikopia (Firth 1936), and many peoples of the hinterlands of America and Africa, as for example, the Tallensi of Ghana (Fortes 1945; 1949). Many other traditional societies generally regarded as tribal conform less closely to the ideal type. There is, for instance, what might be described as a middle range of large centralized states, such as the east African Baganda (Richards 1960, pp. 41 ff.), whose population numbers well over a million; the central African state of Ruanda, with nearly two million people (Maquet 1961); the west African state of Nupe, with a population of almost half a million (Nadel 1942); and in southern Africa, the Zulu state, which in 1870 was similar in strength to Nupe (Gluckman 1940). The famous League of the Iroquois (Morgan 1851) presents another example of this type. In the degree and range of internal differentiation, especially in their political and legal institutions, these examples do not conform fully to the ideal conception of a tribal society. It is clear that the issue is not merely one of the degree of political and administrative centralization achieved, for there are many other tribal societies that lack these features and yet in terms of sheer numerical size assume the proportions of small nations. For example, both the Galla (Huntingford 1955) and the Somali (Lewis 1961) of northeast Africa have a population of about three million, and the Yoruba (Forde 1951), Hausa, and Ibo (Forde & Jones 1950) of west Africa are probably even more numerous. Other exceptions are encountered when one
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deals with much smaller, but equally uncentralized, tribal peoples who live in Arabia and in north, northeast, and west Africa. Through trade, the Muslim religion, and the partial use of the Arabic language, these communities participate in the world culture of Islam. In Asia, the Hindu world provides parallel instances of small societies which are culturally and linguistically distinct, but which participate through religion and the caste system in the macroculture and society of Hinduism (cf. Srinivas 1952; Dumont 1957). Although it is common practice to regard these communities as laterally organized tribal units in the vertical world of Hindu caste, here the closed horizons of tribal societies in the strict sense are patently absent. Similar reservations have to be made in the case of rural Chinese communities, although these share many tribal principles of organization. In these latter cases we are concerned with communities that belong emphatically to two worlds, where the category of tribal society overlaps with that of peasant society and, according to Redfield (1956), the "little tradition" in many respects partakes of the more inclusive "big tradition" in which it participates. The chief difficulty here is that of determining where the tribal community begins and ends. With the spread of modern values, of industrialization, and of urbanization, this problem of course is becoming almost universal, and in its urban aspects gives rise to the so-called phenomenon of "detribalization" discussed below. In the typically isolated and self-contained tribal society, however, there is a common awareness of social and cultural identity —a common set of values—and no dispute about the social frontiers of the community. But in the fluid conditions just described, this no longer applies. Instead, there is a lack of generally accepted, precisely defined limits to consciously recognized social and cultural identity. In these cases, the frontiers of cultural and social interaction are illdefined, shifting, and inconsistent (cf. Leach 1954). The concept "tribal society," therefore, although having general utility as an idealized type of society, is in no sense an absolute category. Some societies are merely more or less tribal than others. In the classification of societies according to their scale, "tribal society" can be regarded at most as a loosely bounded area at the opposite end of the continuum to that of "modern society." Typologies of tribal society. Various criteria have been adopted by different schools of anthropologists in the classification of tribal societies. For
the purpose of reconstructing historical connections, German and Austrian workers such as Schmidt and Koppers and their followers have classified societies according to the particular configuration of institutions, or Kulturkreise, which they incorporate. The theoretical premise is that peoples sharing the same cluster of institutions have a common origin, an assumption that has proved better founded when the cultural traits shared have belonged to the material rather than to the social sphere of organization. Attempts to correlate social and political institutions with types of tribal economy, usually in order to construct evolutionary scales of progress, have fared little better. Certain crude correlations undoubtedly exist between the extent of environmental control and scope of economic exploitation on the one hand, and the complexity and scale of juridical and political organization on the other. This has been elegantly demonstrated by Hobhouse, Wheeler, and Ginsberg (1915), But, in spite of this, there is no necessary and inevitable connection between particular social and political institutions, or clusters of them, and modes of livelihood and economy. Recent research in cultural and structural anthropology has consequently abandoned the holistic search for origins and has applied the comparative method to the functional analysis of institutions. The British school and its adherents, stimulated by the pioneering work of Fortes and Evans-Pritchard (1940), have devoted much attention to problems of political organization. These studies have shown equally how the same institutions may in one tribal society provide a basis for a complex administrative and governmental structure, while in another they are invested with different functions and provide only for ephemeral political cohesion without any formal positions of leadership or authority. More generally, this work has demonstrated how as political units increase in size (but not necessarily in population density) their internal organization inevitably becomes more complex. Among the politically diffuse Nuer of the Sudan, or among the equally equalitarian Somali nomads of northeast Africa, quite large communities may for short periods act as political entities. However, stable and concerted political unity requires a degree of centralized government and administrative specialization that these peoples traditionally lack. Here, moreover, there is often a separation between morality, or the system of values, and political cohesion. In the Somali case, for instance, the boundaries of traditional political unity stop short at the clan, although all clans share common value and
TRIBAL SOCIETY moral systems and recognize the same code of indemnification for wrongs. This concentration on the comparative functions of political institutions has greatly advanced the study of tribal societies and has led to a deepened understanding of the various institutional principles by which tribal cohesion is maintained. It is now clear, for example, that in many politically inchoate societies the threat of vengeance, rather than its execution, serves to maintain social order. In this manner the potential for violence activates the network of personal allegiances founded on residence and kinship, and thus affords a system of social control in the absence of government and courts of law. These inquiries have emphasized the significance of the counterbalancing forces in the elastic fabric of social relations, which in certain areas of all societies contribute to social stability and integration. Stripped of their particular cultural idiom, similar social processes can be seen to be at work in all human societies. One of the principal values of tribal studies is that in these alien, small-scale, and closely knit communities it is easier to perceive the mechanisms of cultural dynamics. "Tribe" as a technical term. The increasingly detailed functional analysis of tribal institutions has naturally entailed a reformulation of concepts. In English anthropology, although not always in America or on the Continent, the term "tribe" has acquired a restricted technical meaning. Usually the term now refers to the widest territorially denned, politically independent unit in a tribal society. It no longer refers to the culturally and ethnically distinct tribal society as a whole except where, as in such tribal states as Baganda or Ruanda, tribe and society coincide. Some tribal societies, therefore, consist of several tribes; others comprise a single tribe. But in both cases the emphasis of the definition is on territorially based political unity, an emphasis that reflects tribal realities. In truly nomadic societies, of course, where there are no proprietorial rights asserted over definite areas of land, tribes in this strict sense do not exist. Thus the introduction of the word "tribe" as a technical term makes possible a fuller and more accurate description of the nature of political cohesion within the tribe and facilitates the distinction between purely territorial loyalties and those founded on such other principles of association as kinship, clanship, or age-grouping. But, while it is always easy to describe the tribe in its territorial aspects, its political qualities are not always easily
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defined, especially in tribes without chiefs or other formally installed rulers. Thus, in dealing with the Nuer of the Sudan, Evans-Pritchard (1940) found it necessary to define the tribe as the largest territorial unit within which the members of the tribe would unite against external aggression and settle their internal differences by arbitration. Tribalism and "detribalization." When tribesmen move out of their native society to join, however peripherally, a larger multitribal or plural society, the tribal identity that they carry with them is that of their tribal society as a whole, irrespective of whether or not it originally represented a single political unit. An interesting example is provided by the Luapula kingdom of Kazembe in central Africa studied by Cunnison (1960). Here peoples of various tribal origin have settled and owe common allegiance to the Lunda King Kazembe and yet also retain their external ties with their tribal homelands. There is a single multitribal Luapula political unit under Kazembe, a tribe; yet cultural, social, and political ties extend outside the kingdom from among its heterogeneous subjects. What is significant is the retention of original tribal links and their use as a principle of association within the kingdom as well as outside it, a situation that implies something more than dual citizenship. This purely tribal phenomenon, which is not restricted to central Africa, is analogous to the common situation today caused by the spread of urbanization and industry throughout the world and the increasing involvement of tribesmen in the new plural societies that result. Contrary to the deep-seated traditional view, many tribal societies do not disintegrate or lose their identity in these situations of contact or acculturation between widely diverse cultures. Indeed, as long as the traditional economy is not radically changed and the weight of foreign influence is not overwhelming, much of the traditional tribal culture and values persists and shows remarkable resilience in adapting to the new conditions. Tribal cohesion has, moreover, in most cases shown itself to be capable of surviving and even profiting from quite radical changes in political organization under colonial rule. Frequently indeed, and especially where the policy of indirect rule has been followed, colonial administration has buttressed and strengthened rather than weakened tribal identity. When tribal identity and cohesion persist outside towns, those tribesmen who move into the industrial areas in search of work do not necessarily become "detribalized." Recent studies, such as those
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of Mitchell (1956; 1960) and of Southall (1961) in Africa, reveal how inadequate this traditional evaluation has become. Especially where urban conditions are insecure, the tribal townsman maintains a foot in both town and country and is not unequivocally committed to urban society. Social, political, and property interests (particularly where land or livestock are involved) tie the townsman to his rural kinsmen, whom he helps to support with his new earnings. In turn, the effective maintenance of these ties with his rural kin guarantees that the townsman's place in his tribal social structure will be kept open for him. Thus, between tribal area and urban conglomeration a kind of social continuum is established. In the multitribal or plural society of the town itself, tribal identity is now enlarged to the limits of the individual's tribal society as a whole. It becomes a category of social interaction competing for the townsman's allegiance with other social categories, such as residential ties, class, and modern nationalism. Hence, what is carried forward into the mixed and often polyglot urban community with all its new values is not tribal allegiance at the level of "tribe" in the strict sense, but tribal institutions and patriotism on the wider scale. For the townsman, and also to an increasing extent for the tribesman who remains at home, the tribal way of life and system of values are now one institution among several that are variously opposed and conflicting. With these developments, the gap between the real situation and the ideal concept of tribal society grows even wider. But the concept will remain useful, not only for understanding the way in which tribal societies have changed and are changing in the modern world, but also as a theoretical construct in the comparative study of social systems and institutions. Even when all truly tribal communities have disappeared, the fact that under certain conditions certain combinations of institutions have provided the basis for a viable social system at some point in man's history is of the utmost significance to the student of society. No empirically sound general theory of society can be elaborated unless account is taken of every known form of man's existence in society. I. M. LEWIS [See also POLITICAL ANTHROPOLOGY, article on POLITICAL ORGANIZATION; STATELESS SOCIETY; VILLAGE.] BIBLIOGRAPHY
BEATTIE, J. H. M. 1964 Other Cultures: Aims, Methods and Achievements in Social Anthropology. London: Cohen & West; New York: Free Press.
BOHANNAN, PAUL; and DALTON, GEORGE (editors) 1962 Markets in Africa. Northwestern University Africa Studies, No. 9. Evanston, 111.: Northwestern Univ. Press. CUNNISON, IAN G. 1960 The Luapula Peoples of Northern Rhodesia: Custom and History in Tribal Politics. Manchester (England) Univ. Press. DAVY, GEORGES 1922 La foi juree. Paris: Alcan. DOUGLAS, MARY 1966 Purity and Danger: A Comparative Study of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. London: Routledge. DUMONT, L. 1957 Une sous-caste de I'Inde du Sud: Organisation sociale et religion de Pramalai Kallar. Paris: Mouton. EVANS-PRITCHARD, E. E. 1940 The Nuer: A Description of the Modes of Livelihood and Political Institutions of a Nilotic People. Oxford Univ. Press. FALLERS, LLOYD A. (editor) 1964 The King's Men: Leadership and Status in Buganda on the Eve of Independence. Oxford Univ. Press. FIRTH, RAYMOND (1936) 1957 We the Tikopia: A Sociological Study of Kinship in Polynesia. 2d ed. London: Allen & Unwin. -> A paperback edition was published in 1963 by Beacon. FORDE, C. DARYLL (1934) 1963 Habitat, Economy and Society: A Geographical Introduction to Ethnology. London: Methuen. FORDE, C. DARYLL 1951 The Yoruba-speaking Peoples of South-western Nigeria. Ethnographic Survey of Africa Series: Western Africa, Part 4. London: International African Institute. FORDE, C. DARYLL; and JONES, G. I. 1950 The Ibo and Ibibio-speaking Peoples of South Eastern Nigeria. Ethnographic Survey of Africa Series: Western Africa, Part 3. Oxford Univ. Press. FORTES, MEYER 1945 The Dynamics of Clanship Among the Tallensi: Being the First Part of an Analysis of the Social Structure of a Trans-Volta Tribe. Published for the International African Institute. Oxford Univ. Press. FORTES, MEYER 1949 The Web of Kinship Among the Tallensi: The Second Part of an Analysis of the Social Structure of a Trans-Volta Tribe. Published for the International African Institute. Oxford Univ. Press. FORTES, MEYER; and EVANS-PRITCHARD, E. E. (editors) (1940) 1958 African Political Systems. Oxford Univ. Press. GLUCKMAN, MAX 1940 The Kingdom of the Zulu of South Africa. Pages 25-55 in Meyer Fortes and E. E. Evans-Pritchard (editors), African Political Systems. Published for the International Institute of African Languages and Cultures. Oxford Univ. Press. GLUCKMAN, MAX 1955 The Judicial Process Among the Barotse of Northern Rhodesia. Manchester (England) Univ. Press; Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. GLUCKMAN, MAX 1965 Politics, Law and Ritual in Tribal Society. Oxford: Blackwell. HERSKOVITS, MELVILLE J. 1938 Dahomey: An Ancient West African Kingdom. 2 vols. New York: Augustin. HOBHOUSE, LEONARD T.; WHEELER, G. C.; and GINSBERG, M. (1915) 1930 The Material Culture and Social Institutions of the Simpler Peoples: An Essay in Correlation. London School of Economics and Political Science, Monographs on Sociology, No. 3. London: Chapman. HUNTINGFORD, GEORGE W. B. 1955 The Galla of Ethiopia. Ethnographic Survey of Africa: North-eastern
TROELTSCH, ERNST Africa, Part 2. London: International African Institute. KROEBER, A. L.; and KLUCKHOHN, CLYDE 1952 Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions. Harvard University, Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology, Papers, Vol. 47, No. 1. Cambridge, Mass.: The Museum. LEACH, EDMUND R. 1954 Political Systems of Highland Burma: A Study of Kachin Social Structure. A publication of the London School of Economics and Political Science. London School of Economics and Political Science; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. LEVI-STRAUSS, CLAUDE 1949 Les structures elementaires de la parente. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. LEWIS, I. M. 1961 A Pastoral Democracy: A Study in Pastoralism and Politics Among the Northern Somali of the Horn of Africa. Published for the International African Institute. Oxford Univ. Press. LOWIE, ROBERT H. (1920) 1947 Primitive Society. Rev. ed. New York: Liveright. MAINE, HENRY J. S. (1861) 1960 Ancient Law: Its Connection With the Early History of Society, and Its Relations to Modern Ideas. Rev. ed. New York: Button; London and Toronto: Dent. -» A paperback edition was published in 1963 by Beacon. MALINOWSKI, BRONISLAW (1922) 1960 Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An Account of Native Enter-prise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea. London School of Economics and Political Science, Studies, No. 65. London: Routledge; New York: Button. MAQUET, JACQUES J. 1961 The Premise of Inequality in Ruanda: A Study of Political Relations in a Central African Kingdom. Published for the International African Institute. Oxford Univ. Press. MITCHELL, JAMES C. 1956 The Kalela Dance: Aspects of Social Relationships Among Urban Africans in Northern Rhodesia. Rhodes-Livingstone Institute, Papers, No. 27. Manchester (England) Univ. Press. MITCHELL, JAMES C. 1960 Tribalism and the Plural Society. Inaugural lecture at University College of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, 1959. Oxford Univ. Press. MORGAN, LEWIS H. (1851)1962 League of the Iroquois. Gloucester, Mass.: Smith. -» First published as League of the Ho-de-no-sau-nee, or Iroquois, in 2 vols. MORGAN, LEWIS H. (1877) 1964 Ancient Society. Edited by Leslie A. White. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap. MURDOCK, GEORGE P. 1949 Social Structure. New York: Macmillan. NADEL, S. F. 1942 A Black Byzantium: The Kingdom of Nupe in Nigeria. Oxford Univ. Press. NADEL, S. F. 1957 The Theory of Social Structure. London: Cohen & West; Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. REDFIELD, ROBERT 1956 Peasant Society and Culture: An Anthropological Approach to Civilization. Univ. of Chicago Press; Cambridge Univ. Press. -> A paperback edition, bound together with The Little Community, was published in 1961 by Cambridge University Press. RICHARDS, AUDREY I. (editor) 1960 East African Chiefs: A Study of Political Development in Some Uganda and Tanganyika Tribes. London: Faber; New York: Praeger. SCHAPERA, ISAAC (1938) 1955 A Handbook of Tswana Law and Custom. 2d ed. Oxford Univ. Press. SCHAPERA, ISAAC 1956 Government and Politics in Tribal Societies. London: Watts.
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SCHMIDT, WILHELM; and KOPPERS, WILHELM 1924 Volker und Kulturen. Regensburg (Germany): Habbel. SIDGWICK, HENRY (1891) 1908 The Elements of Politics. 4th ed. London: Macmillan. SOUTHALL, AIDAN (editor) 1961 SociaJ Change in Modern Africa. Oxford Univ. Press. SRINIVAS, M. N. 1952 Religion and Society Among the Coorgs of South India. Oxford Univ. Press. STEWARD, JULIAN H. 1955 Theory of Culture Change: The Methodology of Multilinear Evolution. Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press. WILSON, GODFREY;-and WILSON, MONICA H. (1945) 1965 The Analysis of Social Change, Based on Observations in Central Africa. Cambridge Univ. Press.
TROELTSCH, ERNST Ernst Troeltsch (1865-1923), German historian and sociologist, was born in Augsburg, a descendant of an old burgher family and the eldest son of a practicing physician. His father introduced him to the natural sciences, and he retained a keen sense for scientific thinking throughout his life. His interests, however, lay in the direction of religion and philosophy. From 1883 to 1888 he studied theology at the universities of Erlangen, Gottingen, and Berlin and for a short time was a Lutheran curate at Munich. He became a lecturer at Gottingen in 1891 and an associate professor of theology at Bonn in 1892. In 1894, at the age of 29, he became a professor at Heidelberg, where he remained for 21 years. In 1915, feeling that theology was narrow and confining, he transferred to philosophy at Berlin, where he lectured on a variety of topics, from the philosophy of religion to the philosophy of history. He was influenced by Kant and Hegel, and by Fichte and Schleiermacher, as well as by his teachers, especially Ritschl. In 1901 he married the daughter of a Mecklenburg officer; a son, Ernst Eberhard, was born in 1913. Troeltsch took part in politics, was long a member of the Baden upper house, and from 1919 to 1921 was a member of the Prussian Landtag and undersecretary of state for public worship. He died in 1923 in his fifty-eighth year. Troeltsch was conservative in politics. In the early days of World War i he was moved, as were many of his friends, including Max Weber, by what Weber called the "great and wonderful" fervor of the German people. Like almost all his fellow intellectuals, he saw rooted in the German nation idealist values that constituted the ethical justification for the war effort. Like Weber, he believed that his fatherland upheld an important spiritual heritage, as opposed to the materialistic values of the British and the French. Soon, however, under the in-
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fluence of Weber and Friedrich Meinecke, he separated himself from the conservative majority, opposed annexationist war aims, and advocated domestic democratization, which he considered urgent. He joined the circle around Prince Max of Baden and after the war became active in the founding of the German Democratic party. He supported the Weimar Republic and in the early 1920s defended the new constitution in monthly articles in the review Der Kunstwart, using the pseudonym "Spektator." These contributions rank among the most clearheaded political analyses of the day: he decried the "frightful demagoguery" of the right and urged that the republic be accepted wholeheartedly, despite its alien character (its basis in Anglo-French eighteenth-century values) and the inferior quality of its office holders. The true conservatism required to restore balance to German life could be brought about, he declared, only by the acceptance of the Weimar Republic. Troeltsch's articles appeared until four months before his death, representing his last efforts to save both humanity and rationality. Sociology of religion In his great sociological work, The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches (1912), Troeltsch examined the history of Christianity up to the eighteenth century. He sought the answer to two fundamental questions: (1) Are religious beliefs and movements primarily the products of nonreligious factors or are they primarily irreducible phenomena that develop independently? and (2) the reciprocal question, To what extent do religious ideas and institutions affect other elements of society and culture? He raised these questions not simply in the abstract but with respect to Christianity in its total historical setting. Weber concerned himself with similar questions but evolved a rather different technique of study. Weber used ideal type constructions and, in a kind of post hoc mental experiment, attempted to hold some factors constant while he compared two or more cases. Troeltsch studied only Christianity and attempted to trace the whole vast interconnected web of factors impinging on it, delineating the place of religion within this total complex. The result—The Social Teaching—makes difficult reading but exhibits tremendous learning, and despite a certain diffuseness, it presents a host of valuable theoretical insights. It reveals the interaction of ideal and material factors at the same time that it conveys the unique quality of concrete historical situations. The Social Teaching affirms the reality and au-
tonomy of the religious factor—or, to use a more modern expression, finds that religion can be an independent variable in social change—but locates this autonomy in a context of interacting factors. Primitive Christianity was a religious movement, not reducible to displaced social protest, as Kautsky and the Marxists had tried to show, and its inner meaning contained autonomous implications for future development. But the forms of its beliefs, values, and organizations were to a great extent conditioned by circumstances, and once established, Christianity in turn affected other aspects of society and culture. Troeltsch examined this complex interaction of factors in relation to four aspects of society: family, economics, politics, and learning. In all four areas he saw Christianity exhibiting two contradictory but complementary tendencies—accommodation and protest, or compromise and absolutist rejection of compromise. Both were genuine expressions of New Testament values. He concluded his monumental study with the following summary: "The Ethos of the Gospel . . . is an ideal which requires a new world if it is to be fully realized . . . [it is] an ideal which cannot be realized within this world apart from compromise. Therefore the history of the Christian Ethos becomes the story of a constantly renewed search for this compromise, and of fresh opposition to this spirit of compromise" ([1912] 1931, pp. 999-1000). This great permeating rhythm of accommodation and protest has its sociological expression in three types of religious participation. The church compromises with the "world"—with society and culture; the sect rejects the world and compromise with it, as well as the social consequences of compromise; and individual religious spontaneity finds expression neither in creative compromise nor in dissent, but in mysticism. The appearance of these forms is conditioned by social and cultural influences, but each represents a genuine religious expression that is irreducible to other factors or variables. Troeltsch was influenced by Weber and, like him, was concerned with the relation of religion to economic activity. In an earlier work, Protestantism and Progress (1906a), he sought to find out how much the development of modern secular capitalism owes to Protestantism. Troeltsch saw Protestantism as originally a reaction, a return to medieval thinking, "which [swept] away such beginnings of a free and secular civilization as had already been toilsomely established." Its impact upon the rise of modernity was mainly "indirect and unconsciously produced," as well as "against its will"
TROELTSCH, ERNST ([1906a] 1958, pp. 85-87). Like Weber, he asked whether or not the this-worldly asceticism of Protestantism had provided indirect and unintentional support for the development of capitalist economic activity, and he agreed with Weber that Calvinism did have an important early influence. But he felt that Weber should have given greater emphasis to the fact that Reformed asceticism was itself "partly determined by ... the commercial situation in the Western countries," especially "the exclusion of Dissent from political life" (ibid., p. 138) and that it was economic decline in Germany that gave emphasis to the element of asceticism in traditional Luther anism. Curiously, although Troeltsch was a friend of Weber's and somewhat dependent upon him intellectually, he seemed unaware that he had seriously criticized Weber's thesis. Moreover, although he charged Weber with having failed to stress sufficiently the differences between Calvin and Calvinism, he did not seem to realize that this also was a highly critical appraisal. In the same work Troeltsch both denied any immediate or direct causal relationship between Protestantism and capitalism and declared that "Weber has, in my opinion, completely proved his case" (ibid., p. 138). Troeltsch believed that religion was more significantly affected by the development of modernity than the reverse. Yet he saw that despite "all the hostility to the churches and to Christianity" in his own time, culture and values derived from and rested upon Christian foundations. He felt that "individual autonomy," "belief in progress," "confidence in life," and even the "impulse to work" would be impossible, were it not for the Christian heritage (ibid., pp. 38-39). Toward the end of his life Troeltsch assessed the future of Christianity as "unpredictable," but he felt that it was "at a critical moment of its further development, and that very bold and far-reaching changes [were] necessary, transcending anything that [had] yet been achieved by any denomination" ([1923] 1957, p. 60). Historicism Troeltsch took a classic position with respect to the problem of historicism. Influenced by Dilthey, he believed in a sharp distinction between the methods appropriate to the natural sciences and those appropriate to study of the life of the human spirit. The former could use generalized categories and seek timeless regularities; the latter must endeavor to understand the meaning and uniqueness of spatially and temporally situated cultural complexes. History is "an immeasurable, incomparable profusion of always-new, unique, and hence indi-
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vidual tendencies, welling up from undiscovered depths." History reveals individual configurations of ideas, values, strivings, relations, and situations in "always-new and always-peculiar individualizations" (ibid., p. 44). These "historical individuals" can be understood only in their own terms. Weber too had faced this issue, and his solution represents an important contribution to social science. He accepted the uniqueness of specific historical configurations and the importance of understanding meaning and quality, but he also developed generalized analytical categories for analysis. These he saw as formal in Kant's sense. He was thus able to break down the historical complexes into a number of analytical factors, to make comparative studies in which some factors were held constant as far as possible, and thereby to produce analytical and generalizing sociology. He did not, however, pursue the philosophical difficulties involved in this "nominalist" use of "universals" for scientific convenience. For Troeltsch the issue was more profound; he was concerned with its human and not its technical implications. He sought not simply a methodological posture for scientific work but "a vital and effective religious position, which alone could furnish my life with a center of reference for all practical questions and could alone give meaning and purpose to reflection upon the things of this world" (ibid., p. 37). Troeltsch's problem was this: If everything in history is individual and unique and is limited to specific times and places, is there then nothing suprahistorical in the products of man's search for truth and his creations of value? Can man make no contact with any extrahistorical truth or any transhistorical truths or values? In his Trennung von Staat und Kirche (1906£>) he introduced the concept of "polymorphous truth": Truth is one, but it is apprehended by men in historical forms that vary indefinitely. He rejected "monomorphous truth" as no longer genuinely accepted, save by Roman Catholics. In 1909, in his Absolutheit des Christentums, he sought the basis for transhistorical validity in the inner experience of the Christian and its effects on his actions and in an evolution toward universal religion. Troeltsch also looked for an extrahistorical element in what he called the "morality of conscience." Conscience arises from the need to preserve the inner integrity of personality amid "the flux and confusion of the life of the instincts." But this need has "a purely formal aim of independence from mere fate" and finds its content in historically relative cultural values. Personality and conscience do not represent a genuinely transhistorical basis for
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values, however, for the value of personality is itself culturally relative; our own high evaluation of it is derived from Christianity and unknown in our sense in the Far East ([1923] 1957, pp. 77-78, 121). Troeltsch later gave up these tenuous bases for extrahistorical validity but continued to be greatly concerned with what he saw as the fundamental conflict between "the critical scepticism generated by the ceaseless flux and manifold contradictions within the sphere of history and the demand of the religious consciousness for certainty, for unity, and for peace" (ibid., p. 39). He came to see all the world religions as unique and relative to given historical conditions, having validity only within a community of tradition. "The actual history of religion knows nothing of the common character of all religions, or of their natural trend toward Christianity" (ibid., p. 43). He did not limit this concern to the sphere of religion but in his Historismus und seine Probleme (1922), as he wrote later, he examined the "relation of individual historical facts to standards of value within the entire domain of history in connection with the development of political, social, ethical, aesthetic, and scientific ideas" and found that "even the validity of science and logic seemed to exhibit, under different skies and upon different soil, strong individual differences present .even in their deepest and innermost rudiments" ([1923] 1957, pp. 52-53). He held that mankind has little in common besides material needs and a capacity for mutual understanding. Cultures represented for Troeltsch unique historical products, and values, although the "source of all nobility and all greatness," are the consequence of a "molding which is peculiar, unique, and sui generis." Cultural values remain in a "permanent dependence on the natural basis and the temporary and special historic position of that basis. . . . Here there is nothing independent of time and universally valid except the stimulus and obligation to create a system of culture" (ibid., pp. 105-108). Troeltsch never found a basis within history itself for any transhistorical position for either knowledge or values. He concluded that validity is historically relative and conscience valid only for each individual. He fell back on faith, the anguished and dissatisfied faith he had never completely lost. He believed that the truth man sees from his limited and relative point of view is a refraction of a truth beyond and that relative values reflect a transcendent value realm. Thus he could say: "Scepticism and relativism are only an apparent necessary consequence of modern intellectual conditions and of Historicism. They may be overcome by way
of Ethics . . ." (ibid., p. 126). Ethical values are objective to the actor and challenge him to transcend his situation. Thus, they are genuine and valid, but finally rest upon a "deep subjectivity" and "personal resolve" (ibid., p. 126). It is perhaps an ironic example of the historical determinism with which he grappled that he himself found his last uneasy and unsatisfactory solution in his own version of the doctrine in which he had been brought up—-the Lutheran doctrine of salvation through faith alone. Troeltsch had created a stir among German intellectuals in 1896 when he appalled a group of theologians by announcing that "all is tottering," and when they rebuked him, walking out and slamming the door. He never ceased to concern himself with this tottering. His friend Meinecke said of him with irony and compassion that he was the incarnation of the idea expressed by both Heraclitus and Archimedes: Everything is in flux; give me a place to stand. This deeply religious man, in Baron von Hiigel's words, this "so realistic believer in God," struggled to find within the ebb and flow of history a stable basis for universally significant values. When his anguished search failed, he found a final position in an anguished faith. Shortly before his death Troeltsch wrote: "If there is any solution at all of these riddles and problems, with their conflicts and contradictions, that solution certainly is not to be found within their own sphere, but beyond it, in that unknown land, of which there are so many indications in the historic struggle of the spirit upwards, but which itself is never revealed to our eyes" ([1923] 1957, p. 146). THOMAS F. O'DEA [See
also CHRISTIANITY; HISTORY, article on THE
PHILOSOPHY
OF HISTORY; RELIGION;
SECTS
AND
CULTS; and the biographies of DILTHEY; MEINECKE; WEBER, MAX.] WORKS BY TROELTSCH (1906a) 1958 Protestantism and Progress: A Historical Study of the Relation of Protestantism to the Modern World. Boston: Beacon. -> First published as Die Bedeutung des Protestantismus fiir die Entstehung der modernen Welt. The first English translation was published in 1912 by Williams and Norgate and by Putnam. 1906Z? Die Trennung von Staat und Kirche: Der staatliche Religionsunterricht und die theologischen Fakultaten. Akademische Rede zur Feier des Geburtsfestes des hochstseligen Grossherzogs Karl Friedrich am 22. november 1906 bei dem Vortrag des Jahresberichts und der Verkiindung der akademischen Preise gehalten von dr. theol. et phil. h.c. Ernst Troeltsch. Heidelberg: Universitats-Buchdruckerei. (1906c) 1909 Wesen der Religion und der Religionswissenschaft. Pages 1-36 in Systematische christliche
TROTSKY, LEON Religion, by Ernst Troeltsch et al. 2d ed. Die Kultur der Gegenwart, t. 1, abt. 4, 2. Berlin: Teubner. (1909) 1912 Die Absolutheit des Christentums und die Religionsgeschichte. Vortrag gehalten auf der Versammlung der Freunde der Christlichen Welt zu Miihlacker am 3. oktober 1901. 2d rev. ed. Tubingen: Mohr. (1912) 1931 The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches. 2 vols. New York: Macmillan. -» First published as Die Soziallehren der christlichen Kirchen und Gruppen. A paperback edition was published in 1960 by Harper. 1915a Augustin, die christliche Antike, und das Mittelalter: Im Anschluss an die Schrift, De civitate Dei. Munich and Berlin: Oldenbourg. 1915fe Das Wesen des Deutschen. Rede gehalten am 6. dezember 1914 in der vaterlandischen Versammlung in der Karlsruher Stadthalle. Heidelberg: Winter. 1916 Uber Massstabe zur Beurteilung historischer Diiige. Academic dissertation, University of Berlin. 1919 Die Dynamik der Geschichte nach der Geschichtsphilosophie des Positivismus. Berlin: Reuter. 1922 Der Historismus und seine Probleme. Gesamrnelte Schriften, Vol. 3. Tubingen: Mohr. (1923) 1957 Christian Thought: Its History and Application. New York: Meridian. -> Lectures written for delivery in England during March 1923 and first published by the University of London Press. A German edition was published in 1924 as Der Historismus und seine Uberwindung. 1924 Spektator-briefe: Aufsdtze iiber die deutsche Revolution und die Weltpolitik, 1918/22. Tubingen: Mohr. -> Published posthumously in book form. Deutscher Geist und Westeuropa: Gesamrnelte kulturphilosophische Aufsdtze und Reden. Tubingen: Mohr, 1925. Gesamrnelte Schriften von Ernst Troeltsch. 4 vols. Tubingen: Mohr, 1912-1925. -> Volume 1: Die Soziallehren der christlichen Kirchen und Gruppen, 1912. Volume 2: Zur religiosen Lage, Religions-philosophic und Ethik, 1922. Volume 3: Der Historismus und seine Probleme, 1922. Volume 4: Aufsdtze zur Geistesgeschichte und Religions-soziologie, 1925. Volume 4 includes a comprehensive bibliography of Troeltsch's writings. Glaubenslehre. Nach Heidelberger Vorlesungen aus den Jahren 1911 und 1912. Munich & Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1925. SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY
HUGEL, FRIEDRICH VON 1923 Introduction. In Ernst Troeltsch, Christian Thought: Its History and Application. Univ. of London Press. HUGHES, H. STUART 1958 Consciousness and Society: The Reorientation of European Social Thought, 18901930. New York: Knopf. YINGER, J. MILTON 1948 The Sociology of Religion of Ernst Troeltsch. Pages 309-315 in Harry E. Barnes (editor), Introduction to the History of Sociology. Univ. of Chicago Press.
TROTSKY, LEON Leon Trotsky (Lev Davidovich Bronstein) was born in the Ukraine in 1879 and assassinated in Mexico in 1940. Trotsky was not only a leader of the October revolution of 1917, commissar of
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foreign affairs in the first Soviet government, founder of the Red Army and commissar of war from 1918 to 1925, cofounder of the Communist International, member of the Politburo of the Soviet Communist party from 1918 to 1927, and Stalin's chief antagonist and critic; he was also an outstanding thinker and original theorist of Marxism, whose ideas strongly influenced socialism and communism in the first four decades of this century. Permanent revolution The theory of permanent revolution is Trotsky's principal contribution to Marxism and the leitmotiv of his political activities. He first formulated that theory in a treatise called Results and Prospects, written and published in 1906, while he was in prison awaiting trial by a tsarist court for his leading role in the 1905 St. Petersburg Soviet. The origins of the theory can be traced back to the writings of Karl Marx, and it was also influenced by A. L. Helphand-Parvus, a Russo-German Marxist of note. But its actual formulation and application to the revolution of the twentieth century, and to Russian circumstances, was Trotsky's own work. Trotsky viewed the transition of society from capitalism to socialism, postulated by Marxism, as an immense succession of socioeconomic and political upheavals leading to the establishment of an international classless and stateless society. No single phase of this revolution, whatever its social character or geographic limitation, can be regarded as self-contained or self-sufficient. The process of society's transformation is in the nature of a chain reaction that cannot be arbitrarily interrupted or arrested. The revolution develops intensively, by "deepening" and affecting the whole structure of society, and extensively, by assuming international scope. From these general premises Trotsky developed a specific, prognostic analysis of the character of the Russian revolution. He rejected the view, which had been generally accepted by Marxists, that the Russian revolution would have to be bourgeois in character, as the French revolution of 1789-1793 had been. In this traditional Marxist view, the "task" of the revolution was to overthrow tsardom, sweep away obsolete semifeudal relationships and institutions, and establish a parliamentary democratic republic, under which Russia's productive forces would be free to develop on a capitalist basis and its working class free to wage its class struggles until such time as Russian society became sufficiently "mature" for socialism. Up to World War I even Lenin and the Bolsheviks adhered to this view, although Lenin occasionally deviated from it. The differences between Bolsheviks and Men-
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sheviks centered at that time on the question of which social class, the bourgeoisie or the workers, should exercise leadership in the revolution. The Mensheviks maintained that since the revolution was bourgeois, the bourgeoisie should lead it, while the workers should lend the bourgeoisie their critical support. Lenin argued that the Russian bourgeoisie was frightened of revolution and willing to compromise with tsardoni; consequently, only the working class, with the support of the peasantry, could accomplish this bourgeois revolution—despite and against the bourgeoisie. Trotsky agreed with Lenin's view that the industrial workers were the chief motive power of the upheaval, but he pointed out that precisely because of this the revolution could not remain bourgeois. He asserted that it would be driven by its own momentum beyond the limits set to it a priori by the traditionalist theory and that it would present a peculiar combination of two revolutions, a bourgeois one and a socialist one. Once the proletariat had assumed the leading role, it would be compelled by the logic of its own class interest to turn against the capitalists as well as against tsardom and the landlords; and it would proceed to establish its own dictatorship and to socialize the means of production. Russia, Trotsky predicted, would be the first country to set up a proletarian dictatorship. This was a startling and hotly contested conclusion: all Marxists, including the Leninists, still held that such a dictatorship could first be established only in one of the advanced industrial countries of the West. Trotsky went on to point out that because of its industrial and cultural backwardness and poverty, Russia could only begin the socialist revolution (or the building of socialism) but could not achieve or complete it except in association and cooperation with the industrial countries of the West. Indeed, the Russian revolution would not be a purely national phenomenon; it would be the prelude to European or global revolution. Just as the revolution would not be contained within its bourgeois stage, so it could not be brought to a halt within any national boundaries. Internationally as well as nationally the revolution would be "permanent." As author of this theory, Trotsky linked up with the classical Marxist tradition, but he also departed from it. He was the first Marxist to proclaim that the initiative for the anticapitalist revolution of this century would come from the underdeveloped part of the world rather than from the West. But he remained within the classical Marxist tradition insofar as he continued to see in the industrialized countries of the West the terra firma of socialism, its decisive domain, its chief potential center. A
backward country like Russia could and would have the lead in revolutionary initiative, but the lead in the actual establishment of socialism would still belong to the West. Shortly before 1917 Lenin arrived independently at the same conclusion, and this induced Trotsky to join the Bolshevik party. The idea of permanent revolution was embodied in the programmatic statements of the Communist International during the time that Lenin and Trotsky were its leading lights. It should be added that Trotsky did not favor coups or putsches staged by revolutionary minorities unsupported by the mass of the workers and that he was categorically opposed to "carrying revolution abroad on the point of bayonets." Permanent revolution, as he saw it, was an organic historic process, inherent in the logic of the class struggles and political conflicts of the age. The most dramatic implication of Trotsky's theory emerged in the 1920s, at the time of his conflict with Stalin. The great ideological controversy in the Bolshevik party after Lenin centered on the doctrinal opposition between two theories: Trotsky's permanent revolution and Stalin's socialism in a single country. Stalin asserted the self-sufficiency of the Russian revolution; and, at least up to World War n, his doctrine was manifest in a policy of Soviet isolationism and self-containment. As such it was necessarily antagonistic to the idea of permanent revolution. Trotsky proceeded to demonstrate theoretically the impossibility of an autarchic socialism, of a socialism confined to any single country, especially to a backward country in which the small-holding peasantry formed the majority of the population. He characterized the Soviet regime as a transitional social order, combining socialist and capitalist (and even precapitalist) elements; but he refused to recognize it as genuinely socialist. He viewed the isolation of Bolshevism within Russia's boundaries as a mere interval between two acts, as it were, of permanent revolution, an interval unduly prolonged by Stalinist errors and opportunism, but not a definite interruption of the revolutionary process. (Trotsky probably would have regarded the revolutionary aftermath of World War n, culminating in the Chinese revolution, as a continuation of the process begun in Russia in 1917, the long overdue new phase of permanent revolution.) Critique of Soviet bureaucracy Among Trotsky's many contributions to Marxist thinking, the one next in importance to his theory of permanent revolution is his critique of the Soviet bureaucracy. He was, with Lenin, an uncompro-
TROTSKY, LEON mising advocate of proletarian dictatorship, and, again like Lenin, he held that this dictatorship ought to be based on "proletarian, or Soviet, democracy." Its purpose was to consolidate the conquests of the revolution, to suppress the resistance of the former possessing classes, and to guarantee the social and political supremacy of the working class. This aim could not be achieved unless the workers, the poor peasants, and the social groups close to them enjoyed full freedom of expression and association. During the civil war such freedom was severely curtailed; and in the early 1920s the singleparty system was established. Trotsky at first treated this as a kind of emergency measure and refrained from elevating the practice of the single-party system to a principle. Presently, he came into conflict with the practice. As early as 1923 he had diagnosed the onset of a postrevolutionary reaction and the incipient "degeneration" of the Bolshevik party; and he had protested against the growing preponderance and arbitrary behavior of the party's bureaucracy. Between 1926 and 1928, characteristically invoking various precedents from the French Revolution, he warned of the dangers of a Russian Thermidor, Bonapartism, and Restoration. (Later still, in the 1930s, he maintained that Thermidor and Bonapartism were no longer dangers threatening the revolution but accomplished facts.) Trotsky saw the bureaucracy and the managerial groups of the Soviet Union as the new privileged strata who had usurped the fruits of the revolution and deprived the working class of its rights; he attacked Stalinism as the ideology of the new privileged strata. Up to 1934-1935 he advocated a reform of the Soviet Union, aiming at the revival of Soviet democracy; but in his last years he called for the overthrow of the bureaucratic dictatorship and of Stalin's personal rule by means of revolution. However, he insisted that the Soviet bureaucracy was not a new and independent social class, exploiting other classes, but a "cancerous growth on the body of the working class"; that the Soviet Union was, even under Stalin, a "workers' state," although a "degenerate" one; and that Marxists were obliged to defend the Soviet state "unconditionally" against its capitalist—imperialist enemies. He advocated a revolution against Stalinism that, as he explained, was to be political, not social: its aim was to do away with Stalin's oppressive government, to reduce the new inequality, to abolish the single-party system and the "leader cult," and to bring the state under workers' control. But the revolution was not to change anything in the basic system of social ownership of the means of production; on the contrary, it was to preserve that
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system and revitalize it. These views aroused vehement controversy among Trotsky's adherents, some of whom (like James Burnham and others) considered the Soviet bureaucracy to be a new exploiting class and Soviet society a "managerial society," not different in kind from the German society under Hitler or the Italian under Mussolini. (In consequence they renounced all political solidarity with the U.S.S.R. and broke with Trotsky.) Other contributions While the ideas just summarized are at the core of so-called Trotskyism, the importance of Trotsky's contribution to the strategy and tactics of the Communist International should also be stressed. Trotsky was in 1921-1922 one of the chief initiators of the policy of the "united front"; and in his later critique of the Stalinized Comintern his analysis of the rise of Nazism was most remarkable. He was the first, if not the only, Marxist to grasp clearly the totalitarian character, the destructive explosiveness, and the imperialist fury of Nazism. While Stalin and his followers underrated Nazism, treating it as a more or less conventional form of reaction ("one of the agencies of finance-capitalism"), Trotsky, as early as 1929-1930, diagnosed it as a new plebeian form of counterrevolution, drawing its dynamic force from the despair of the petty-bourgeois and lumpenproletarian masses faced with the unemployment and misery of the great slump of 19291932. He advocated, in vain, joint socialist-communist action to prevent the seizure of power by Hitler and the new world war Hitler's victory could bring. In 1935-1936 he criticized as opportunistic and defeatist the Stalinist "popular front" policies, especially as applied in France and Spain. In subsequent years he exposed the great purges and the Moscow trials by which Stalin exterminated all his communist critics and opponents; and he founded the Fourth International. Trotsky was a many-sided personality, a man of action as well as a theorist, a prolific author and an orator of genius. He was unrivaled as a Marxist writer on military theory. While Clausewitz treated war as a "continuation of politics by different means," Trotsky showed it to be a continuation also of economics, class struggle, and social psychology. He was a historian of the highest order; his History of the Russian Revolution (1931-1933) is a huge artistic canvas depicting the events of 1917 as well as a theoretical interpretation. His biographical gifts are evident in My Life (1930a), in his various writings on Lenin, and to a lesser extent in his Stalin (1941). He was outstanding also as a literary critic. His use of Marxism as a tool of artistic
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criticism was free from dogma; and he was uncompromisingly opposed to the manufacturing of any "proletarian culture" or "proletarian literature" and to any form of party tutelage over the sciences and the arts. He defended Freudian psychoanalysis against Bolshevik and Pavlovian critics; and in one of his popularizations of dialectical materialism he confidently predicted, in the year 1926, the advent of the atomic age and forecast that the new technological revolution would coincide with and accelerate the social revolution of this century. He was defeated in his lifetime, slandered, and assassinated. His works and memory were still banned from his native country even in the 1960s, well after the collapse of the Stalin cult. But his ideas—his views on capitalist society, his critique of postrevolutionary bureaucratic privilege and of nationalist (Stalinist and Social Democratic) distortions of socialism—remain relevant to the issues agitating the communist camp and the world at large in the second half of this century. ISAAC DEUTSCHER [For the historical context of Trotsky's work, see COMMUNISM; MARXISM; SOCIALISM; and the biographies of LENIN and MARX.] WORKS BY TROTSKY .Nashi politicheskiia zadachi: Takticheskie i organizatsionnye voprosy (Our Political Tasks: Tactical and Organizational Questions). Geneva: Rossiiskaia Sotsialdemokraticheskaia Rabochaia Partiia, Tipografiia Partii. (1906) 1965 Results and Prospects. New York: Pioneer. -> First published in Russian. The 1965 edition is bound together with Trotsky 1930&. 1918 Our Revolution; Essays on Working-class and International Revolution: 1904-1917. New York: Holt. -> A collection of essays first published separately in Russian. (1920) 1935 Terrorism and Communism: A Reply to Karl Kautsky. New ed. London: Allen & Unwin. -> First published in Russian. A paperback edition was published in 1961 by the University of Michigan Press. 1922 Between Red and White. London: Communist Party of Great Britain. 1923—1925 Kak vooruzhalas revolutsiia (How the Revolution Armed Itself). 3 vols. Moscow: Vysshii Voennyi Redaktsionnyi Sovet. -» A collection of Trotsky's military writings, orders of the day, and speeches. (1924) 1959 Lenin. Garden City, N.Y.: Garden City Books. -» A collection of character sketches about Lenin, first published in Russian. 1925-1927 Sochineniia (Works). Vols. 2-21. Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe Izdatel'stvo. -> A projected complete edition of Trotsky's works; its publication was discontinued in 1927, at the time of Trotsky's expulsion from the party. (1930a) 1960 My Life. New York: Grosset & Dunlap. -» 1904
First published in Berlin in two volumes as Moia zhizn'. (1930b) 1965 Permanent Revolution. New York: Pioneer. -> First published in Russian. The 1965 edition is bound together with Trotsky 1906. (1930c) 1957 The Third International After Lenin. New York: Pioneer. -» First published in French. (1931-1933) 1957 The History of the Russian Revolution. 3 vols. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press. -» First published in Russian. (1932) 1962 The Stalin School of Falsification. 2d ed. New York: Pioneer. -> First published in Russian. (1937) 1957 The Revolution Betrayed: What Is the Soviet Union and Where Is It Going? New York: Pioneer. -» First published in English. (1941) 1958 Stalin: An Appraisal of the Man and His Influence. New York: Grosset & Dunlap. -» First published in English. The Age of Permanent Revolution: A Trotsky Anthology. Edited with an introduction by Isaac Deutscher. New York: Dell, 1964. Basic Writings. Edited and introduced by Irving Howe. London: Seeker & Warburg, 1964. -> A paperback edition was published by Random House in 1965. Diary in Exile, 1935. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1958. The Trotsky Papers, 1917-1922. Edited and annotated by Jan M. Meijer. Vols. 1—. The Hague: Mouton, 1964—. SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY
DEUTSCHER, ISAAC 1954 The Prophet Armed: Trotsky, 1879-1921. New York: Oxford Univ. Press. DEUTSCHER, ISAAC 1959 The Prophet Unarmed: Trotsky, 1921-1929. London and New York: Oxford Univ. Press. DEUTSCHER, ISAAC 1963 The Prophet Outcast: Trotsky, 1929-1940. London and New York: Oxford Univ. Press. EASTMAN, MAX 1925 Leon Trotsky: The Portrait of a Youth. New York: Greenberg. HARVARD UNIVERSITY, LIBRARY 1959 Guide to the Papers of Leon Trotsky and Related Collections in the Harvard College Library. Unpublished manuscript. LEVINE, ISAAC D. 1959 The Mind of an Assassin. New York: Farrar. WOLFE, BERTRAM D. (1948) 1964 Three Who Made a Revolution: A Biographical History. 4th rev. ed. New York: Dial.
TROTTER, WILFRED Wilfred Batten Lewis Trotter (1872-1939) was born at Coleford in Gloucestershire, England, and entered University College, London, as a medical student in 1908. He became a distinguished surgeon and teacher of surgery. His most important research in the field of surgery was a repetition of Sir Henry Head's experiment on the restoration of cutaneous sensibility after section of a sensory nerve fiber. In this experiment he reached conclusions somewhat different from those of Head.
TRUSTEESHIP In 1931 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society, and in 1935 he became professor of surgery in University College Hospital. Trotter's claim to fame, however, does not rest principally on his distinction as a surgeon. He became known to the world outside medicine in 1916, when he published a book entitled Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War. This book aroused much interest and exerted a widespread influence on both social scientists and the general public. Social science was not at this time a new interest to Trotter; in 1908 and 1909 he had already published two articles on this subject, which, in 1916, became the first two chapters of his book. The end of World War I led to the issue of a new edition that included an illuminating section on prejudice (see especially pages 173-180, "Postscript of 1919" in 1953 edition). In the year before his death, the imminence of World War n led him to write the press two letters which showed that his interest in social science and its application to practical social problems had not ceased. The essence of Trotter's thought was that there is a herd instinct leading animals to congregate and determining their behavior with respect to their own kind, that the nature of this herd instinct can be revealed by studying the gregarious animals, and that, since man also is a gregarious animal, his behavior can be predicted and controlled by means of the knowledge so gained. In the years immediately following its publication, Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War was widely read, discussed, and quoted, but it has had little lasting influence. Its immediate success may have resulted not only from its real merits of bold thinking and forceful presentation, but also from its topicality and the hope it held out for a rational and scientific approach to the problems that led to wars. Since that time, however, the development of the social sciences has followed lines other than those envisaged by Trotter. Instead of speculating about the instinctive basis of social behavior, social scientists now make actual studies of the behavior of groups. Trotter's book, read now, seems oddly speculative and remote from any systematic social observation and unduly colored by the author's own prejudices. These factors have dated his book, yet Trotter has a real claim to be considered one of the pioneers of scientific social study. He was important as one of the first to realize the necessity of providing a scientific basis for the understanding of social facts. He may well have been mistaken in what he chose as the appropriate road to this goal;
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he was surely right in emphasizing the importance of the goal. In that emphasis lies the contribution for which he deserves to be remembered. R. H. THOULESS [See also COLLECTIVE BEHAVIOR.] WORKS BY TROTTER
1908
Herd Instinct and Its Bearing on the Psychology of Civilised Man. Sociological Review 1:227-248. 1909 Sociological Application of the Psychology of Herd Instinct. Sociological Review 2:36-54. (1916) 1953 Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War: 1916-1919. Edited by R. W. Chapman. New York: Macmillan. -> First published as Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War. 1942 Collected Papers. Oxford Univ. Press. SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY
ELLIOTT, T. R. 1941 Wilfred Batten Lewis Trotter: 1872-1939. Royal Society of London, Obituary Notices of Fellows 3:325-344. -> Contains a comprehensive bibliography.
TRUNCATION AND CENSORSHIP See under STATISTICAL ANALYSIS, SPECIAL PROBLEMS OF.
TRUSTEESHIP The concept of trusteeship as understood in contemporary international relations is best expressed in article 73 of the United Nations Charter. By the terms of this article, member states of the United Nations recognize the principle that the interests of the inhabitants of dependent territories "are paramount, and accept as a sacred trust the obligation to promote to the utmost" their "well-being." According to article 73, this obligation includes ensuring the "political, economic, social, and educational advancement" of the inhabitants of dependent territories and their "just treatment" and "protection against abuses." It also commits the administering states to develop "self-government" in the dependent territories and to take "due account of the political aspirations of the peoples." In order to ensure the fulfillment of these goals, contemporary trusteeship seeks? to provide varying measures of international supervision. History. The concept of trusteeship involves a continuation and an expansion of the concept and system of mandates set forth in article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations and of the requirement in article 23(b) that League members "secure just treatment" for the native inhabitants in their dependent territories.
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The International Labour Organisation (ILO) provided another source for the contemporary concept of trusteeship. Starting in 1930, the ILO adopted a series of conventions designed to establish standards for the treatment of indigenous inhabitants in dependent territories, a movement which culminated with the recommendation in 1944, and the adoption three years later, of the comprehensive Convention on Social Policy in NonMetropolitan Territories. Taking a longer and less formal view, one finds that the concept has much deeper origins. Imperialist acts and policies were often, if not usually, accompanied by statements concerning obligations toward the indigenous inhabitants, although scholars have disagreed concerning the sincerity, meaning, and strength of these declarations and their precise relationship to modern trusteeship. Nevertheless, as early as 1885, with the signature at the Berlin conference of the general act concerning the Congo basin, some obligations toward the inhabitants of dependent territories were stated in legal form, and five years later, at the Brussels conference, international machinery was created to facilitate the implementation of these and other obligations. Scholars have interpreted the development of the concept of trusteeship in varying ways. Some have seen it as a notable departure from past colonial policies and as a significant step in the direction of world order, while others have seen it merely as a fagade for the continuation of traditional imperial practices. Still others have advanced a full range of views between these two extremes. In terms of the effects of trusteeship, the first interpretation appears to have been closest to the mark. Whatever the motives of those who wrote the concept of trusteeship into various legal documents, in operation it appears to have led to improvements in colonial regimes and to have hastened the process of decolonization. It is worthy of note that improved colonial practices appear to have resulted in intensified demands for the liquidation of colonialism. The League of Nations Covenant prescribed extensive obligations only for the administration of dependent territories detached from the vanquished states in World War i, i.e., the mandates. A rather modest goal was set for all other areas. The concept of trusteeship as included in the United Nations Charter applied to all dependent territories. However, although the obligations and goals of trusteeship were universally applicable, the charter envisaged widely different degrees of international supervision. It divided dependent territories into
two categories: trust territories and non-self-governing territories. For the former, chapters xn and xni of the charter created an elaborate system of supervision, consisting primarily of the Trusteeship Council, which is composed of an equal number of administering and nonadministering states, including the five permanent members of the Security Council. For the other category, non-self-governing territories, member states were merely required to transmit to the secretary-general of the United Nations statistical and other information relating to economic, social, and educational conditions in the territories (Chapter xi). It is significant, though, that the General Assembly's Fourth Committee, where matters relating to both systems are considered, was named simply the Trusteeship Committee. Which regimen applied to any given dependent territory depended upon the administering state, since the decision to place a territory within the trusteeship system was a voluntary one. In theory, all dependent territories were eligible for the trusteeship system, although article 77 of the charter singled out former mandates and territories belonging to the defeated states of World War n as being pre-eminently eligible. Actually, only dependent territories falling into these two categories have been placed within the trusteeship system. In 1947 the General Assembly failed to adopt a resolution proposed by India expressing the hope that administering states would propose trusteeship agreements for other dependent territories. Thus, under both the League of Nations and the United Nations, the most extensive commitments have applied only to dependent territories detached from states defeated in the two world wars. On the other hand, the supervisory and enforcement machinery of the International Labour Organisation has applied equally, regardless of the status of the territory before the League or the UN, if the administering state has ratified the relevant conventions. Eleven territories were eventually placed within the trusteeship system. One of these, the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, under United States administration, was designated as a strategic area under the special provisions outlined in articles 82 and 83, which had been inserted in the charter to accommodate American wishes. (The United States may restrict access to the territory, and it need not extend the economic privileges it exercises there to other states.) Ultimate supervisory authority with respect to this territory rests with the Security Council rather than the General Assembly, which has this authority in all other cases. This authority is relevant and exercised particularly at the time
TRUSTEESHIP of the approval and the termination of the trusteeship agreement. The Security Council, however, transferred routine supervisory functions with respect to the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands to the Trusteeship Council. The UN's supervision of all eleven territories has been quite similar. The trusteeship system thus included only a small fraction of the territories and peoples under colonial rule at the conclusion of World War n. However, the system appears to have had a broader impact than its limited application would indicate. Seven of the trust territories were grouped, for administrative purposes, with non-self-governing territories. Consequently, the UN has often considered issues affecting the latter as well. More importantly, developments in the trust territories inevitably have had an impact in other dependent areas. The system in action. Over the years an elaborate system has been developed, one which has allowed much more extensive contacts than were possible under the League of Nations' mandates system. The administering authorities are required to submit annual reports on the administration of the territories. These reports are based on a questionnaire prepared by the Trusteeship Council, with special questions prepared for certain individual territories. When the Trusteeship Council considers a report, a special representative of the administering authority, often the highest-ranking administrative official in the trust territory, attends the sessions for the purpose of making statements and answering questions. In addition, written and oral petitions concerning the trust territories can be submitted to the United Nations, and the United Nations can dispatch special and periodic visiting missions to the trust territories. Through these several devices, the United Nations has maintained close contact with the inhabitants of the trust territories and with the individuals responsible for their administration. This close contact has greatly contributed to the trusteeship system's effectiveness. As applied to Somaliland, the trusteeship system had certain additional special features. This was a consequence of the General Assembly's role in bringing the territory into the system and of the fact that Italy, the defeated administrator of the territory, was allowed to resume administrative responsibilities. Italy agreed to be aided and advised in the administration of the territory by an advisory council composed of representatives of Colombia, Egypt, and the Philippines. The most important special feature was that the trusteeship agreement was limited to a ten-year period after
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its approval by the General Assembly on December 2, 1950. At the expiration of this period Somaliland had to be given independence. In no other case would the administering authorities allow a final target date for independence to be established. At the time that the United Nations Charter was drafted, it was generally expected that all League of Nations mandates would be placed within the trusteeship system, other than Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Trans-Jordan, and Palestine, which had already gained, or were about to gain, independence. The exception was South-West Africa, a mandate of the Union of South Africa. The General Assembly sought, through a series of resolutions, to induce the Union of South Africa to place South-West Africa within the trusteeship system. After the futility of these efforts became apparent, and on the basis of an advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice issued in 1950, the General Assembly, starting in 1953, has established a series of committees in an attempt to exercise a measure of international supervision over the administration of the territory. Since the Union of South Africa's willingness to cooperate with these bodies has been severely circumscribed, their effectiveness has been extremely limited. General Assembly resolutions sharply critical of aspects of the administration of the territory, especially of the application of the Union's apartheid policy, have had little effect. Starting with the first session, there has been pressure in the General Assembly to create machinery so that non-self-governing territories would be subject to almost the same measure of international supervision as trust territories. This pressure would have existed in any case, given the anticolonial bias of the General Assembly, but it probably gained strength because of the limited application of the trusteeship system. Article 73(e), which required administering states to submit statistical and other information relating to economic, social, and educational conditions in their nonself-governing territories, has provided a basis for action by the General Assembly. The initial step was the creation of a committee, composed of an equal number of administering and nonadministering states, to examine and consider this information. The Committee on Information from Non-SerfGoverning Territories sought to imitate the Trusteeship Council. It prepared a standard form, which resembled the Council's questionnaire, for administering states to follow in submitting information. Its recommendations have paralleled those of the
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Trusteeship Council. Attempts were made to give the committee the right to receive petitions and dispatch visiting missions, but these efforts were unsuccessful. Some administering states did, however, respond to the urgings of the General Assembly and include in their delegations to the committee representatives of the indigenous inhabitants of their non-self-governing territories and specialists on various aspects of administration. Although article 73(e) does not require the submission of information on constitutional and political developments in the non-self-governing territories, the General Assembly always encourages the administering states to supply such material, and since 1962 all states do so. Beyond creating the Committee on Information, the General Assembly assumed the power of ruling on whether or not administering states should transmit or could cease transmitting information on specific territories. Portugal alone has defied the General Assembly and refused to submit information, insisting that its overseas territories are not colonies, but integral parts of the state. When dependent territories were given independence or were fully integrated on equal terms into independent states, the General Assembly raised no objection to the administering state's ceasing to transmit information. Cases which did not involve either of these solutions were controversial. The aims of the General Assembly with respect to both trust territories and non-self-governing territories have been similar. They have included improving colonial practices in various ways, eliminating all racial discrimination, and, above all, liquidating colonialism. In this sense the United Nations has differed from the League of Nations, for the concept of trusteeship as applied in the League focused principally on the first and to a much lesser extent on the second and third of these goals. The activities of other international organizations in this field have generally followed the League pattern, although in July 1944 the International Labour Organisation proclaimed that it had "embarked on a process of 'decolonization' " (1944b, p. 27). The Trusteeship Council and the Committee on Information have broadly shared the General Assembly's understanding of trusteeship. However, since the administering powers have been in a considerably stronger position in these two bodies, they have taken a somewhat more sanguine view of the adequacy of existing colonial practices and have made considerably more modest demands with respect to the pace of decolonization. In addition, these two bodies have been more seriously con-
cerned about the nature of the political system of the emerging states than the General Assembly, which has been content to advocate the principles of the plebiscite and universal suffrage. Thus the UN's handling of its trusteeship functions had been characterized by tension between the organs principally concerned. From the first session, those with anticolonial views have had numerical superiority in the General Assembly, and as the UN's membership has grown, so has the relative voting strength of this group. However, since the effectiveness of the UN's activities has depended on the voluntary compliance of the administering states, there have always been distinct limits as to how far this voting strength could be pressed. In specific terms, although the anticolonial group could vote actions which might alienate minor colonial powers, such as Belgium and Portugal, they could not afford to alienate the major administering states, in particular the United Kingdom. Starting in 1960, the tone and tempo of the United Nations proceedings with respect to its trusteeship functions has changed sharply. The increasingly rapid liquidation of colonialism in Africa, marked that year by the granting of independence to the French African territories and the former Belgian Congo, signified the acceptance by the administering states of a rate of decolonization which they hitherto had resisted. Upon entering the United Nations, as seventeen did that year, the emerging states swelled the anticolonial majority. As more and more trust territories attained the ultimate goals of the system, the importance of the Trusteeship Council faded. The first major sign of the change was the passage of General Assembly Resolution 1514 (xv), which requested administering states to take "immediate steps" to transfer "all powers" to the peoples of trust and non-self-governing territories. In 1961 a special committee was created to examine and to make recommendations and suggestions concerning the implementation of this resolution. States holding anticolonial views were given a predominant position on the committee, which was given powers almost equivalent to those of the Trusteeship Council. In 1964 this committee assumed the functions of the Committee on Information, which was disbanded. Since 1960, the General Assembly has taken the view that the period of trusteeship is nearly over, and that colonialism should be liquidated as rapidly as possible. Evaluation. Assessments of the application of the concept of trusteeship are technically difficult and also raise various value-laden issues. Depend-
TRUSTEESHIP ing on their view of colonialism and their image of what attributes emerging states should have, scholars and statesmen have interpreted the record in widely different terms. Both the legality and the efficacy of the way in which the concept of trusteeship has been applied to non-self-governing territories have been hotly debated. Although the debate has been more moderate, the record of the trusteeship system in trust territories has also been controversial. Some have argued that the United Nations has done too much, while others have maintained that it has done too little. Similarly, some have felt that the administering states have more than fulfilled their obligations with respect to both the indigenous inhabitants of dependent territories and the international community, while others have thought that they have been laggard. Of course the debate has had other dimensions as well. Belgium, for example, has complained that the provisions of Chapter xi of the United Nations Charter have been applied only to dependent territories which are geographically separated from the administering state and has stated that they should also have been applied to dependent territories within states. The Trusteeship Council has been criticized because of the "political" nature of its proceedings and contrasted unfavorably with the Permanent Mandates Commission of the League, where a more "technical" atmosphere prevailed. This characteristic has been attributed to the fact that the Trusteeship Council is composed of representatives of states, while the Permanent Mandates Commission was composed of individuals appointed in their own capacity. The United Nations has been disparaged because it merely "ventilates" existing colonial practices, rather than suggests constructive alternatives, and shows little concern for the political structure of emerging states. The lack of objective standards by which to measure achievements and the failure to construct such criteria or even to measure progress in dependent territories against that in independent territories has often been decried; but little academic work has been done in this area. Most scholarship has concentrated on the historical description of the activities of the League of Nations and the United Nations and on the legal and formal aspects of the concept of trusteeship. Prominent among the explanations for this is the fact that formal and legal analyses are technically easier. They can be based principally on documentary sources, and they avoid difficult problems of establishing and delimiting interrelationships.
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The most that can be said, at present, concerning the effects of trusteeship is that it has altered the climate of opinion in the dependent territories, the administering states, and other countries. Although some steps have been made in the direction of determining more precisely through what means, in which directions, and with what effects the climate of opinion has been altered, this too remains an important task for future scholarship. HAROLD K. JACOBSON [See also INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION; INTERNATIONAL POLITICS. Other relevant material may be found in COLONIALISM; IMPERIALISM; NATION.! BIBLIOGRAPHY
BEIKOPOULOS, NIKOLAOS 1960 Traite de territoires dependants. Athens: Privately published. -» Volume 1, Le systeme de tutelle d'apres la Charte de San Francisco, was published in 1960 as the first part of a projected three-volume work. CHIDZERO, BARNARD T. G. 1961 Tanganyika and International Trusteeship. Oxford Univ. Press. ->• Issued under the auspices of the Royal Institute of International Affairs. CHOWDHURI, RAMENDRA N. 1955 International Mandates and Trusteeship Systems: A Comparative Study. The Hague: Nijhoff. CLAUDE, INIS L. (1956) 1964 Trusteeship as an Approach to Peace. Pages 318-343 in Inis L. Claude, Swords Into Plowshares: The Problems and Progress of International Organization. 3d ed., rev. New York: Random House. COLEMAN, JAMES S. 1956 Togoland. International Conciliation 509:3-91. EMERSON, RUPERT 1965 Colonialism, Political Development, and the UN. International Organization 19: 484-503. FINKLESTEIN, LAWRENCE S. 1955 Somaliland Under Italian Administration: A Case Study in United Nations Trusteeship. New York: Woodrow Wilson Foundation. FLETCHER-COOKE, JOHN 1959 Some Reflections on the International Trusteeship System, With Particular Reference to Its Impact on the Governments and Peoples of the Trust Territories. International Organization 13:422-430. Fox, ANNETTE BAKER 1950 United Nations and Colonial Development. International Organization 4:199—218. Fox, ANNETTE BAKER 1951 International Organization for Colonial Development. World Politics 3:340-368. GARDINIER, DAVID E. 1963 Cameroon: United Nations Challenge to French Policy. Oxford Univ. Press. HAAS, ERNST B. 1952 The Reconciliation of Conflicting Colonial Policy Aims: Acceptance of the League of Nations Mandate System. International Organization 6:521-536. HAAS, ERNST B. 1953 The Attempt to Terminate Colonialism: Acceptance of the United Nations Trusteeship System. International Organization 7:1—21. INTERNATIONAL LABOUR OFFICE 1944a Minimum Standards of Social Policy in Dependent Territories. International Labour Conference, 26th Session, Philadelphia, 1944. Report No. 5. Montreal: International Labour Office.
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INTERNATIONAL LABOUR OFFICE 1944b The Twentysixth Session of the International Labour Conference: Philadelphia, April to May 1944. International Labour Review 50, no. 1:1-39. JACOBSON, HAROLD KARAN 1962 The United Nations and Colonialism: A Tentative Appraisal. International Organization 16:37-56. MURRAY, JAMES N. 1957 The United Nations Trusteeship System. Illinois Studies in the Social Sciences, Vol. 40. Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press. RIVLIN, BENJAMIN 1955 Self-determination and Dependent Areas. International Conciliation 501:195271. HOWE, EDWARD T. 1964 The Emerging Anti-colonial Consensus in the United Nations. Journal of Conflict Resolution 8:209-230. SADY, EMIL J. 1957 The United Nations and Dependent Peoples. Pages 813-1017 in Robert E. Asher et al., The United Nations and Promotion of the General Welfare. Washington: Brookings Institution. TOUSSAINT, CHARMIAN EDWARDS 1956 The Trusteeship System of the United Nations. New York: Praeger. -> Published under the auspices of the London Institute of World Affairs. WRIGHT, QUINCY 1930 Mandates Under the League of Nations. Univ. of Chicago Press.
TUGAN-BARANOVSKII, MIKHAIL I. Mikhail I. Tugan-Baranovskii (1865-1919), Russian economist, writer on public policy, and economic historian, is internationally known for his contributions to business-cycle theory. Tugan-Baranovskii was born in Solyonoye near Kharkov in the Ukraine. In 1888 he was awarded a degree in the natural sciences and two years later received a degree in law and economics from Kharkov University. From 1895 on he was intermittently connected with St. Petersburg University, and in 1913 he was elected to the chair of political economy and statistics, but the government refused to endorse his election. He did take the chair in 1917, but after the Bolshevik revolution he moved to Kiev, where he became dean of the law faculty and a member of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. He also served as finance minister of the Ukrainian republic established in 1918. In 1889 Tugan-Baranovskii had married Lydia Karlovna Davydova, whose mother was the founder and owner of Mir Bozhii ("God's World"), a review with Marxist leanings. Through his wife's connections, Tugan-Baranovskii was launched into the world of St. Petersburg publicists and soon gained a pre-eminent position among them. Debate with Narodniki. Russian intellectual life since the 1860s had by and large been dominated by the Narodniki (populists). They believed that Russia could bypass capitalism altogether and could develop as a socialist country based on peasants,
who would be organized in communes, and cottage workers (kustars}, who would be organized in associations. However, vigorous economic activity in Russia during the 1890s and the impact of Marxist ideology caused the Narodniki to modify their views somewhat. From Marx they borrowed the idea that capitalism has an inherent tendency to undermine its own home market by creating a pauperized proletariat. The Narodniki argued that whereas advanced industrial nations counteracted this tendency by seeking foreign markets, backward Russia was hardly in a position to compete for such markets; that the Russian government was therefore bound to fail in its efforts to foster capitalism through tariffs and subsidies; and that Russian socialists must effect social change through the peasants and not through the factory workers. Tugan-Baranovskii, taking issue with the extreme and primitive underconsumption theories of the Narodniki and also drawing heavily on Marxist literature, evolved and sharpened his theories concerning the problems of a developing industrial economy in general and the problems of Russia's economic development in particular. His debate with the Narodniki was carried on at the meetings of the Free Economic Society in St. Petersburg and in the periodical literature. Tugan-Baranovskii's two most important books, which established his reputation as a scholar and with which he earned his master's and doctor's degrees (1894; 1898), both resulted from his desire to refute Narodnik theories about the future of Russia's economic development. Theory of crises. The first book, an examination of industrial crises in England, was a pioneer piece of historical investigation, based on research done in the British Museum and in Russian libraries. With Narodnik theories in mind, TuganBaranovskii showed that even in Britain, where the role of foreign trade was paramount, capitalism was the product of internal evolution and was based on the domestic market; he also showed that smallscale "independent" domestic industry inevitably collapsed under the impact of mechanized factory production, although small industry often continued to spring up at various stages of capitalistic development. In this book Tugan-Baranovskii also presented his main theoretical contribution, the disproportion ality theory of crises. According to this theory, crises arise when some sectors of industry are allowed to expand out of proportion to other sectors because of the irrational allocation of investment between the capital-goods industries and the consumer-goods industries. Tugan-Baranovskii believed
TUGAN-BARANOVSKII, MIKHAIL I. that the danger of such disproportion, and of a consequent crisis, arises only when capital has been newly accumulated, for then there is no sound basis in experience for estimating which sector will require new investment. Tugan extended his theory to account for entire business cycles as well as for crises by taking into account the workings of the credit system. He maintained that crises and depressions are periods during which idle loan capital accumulates and interest rates are low. Presently, new investment activity begins again, but the length of time required to complete many of the new projects is such that any latent disproportion in the allocation of the newly invested capital does not become evident until a considerable period of prosperity has been enjoyed. Only when the new projects are well under way does the disproportion come to the surface and lead again to the inevitable crisis. Critique of Marxism. Tugan-Baranovskifs interpretation of crises implied a fundamental criticism of Marxist theory and earned him the epithet "revisionist," although his critical approach to Marxism antedated the appearance of revisionism among Western Marxists. In one of his earliest articles, "Uchenie o predel'noi poleznosti khoziaistvennykh blag" (1890; "The Doctrine of Marginal Utility of Economic Goods"), Tugan-Baranovskii attempted to revise Marxist theory by arguing that marginal utility theory and the labor theory of value supplement each other. His unorthodox approach to Marxism can also be seen in his early biographical sketches of P. J. Proudhon and J. S. Mill (1891; 1892). Indeed, he was one of a group of intellectuals and publicists known as the Legal Marxists. While it is commonly thought that they were called Legal Marxists either because they refrained from illegal activities or because they published their works only in legal publications, neither view is, according to R. Kindersley, quite correct: instead, he believes they were called Legal Marxists because of their strict intellectual honesty (1962). Tugan-Baranovskii rejected the two explanations of crises that Marx had advanced. The first explanation, that crises are produced because the rate of profit falls as the proportion of capital increases, he dismissed as not in accordance with observed fact. In Theoretische Grundlagen des Marxismus (1905a), he argued that according to Marx's own labor theory of value, a rising organic composition of capital, far from leading to a falling rate of profit as Marx supposed, must lead to a rising rate of profit. The second Marxist explanation, that crises result from underconsumption by the masses, he disposed of by arguing that production creates its
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own demand and that hindrances to the expansion of capitalism lie not in consumer demand but in production. Unlike Marx, Tugan-Baranovskii did not believe that the breakdown of capitalism is an economic necessity. Assessment of the disproportionality theory. Already during Tugan-Baranovskii's lifetime, Russian industrialization policy developed along lines he considered possible. Later, during the Stalin era, large-scale expansion of productive capacity was planned and achieved without a proportionate increase in the effective demand of the final consumer, vindicating Tugan-Baranovskii's belief that production rather than consumer demand is crucial for expansion. It would appear, political overtones apart, that his analysis may be of value to developing countries in the early stages of industrialization. There is, however, the danger that the expansion of producer-goods industries will be carried out too consistently or too long, for reasons of strategy or prestige. When Tugan-Baranovskii's work became known in its German translation, it was at once acclaimed as a positive contribution to business-cycle theory. Werner Sombart (1904) called Tugan-Baranovskii the father of new cycle theory. Arthur Spiethoff, Gustav Cassel, Ludwig Pohle, and many others are known to have been influenced by Tugan-Baranovskii's theory and to have used it as the point of departure for their studies of the causation of crises. In the Treatise on Money, Keynes indicated his strong sympathy "with that school of writers of which Tugan-Baranovskii was the first and the most original" (1930, vol. 2, p. 100). Two writers of such disparate views as Paul M. Sweezy and Joseph A. Schumpeter have stressed the originality of the disproportionality theory. In particular, Schumpeter highlighted the importance of TuganBaranovskifs emphasis on the distinction between the reactions of producer-goods industries and consumer-goods industries to the swings of the cycle (1954, p. 1126). History of Russian industry. Tugan-Baranovskii's second major work, Geschichte der russischen Fabrik (1898), traced the development of largescale industry in Russia since the seventeenth century. He argued that contrary to common belief the industries fostered by Peter the Great were not hothouse growths. They had been preceded by the industries of the seventeenth century, and behind these lay a fairly substantial capital accumulation resulting from the commerce of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. With the underconsumption theories of the Narodniki in mind, Tugan-Baranovskii produced statistics showing that the cyclical
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fluctuations in Russian industry, above all in the capital-goods industries, were more closely related to cyclical fluctuations in Great Britain than they were to the harvest results in Russia. In his description of the history of cottage industry and its relation to factory production, Tugan-Baranovskii aimed at disposing of the Narodnik idea of the peculiar role of cottage industry in Russia. Yet his research into the Russian factory during the nineteenth century led him to conclusions that could easily be construed as supporting the Narodnik idea that Russia's economy was different from other European economies: he found that while the number of industrial workers had increased, the number of workers per plant was declining compared with the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. However, Tugan-Baranovskii insisted that what was happening in Russia was due to special circumstances that would cease to operate as the economy expanded. Among these circumstances were a shortage of capital, difficulties of transportation that isolated regional markets, and, above all, the low technological level of the individual plant. Where machinery began to be used, as in the spinning industry, the tendency toward dispersal was much less marked. Tugan-Baranovskii argued that the Russian entrepreneur who dispersed production and the Western entrepreneur who concentrated production were prompted by the same capitalistic motive: both were trying to reduce overhead in order to maximize profit. Soviet writers have ascribed Tugan-Baranovskii's findings to an incorrect interpretation of statistical data that led him to classify many small workshops as factories. Although the statistics at his disposal were far from perfect, it is unlikely that a man of his experience would have made such a fundamental error, especially since his findings played into the hands of the Narodniki. Despite Soviet criticism of Tugan-Baranovskii's theories, Geschichte der russischen Fabrik has been reprinted several times in the Soviet Union. Later views. In the first years of the twentieth century, under the influence of the German criticism of Marxism, the spread of Neo-Kantian philosophy in Russia, and the psychological crisis created by the death of his wife, Tugan-Baranovskii consciously abandoned not only Marxist economics, which he had never fully accepted, but also the general philosophical determinism that Marxism implies. He still called himself a socialist but asserted that he found Utopian socialism more scientific than Marx's scientific socialism. He rejected the concept of class struggle and stressed the im-
portance of moral and psychological factors in social relationships. After the 1905 revolution he concerned himself with such topical questions as land reform, currency problems, and, above all, cooperation. He was the editor of Vestnik kooperatsii and wrote a valuable study on the theory of cooperation (1916). OLGA CRISP [For the historical context of Tugan-Baranovskii's work, see the biography of MARX; for discussion of the subsequent development of his ideas, see BUSINESS CYCLES; INDUSTRY, SMALL; and the biographies of CASSELL; SPIETHOFF.] WORKS BY TUGAN-BARANOVSKII
1890
Uchenie o predel'noi poleznosti khoziaistvennykh blag (The Doctrine of the Marginal Utility of Economic Goods). luridicheskii vestnik 10:192-230. 1891 P. Zh. Prudon, ego zhizn i obshchestvennaia deiatel'nost': Biograficheskii ocherk (P. J. Proudhon, His Life and Social Activity: A Biographical Sketch). St. Petersburg: Erlich. 1892 D. S. Mill: Ego zhizn i ucheno-literaturnaia deiatel'nost' (J. S. Mill: His Life and His Scientific and Literary Activity). St. Petersburg: Pavlenkov. (1894) 1913 Les crises industrielles en Angleterre. 2d ed. Paris: Giard & Briere. -> First published as Promyshlennye krizisy v somemennoi Anglii, ikh prichiny i vliianie na narodnuiu zhizn. 1896 Ekonomicheskii faktor i idei (The Economic Factor and Ideas). Mir Bozhii [1896] no. 4:269-291. (1898) 1900 Geschichte der russischen Fabrik. Zeitschrift fur Social- und Wirthschaftsgeschichte, Erganzungshefte, No. 5-6. Berlin: Felber. -» First published as Russkaia fabrika v proshlom i nastoiashchem. A sixth Russian edition was published in 1934. (1903) 1907 Ocherki iz noveishei istorii politicheskoi ekonomii i sotsializma (Notes From the Recent History of Political Economy and Socialism). 4th ed. St. Petersburg: Aleksandrov. 1904a Bor'ba klassov, kak glavneishee soderzhanie istorii (Class War as the Major Content of History). Mir Bozhii [1904] no. 9:242-259. 1904b Psikhicheskie faktory obshchestvennogo razvitiia (Psychological Factors of Social Development). Mir Bozhii [1904] no. 8:2-28. 1905a Theoretische Grundlagen des Marxismus. Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot. -» Published in the same year as Teoriticheskiia osnovy marksizma. 1905b Zemel'naia reforma: Ocherk dvizheniia v pol'zu zemel'noi reformy i prakticheskie vyvody (Land Reform: An Outline of the Land Reform Movement and Practical Conclusions). St. Petersburg: Skorokhodov. (1906) 1910 Modern Socialism in Its Historical Development. London: Sonnenschein. -> First published as Sovremennyi sotsializm v svoem istoricheskom razvitii. (1909) 1918 Osnovy politicheskoi ekonomii (Foundations of Political Economy). 5th ed. Petrograd; Pravo. 1912 K luchshemu budushchemu (Toward a Better Future). St. Petersburg: Energiia. (1916) 1921 Sotsial'nyia osnovy kooperatsii (The Social Bases of Cooperation). 2d ed. Berlin: Knigoizdatel'stvo "Slovo."
TURGOT, ANNE ROBERT JACQUES SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY
HANSEN, ALVIN H. (1951) 1964 Business Cycles and National Income. Enl. ed. New York: Norton. -» Contains a detailed summary of Tugan-Baranovskii's business-cycle theory. KINDERSLEY, RICHARD 1962 The First Russian Revisionists: A Study of "Legal Marxism" in Russia. Oxford: Clarendon. KONDRATIEFF, N. D. 1923 Mikhail Ivanovich TuganBaranovskii. Petrograd: Izdatel'stvo "Kolos." MENDEL, ARTHUR P. 1961 Dilemmas of Progress in Tsarist Russia: Legal Marxism and Legal Populism. Russian Research Center Studies, No. 43. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. MOISEEV, MOISE 1932 L'evolution d'une doctrine: La theorie des crises de Tougan-Baranovsky et la conception moderne des crises economiques. Revue d'histoire economique et sociale 20:1-43. SCHUMPETER, JOSEPH A. (1954) 1960 History of Economic Analysis. Edited by E. B. Schumpeter. New York: Oxford Univ. Press. SOMBART, WERNER 1904 Die Storungen im deutschen Wirtschaftsleben wahrend den Jahren 1900ff. Verein fur Socialpolitik, Berlin, Schriften 113:121-137. SWEEZY, PAUL M. (1942)1956 The Theory of Capitalist Development: Principles of Marxian Political Economy. New York: Monthly Review Press. VLASENKO, VASILII E. Teorii deneg v Rossii: Konets xix— dooktiabrskii period xx veka. (Monetary Theories in Russia: End of the 19th Century-Pre-October Period of the 20th Century). Izdatel'stvo Kievskogo Univ.
TURGOT, ANNE ROBERT JACQUES Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, baron de 1'Aulne, French economic thinker, was born in Paris in 1727 and died there in 1781. His father had been prevot des marchands (something like head of the guilds), and this led Turgot to an early acquaintance with the bourgeois sector of society and to an intense preoccupation with and a liberal conception of contemporary economic problems. While still a student at the Sorbonne, he had expressed the conviction that reforms were needed to forestall revolution. Called to high office, he endeavored to modernize, and especially to liberalize, the French economy, but his work, which might well have prevented the cataclysm of 1789, was wrecked by vested interests. From 1761 to 1774 Turgot was chief administrative officer (intendant) of the district of Limoges, where he could study the ancien regime at its worst. The main reforms which he tried to effect were abolition of collective responsibility for the prestation of the tax called taille; adjusting the tax burden to ability to pay; replacement of the forced road-building and road-repair service (corvee} by paid work financed by monetary contributions; and a parallel change in the ancient obligation to trans-
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port troops. During the hunger crisis of the years 1769 to 1771, Turgot tried to prevail on the landed proprietors and rich farmers to keep on their laborers and maintain them until the next harvest, and he set up the Bureaux de Charite, through which the workless could find employment. When Louis xvi came to the throne in 1774, he called the energetic reformer into his ministry and soon gave him the key position of controleur general (minister of finance, trade, and public works). Turgot immediately freed the grain trade inside France from all interprovincial obstacles. Unfortunately, the harvest was exceptionally bad that year, and bread riots developed (known to history as the guerre des farines} that had to be put down by force. This was an inauspicious prelude to Turgot's most daring move, the so-called six edicts of 1776. Two of these enactments were downright revolutionary, one not only commuted the road-building services throughout France but, unlike the earlier reform in the Limousin, put the financial burden on the hitherto tax-free nobility; the other dissolved the guilds (maitrises and jurandes}, thus destroying the old trade monopolies and introducing the principle of free enterprise. These bitterly resented and resisted attacks on privilege were combined with enforcement of the strictest economy in public expenditure, all of which alienated the court and ultimately even the king. On May 12, 1776, Turgot was dismissed, and within a few weeks his legislation was very largely revoked. Albert Sorel characterized Turgot's short intervention as a demonstration both of the need for reforms and of the inability of the monarchy to carry them out (Sorel 1885, p. 213). Turgot's theoretical bent can be seen from the fact that his edicts were preceded by preambles outlining their theoretical justification. His basic attitude was formed by two influences, that of the reform mercantilist Vincent de Gournay and that of the physiocrat Quesnay. His most successful book, Reflections on the Formation and Distribution of Riches, which was published in 1769-1770, shows him as a physiocrat rather than as a reform mercantilist, but it is possible that the existing version was edited by the physiocrat Du Pont de Nemours. It was in any case characteristic of Turgot to speak of artisans and traders as a salaried, rather than a sterile, class. In his analysis of distribution, rent is equated with the physiocratic produit net. Wages are said to tend toward the minimum of subsistence. In the discussion of profits, stress is laid on the volume of real savings as the primary determinant of the
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rate of interest and on the presence of a risk premium as an important secondary ingredient. There is an occasional indication (although not in the Reflections') that Turgot was aware of the interdependence of prices, incomes, and population figures, and of the economy's inherent tendency toward equilibrium. In monetary theory Turgot was a defender of the metalist position. It proves his weakness as a thinker, however, that he could in one paragraph assert the impossibility of conventional money and in the next speak of using cowrie shells and apricot stones as the media of circulation. Turgot acknowledged that labor, as well as land, is productive, and at times he presented rudiments of a labor theory of value. He may therefore be regarded as a link in the chain from Locke to Marx and, more particularly, as figuring in the transition from Petty, Hutcheson, and Hume to Adam Smith (whom, incidentally, he met in 1765). In his more programmatic writings, notably "Memoire sur les prets d'argent" (1770a) and "Lettres sur la liberte du commerce des grains" (177 Qb}, Turgot advocated laissez-faire as the panacea for all ills. When he spoke of freedom, he usually spoke in superlatives. It is surprising to find so extreme and doctrinaire an attitude in a man of Turgot's wide practical experience, but it is a fact that he did not manage to combine his philosophical convictions with a sober sense of political possibilities and limitations. His failure was, in the last analysis, due to his belief that it would be possible to remove in a few days what had been growing for centuries. WERNER STARK [For the historical context of Turgot's work, see ECONOMIC THOUGHT, article on PHYSIOCRATIC THOUGHT; LAISSEZ-FAIRE; and the biographies of HUME; LOCKE; PETTY; QUESNAY; for discussion of the subsequent development of Turgot's ideas, see the biographies of MARX; SMITH, ADAM.] WORKS BY TURGOT
(1769-1770) 1898 Reflections on the Formation and Distribution of Riches, 1770. New York: Macmillan. -> First published as Reflexions sur la formation et la distribution des richesses. (1770a) 1919 Memoire sur les prets d'argent. Volume 3, pages 154-202 in Turgot, Oeuvres de Turgot et documents le concernant. Paris: Alcan. (1770&) 1919 Lettres sur la liberte du commerce des grains. Volume 3, pages 386, 393-398 in Turgot, Oeuvres de Turgot et documents le concernant. Paris: Alcan. The Life and Writings of Turgot, Comptroller-general of France, 1774-1776. Edited by W. Walker Stephens. London: Longmans, 1895. Oeuvres de Mr. Turgot, ministre d'etat, precedees et accom-
pagnees de memoires et de notes sur sa vie, son administration et ses ouvrages. Edited by P.-S. Du Pont de Nemours. 9 vols. Paris: Belin, 1808-1811. Oeuvres de Turgot. 2 vols. Collection des principaux economistes, Nos. 3 and 4. Paris: Guillaumin, 1844. Oeuvres de Turgot et documents le concernant, avec biographie et notes par G. Schelle. 5 vols. Paris: Alcan, 1913-1923. Textes choisis. Edited by Pierre Vigreux. Paris: Dalloz, 1947. SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY
DAKIN, DOUGLAS (1939) 1965 Turgot and the Ancien Regime in France. New York: Octagon. FAURE, EDGAR 1961 La disgrace de Turgot, 12 mai 1776. Paris: Gallimard. GIGNOUX, CLAUDE-JOSEPH 1945 Turgot. Paris: Fayard. SOREL, ALBERT 1885 L'Europe et la Revolution francaise. Vol. 2. Paris: Plon. WEDDIGEN, WALTER 1950 Anne Robert Jacques Turgot: Leben und Bedeutung des Finanzministers Ludwigs XVI; Unter Abdruck seiner noch heute wichtigen Schriften. Bamberg (Germany): Meisenbach.
TURNER, FREDERICK JACKSON Frederick Jackson Turner (1861-1932), American historian and originator of the "frontier" and "sectional" interpretations of United States history, was born in semipioneer conditions at Portage, Wisconsin. At the University of Wisconsin, where he earned his bachelor's degree in 1884 and his master's degree in 1888, he fell under the influence of William Francis Allen, a remarkable teacher who taught his young pupil the critical use of documents, instilled in him a belief in scientific method and multiple causation, and converted him to the view of society as a constantly evolving organism. His one year, 1888-1889, at the Johns Hopkins University, which awarded him a doctorate in 1890, was less fruitful, although his interest in economic history was quickened by Richard T. Ely and in nationalism by Woodrow Wilson. Turner took less kindly to the teachings of his principal instructor, Herbert Baxter Adams, who argued that all American institutions had evolved from "germs" in medieval Germany. Years later he wrote Carl Becker that his historical career "was pretty much a reaction from that due to my indignation" (Turner Papers, Henry E. Huntington Library, TU Box 34). The results of Turner's intellectual rebellion were three remarkable essays prepared during his first years at Wisconsin, where he became a professor after Allen's premature death in 1889. In "The Significance of History" ([1891k] 1961, pp. 11-27) he set forth his historical credo, pleading for the use of scientific and interdisciplinary tech-
TURNER, FREDERICK JACKSON niques, arguing for the production of "usable" studies pertinent to present-day problems, setting forth in classic form the doctrine of relativism, and urging the study of all phases of human behavior rather than politics alone. Within a few pages Turner had anticipated the "New History" and presented sound arguments for most of the philosophical and methodological innovations popularized since that time. His second essay, "Problems in American History" ([1892] 1961, pp. 28-36), demanded a new approach to the study of the American past: historians must look behind institutional and constitutional forms to discover "the vital forces that call these organs into life and shape them to meet changing conditions"; they must use the tools of natural scientists to determine the impact of physical conditions on national growth; and they must weigh the relative influence of the environment and the European heritage in shaping the distinctive features of the civilization of the United States. The third paper, "The Significance of the Frontier in American History" ([1893] 1961, pp. 3762), read at a meeting of the American Historical Association in Chicago in 1893, isolated the segment of the past that he had himself chosen to investigate and explain. Many of the distinctive features noticeable in American traits and institutions, he believed, stemmed from a unique environment and particularly from the presence of a receding frontier. "The existence of an area of free land," he wrote, "its continuous recession, and the advance of American settlement westward, explain American development" (1920, p. 1). The repeated rebirth of civilization among pioneers whose cultural patterns were disrupted by contact with raw nature and by mingling with other settlers from different backgrounds helped endow the American people with characteristics and values different from those of their European ancestors. Among these Turner listed coarseness and strength, an inventive turn of mind, physical and social mobility, a restless energy, a strong spirit of selfreliance, dominant individualism, an emphasis on materialism, and, especially, a quickened faith in democracy and the national destiny. On the frontier, he insisted, an "Americanization" of men and institutions took place. From the turn of the century to the 1930s the frontier interpretation dominated historical thought. Disciples less cautious than their master explained every phase of the American past, from literature to politics, as a result of the pioneering experience, converting the American Historical Association into one big "Turnerverein." Turner himself was
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elevated to the pinnacle of his profession: universities sought his services, and his fellow historians made him president of their national association in 1910. When he finally left Wisconsin for Harvard University that year, he did so only as a protest against the anti-intellectual tendencies of some of the Wisconsin regents who seemed to be threatening scholarship in its pure forms. In the meantime his own interests had turned to a second explanation of the uniqueness of the American past: the sectional hypothesis. As population moved westward, he reasoned, successive geographic regions were occupied, each differing from the others in climate, soil, topography, and other natural conditions. And as each of these "sections" developed economic enterprises suitable to its environment, it sought to shape national legislation for its own benefit. Turner believed that the political history of the United States could be understood only as a series of adjustments and compromises between sectional interests. This was the view he stressed in the one book he completed during his lifetime, Rise of the New West: 18191829 (1906) and in the volume that occupied his remaining years and was published posthumously, The United States, 1830-1850: The Nation and Its Sections (1935). Turner retired from Harvard University in 1924 to dedicate full time to this study, living first in Madison, then in 1927 moving to a post as senior research associate at the Henry E. Huntington Library. His death in 1932 spared him knowledge of the assault on his theories that gained momentum during the 1930s and continued for two decades. Younger historians, rebelling against concepts that stressed ruralism and nationalism in an age of mechanization and internationalism, charged him with distorting American values by overstressing the distinctive features of the nation's past and labeled him a monocausationist and geographic determinist. This wave of anti-Turnerism ran its course by the 1950s. It has been followed by a new period in which scholars in several disciplines have begun testing aspects of his frontier hypothesis, a process seemingly destined to continue for many years before the exact effect of the pioneering experience can be appraised. The frontier is today accepted by historians as one—but only one—of the many forces responsible for America's civilization, a judgment with which Turner would have thoroughly agreed. RAY A. BILLINGTON [For the historical context of Turner's work, see the biographies of LORIA and ROBINSON.]
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TYLOR, EDWARD BURNETT WORKS BY TURNER
189la The Character and Influence of the Indian Trade in Wisconsin: A Study of the Trading Post as an Institution. Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, 9th ser., Nos. 11-12. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press. (1891&) 1961 The Significance of History. Pages 11-27 in Frederick Jackson Turner, Frontier and Section: Selected Essays. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. (1892) 1961 Problems in American History. Pages 28-36 in Frederick Jackson Turner, Frontier and Section: Selected Essays. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. (1893) 1961 The Significance of the Frontier in American History. Pages 37-62 in Frederick Jackson Turner, Frontier and Section: Selected Essays. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. (1906) 1961 Rise of the New West: 1819-1829. Gloucester, Mass.: Smith. -» A paperback edition, which has a new foreword and a bibliography by Ray Allen Billington, was published in 1962 by Collier. 1912 TURNER, FREDERICK JACKSON; CHANNING, EDWARD; and HART, ALBERT B. Guide to the Study and Reading of American History. Boston: Ginn. (1920) 1963 The Frontier in American History. New York: Holt. (1932) 1950 The Significance of Sections in American History. Gloucester, Mass: Smith. ->• Essays edited by Max Farrand and Avery Craven. (1935) 1950 The United States, 1830-1850. With an introduction by Avery Craven. Gloucester, Mass.: Smith. -> Published posthumously. The Early Writings of Frederick Jackson Turner. Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1938. Frederick Jackson Turner's Legacy: Unpublished Writings in American History. Edited by Wilbur R. Jacobs. San Marino (Calif.): Huntington Library, 1965. Frontier and Section: Selected Essays. With an introduction by Ray Allen Billington. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1961. SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY
BECKER, CARL 1927 Frederick Jackson Turner. Pages 273-318 in Howard W. Odum (editor), American Masters of Social Science: An Approach to the Study of the Social Sciences Through a Neglected Field of Biography. New York: Holt. BENSON, LEE 1960 Turner and Beard: American Historical Writing Reconsidered. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. BILLINGTON, RAY A. 1962a Young Fred Turner. Wisconsin Magazine of History 46:38-48. BILLINGTON, RAY A. 1962b Frederick Jackson Turner Comes to Harvard. Massachusetts Historical Society, Proceedings 74:51-83. BILLINGTON, RAY A. 1966 America's Frontier Heritage. New York: Holt. CRAVEN, AVERY 1937 Frederick Jackson Turner. Pages 252-270 in The Marcus W. Jernegan Essays in American Historiography. Edited by William T. Hutchinson. Univ. of Chicago Press. CURTI, MERLE 1931 The Section and the Frontier in American History: The Methodological Concepts of Frederick Jackson Turner. Pages 353-367 in Social Science Research Council, Committee on Scientific Method in the Social Sciences, Methods in Social Science: A Case Book. Univ. of Chicago Press. CURTI, MERLE (1949) 1961 Frederick Jackson Turner. Pages 175-204 in Wisconsin State Historical Society, Wisconsin Witness to Frederick Jackson Turner: A
Collection of Essays on the Historian and the Thesis. Madison: The Society. HARPER, N. D. 1951 Turner the Historian: "Hypothesis" or "Process"? With Special Reference to Frontier Society in Australia. University of Kansas City Review 18:76-86. JACOBS, WILBUR R. 1954 Frederick Jackson Turner: Master Teacher. Pacific Historical Review 23:49-58. MOOD, FULMER 1939 The Development of Frederick Jackson Turner as a Historical Thinker. Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Transactions 34:283-352. MOOD, FULMER 1951 The Origin, Evolution, and Application of the Sectional Concept: 1750-1900. Pages 5-98 in Merrill Jensen (editor), Regionalism in America. Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press.
TYLOR, EDWARD BURNETT Sir Edward Burnett Tylor (1832-1917), the English evolutionary anthropologist, was born in London in the year of the Reform Bill. What little we know of his early years and family background places him squarely within the social milieu of the mid-Victorian liberal middle class. Son of a Quaker brassfounder, Tylor was educated along with the sons of other successful Quaker businessmen at Grove House in Tottenham. At 16, he was taken from school to join the family firm. His entrance into the business world coincided with the end of a thirty-year period of social instability, and he soon witnessed that symbolic triumph of middle-class endeavor, laissez-faire policy, and English civilization: the Great Exhibition of 1851 (at which his elder brother Alfred was a juror). Four years later, symptoms of consumption forced his withdrawal from business. Supported by "a modest competence," he was thenceforth to devote his life to travel and study and to participate in the life of the English intellectual aristocracy that by 1860 had developed from prospering Evangelical and Nonconformist families. To "Anahuac" and ethnology. To improve his health, Tylor left England in 1855 for an American tour. Riding on a Havana omnibus the following spring he encountered Henry Christy, a middleaged Quaker banker who was indulging his ethnological and antiquarian interests on an extended trip through the New World. Their acquaintance led to a four-month excursion in Mexico. Christy spent his time enlarging his collection of antiquities, while Tylor observed the details of Mexican daily life and custom. But although the Mexican excursion may have given his Wanderjahr something of the character of an anthropological field trip, Tylor's awareness of his vocation seems to have developed only gradually. Aside from the facts that in 1858 he married
TYLOR, EDWARD BURNETT Anna Fox and that he spent time traveling in Europe, we know little of the years in which Tylor's ethnological interests were germinating. But for men of antiquarian and ethnological bents like Christy and Tylor, it was a period of intense excitement. The years 1858 and 1859 witnessed not only the publication of the Darwinian theory, but also the discovery of flint tools in association with extinct animals at Brixham Cave in Devonshire and the confirmation by British investigators of Jacques Boucher de Perthes's similar findings in the Somme Valley. The net effect was the opening of a new vista on the antiquity of man and the meaning of contemporary "savagery." Christy's previously diffuse antiquarianism found a more exact focus in what his necrologists called "the close resemblance between the lost races of primitive man and the savage life of our own time." Christy was active in the revival of the Ethnological Society of London, whose meetings Tylor had begun to attend by 1862. In the years before his death in 1865, Christy participated with the noted French archeologist Edouard Lartet in an extended excavation of caves in the Dordogne Valley. In view of Tylor's acknowledged debt to Christy and his later comment that he had followed "all the details of [Christy's] ethnological researches in these years," it seems reasonable to infer that Tylor was stimulated by the same events and motivated by the same purpose along a parallel path from incidental ethnography to theoretical ethnology (see Gruber 1965; Burrow 1966). In 1861 Tylor published an account of his Mexican trip. For the most part, Anahuac is simply a well-wrought travelogue. Nevertheless, certain characteristics of the future anthropologist are already apparent: the book has a vivid sense of cultural differences, an intermittent concern with ethnological controversies, glimpses of the later concept of "survival," and a cautious, empirical, and rudimentary anthropological relativism mixed unashamedly with a humane but assured ethnocentrism. Tylor was preoccupied by the backward, illiberal, unEnglish elements in Mexican life, and he ended his book by predicting the ultimate absorption of Mexico by the United States. Although Tylor published little in the early 1860s, he was busy moving beyond the ethnological asides of Anahuac to the more systematic Researches Into the Early History of Mankind, which he published in 1865. The late 1860s were a period of intense activity for him, and in 1871 the ideas on the evolution of religion and culture that he had sketched in a number of articles and lectures were given full elaboration in his two-
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volume masterwork, Primitive Culture. This was his major anthropological contribution, and it was recognized the same year by his election as a fellow of the Royal Society. Positive science and religious orthodoxy. Published at the end of a decade of polemics about evolution, Primitive Culture is as much a cultural document as a scientific study. It can be understood only in relation to the major intellectual controversies of the third quarter of the nineteenth century. From 1830 on, Christian orthodoxy suffered a series of blows that eventually undermined not only belief in the inspiration and literal sense of the Bible and in the uniqueness of man as a vessel for a God-given soul, but also the more general, active, providential conception of nature, which largely governed the thinking of British scientists until 1859. From Sir Charles Lyell's statement of the principle of uniformitarianism in the early 1830s, through Robert Chambers' popular evolutionism and J. S. Mill's confident reassertion in the early 1840s of the principle that the actions of human beings are subject to invariable laws, through Darwin's implicit denial of God's intervention in the history of nature and the polemic over the "ape theory" in the 1860s, and on down to the declaration of warfare on religion by Tyndall and others in the 1870s, what was at first simply a fault line between different religious points of view within science widened into what seemed to many a chasm between science and religion. Tylor was a young member of the generation of Thomas Huxley and Tyndall. Primitive Culture was, among other things, a rationalist assault on the very stronghold of religious orthodoxy: the divine inspiration of religious belief. As Tylor later expressed it in doggerel: Theologians all to expose— Tis the mission of Primitive Man. (Lang & Tylor 1883) Indeed, the foci of Tylor's anthropology—the applicability of scientific method to the study of man, man's great prehistoric antiquity, and man's development along progressive, uniformitarian rather than degenerational, providential lines—were all subjects of heated debate. It is in this broad context of the reassertion and development of the rationalist principles of the Enlightenment against the waning power of the early nineteenth-century religious revival that Tylor's work must be understood. Sources of Tylor's thought. Quaker humanitarianism was a major factor in the emergence of English ethnology in the 1830s; in Tylor's case the
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Quaker heritage expressed itself primarily in intellectual terms. The early nineteenth century was a period of Quaker decline in England, as the sons and daughters of the Quaker well-to-do broke down the barriers of the rigidified antiformalism that isolated them from the middle class at large. Some moved toward evangelicalism or the Church of England; others, following Mill's injunction to pursue the argument wherever it might lead, moved toward rationalism. Tylor took the latter course, but the traditional Quaker antagonism to systematic theology undoubtedly colored his conception of the "mission" of primitive man. This mission was of course evolutionist as well as antitheological: From a status like that of the Crees Our society's fabric arose. (Lang & Tylor 1883) However, Tylor's evolutionism was no simple reflection of Darwin's Origin, although his work was quickly incorporated into the body of Darwinian evolutionary thought. Tylor was also close to prehistoric archeology, and his brother Alfred was a geologist. But although he was undoubtedly much affected by recent advances in these fields, we must look beyond them for the roots of his uniformitarian search for prehistoric origins. There may have been German influences: Tylor knew comparative philology, especially as Anglicized by Max Miiller, and he had read Gustav Klemm's Allgemeine Culturgeschichte der Menschheit. But Klemm's cultural evolutionism was only part of a tradition that was more directly available to Tylor, who was, in any event, "not really happy with foreign tongues" (Lowie 1937, p. 13; Marett 1936, p. 28). The ultimate source of Tylor's evolutionism is suggested rather by his illuminating reference to the empiricism of Mill's System of Logic (Tylor 1871, vol. 1, p. 218); by his clear debt to Auguste Comte, whose theories Mill had introduced to England in 1844; and perhaps most revealingly, by the motto from Charles de Brosses's 1760 work, DM culte de dieux fetiches, on the title page of Primitive Culture-. "It is not in his possibilities, it is in man himself that man should be studied. The issue is not to imagine what he might have or ought to have done, but to look at what he does." Here is the germ of the uniformitarian view that the causal forces of the past are those visible in the present. Indeed, here is foreshadowed the social evolutionist conception that the development of all human social groups (composed as they are of beings with a common nature) normally follows a single gradual progressive pattern of development out of the natu-
ral state, that the rate of this progress is subject to circumstantial retardation, and that the stages of human development from savagery to European civilization can therefore be reconstructed scientifically beyond the reach of historical evidence by comparing the institutions of human groups coexisting in the present and arranging them in a sequence of "natural" development on the basis of their similarity to western European forms. Rooted in classical thought and Cartesian philosophy, this social evolutionary point of view was developed by the social scientists of the French and Scottish Enlightenment—Turgot, Condorcet, Ferguson, Smith. The evidence of racial diversity and the arguments of religious "degenerationists" tended in the first half of the nineteenth century to undermine the developmentalist assumption that all men share a uniform psychic nature that expresses itself in universal progress. Nevertheless, it was transmitted through this "period of doubt" and reasserted in the 1850s and 1860s by various writers who may loosely be termed "positivist"—among them Henry T. Buckle, Herbert Spencer, and, of course, Tylor. For these men, the assumption that civilized society has evolved by natural processes from origins similar to existing "savagery" was at once intellectual baggage and a polemical platform (see Bock 1956; Burrow 1966). Historical and "comparative" methods. Although his social evolutionism can be traced to eighteenthcentury roots, Tylor was affected also by the more orthodox historicism of the romantic period, which was concerned with re-creating the actual sequences of historical change rather than with deriving scientific laws of historical development. This historicism was reflected in the ethnological societies founded around 1840. They were more "diffusionist" than evolutionist; indeed; their central concern was the "origin and diffusion of the races of mankind." When, in the late 1860s, Tylor moved toward a more systematic evolutionism, he was in fact rebuked by the president of the Ethnological Society of London (Burrow 1966, pp. 122-123). Perhaps as a result of his contact with the ethnological tradition, Tylor's first major work, Researches Into the Early History of Mankind, escaped the frequent tendency of positivist social theory to subordinate historical fact to nomothetic ends. On the contrary, this work was largely an attempt to delineate the range of application of two methods in the study of civilization—the systematic comparison of like phenomena and detailed reconstruction of specific historical sequences. On the one hand, Tylor argued that detailed history is unnecessary "when a general law can be
TYLOR, EDWARD BURNETT inferred from a group of facts" (1865, p. 3). Over half the book was an application of the "comparative method" in seeking the origins of language, magic, and myth. Thus, the essential similarity of cultural manifestations among various tribes suggested to Tylor that gesture language and picture writing are "direct products of the human mind" under certain conditions and that magic is the outcome of the "very simple mental law" by which the untutored human mind tends to confuse objective phenomena with their associated subjective manifestations (names, images, and so forth). On the other hand, most of the phenomena of culture have "traveled [too] far from their causes" to be approached so directly in terms of general psychological laws. To trace their development the ethnologist must piece together their actual histories, yet without written records. Relying on the indirect evidence of "antiquities," Tylor demonstrated the world-wide progress from stone to metal and from fire drill to flint. But he argued that the use of such other materials of "culture history" as language and mythology depends on first answering the question whether similarities of custom and art result from independent invention by like minds in like conditions or from transmission and diffusion by blood relationship and social intercourse. Although he made abundant use of the data of independent invention to infer general laws of the mind, Tylor argued that such data have "no historical value whatever." His goal was rather to separate these data from the data of diffusion, to distinguish myths based on the observation or personification of natural phenomena—which recur independently all over the world among groups historically unconnected—from myths whose similarities are better explained by diffusion, and from actual historical traditions. When this was done, he could get on with the real job of using these actual historical traditions to reconstruct the course of man's early history, a process he felt would eventually tie together many races "whose history even the evidence of Language has not succeeded in bringing into connexion" (1865, p. 368). But although Tylor's Researches thus subordinated the "comparative method" of developmentalist social theory to the goal of specific historical reconstruction, he nevertheless offered support for several developmentalist assumptions that the racial heterodoxies and the religious orthodoxies of the pre-Darwinian nineteenth century had brought sharply under attack. The many evidences for independent invention buttressed the argument for the psychic and genetic unity of man against the polygenist argument that various groups of men
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were aboriginally distinct and unequal species, some of them incapable of progress. And in general, his Researches supported the developmentalist position against the attacks of religious orthodoxy. "Degenerationists" like Archbishop Whately had argued that savagery was the end product of decline rather than the starting point of progress and that no savage had ever advanced or could ever advance unaided to civilization. Granting that the early condition of the human mind was not exactly represented in any living tribe, Tylor argued that his Researches showed that the similarity was sufficient to justify the use of existing savage tribes as a basis "to reason upon." Furthermore, his consideration of the "Growth and Decline of Culture" (1865, pp. 252-290) showed that on the whole the history of mankind has been one of progressive development. Doctrine of survival and theory of animism. Although ostensibly carrying the Researches into other branches of thought and belief, art and custom, the purpose and method of Primitive Culture are in fact rather different. The change in focus is related to the scientific and religious controversies of the 1860s. Tylor's "Remarks on Language and Mythology as Departments of Biological Science" shows that his evolutionism, while rooted in an earlier tradition of social thought, was not unrelated to contemporary developments in biology. Here, Tylor argued that the "details of human culture should come under discussion as topics of biology, where . . . they must be treated as facts to be classified and referred to uniform and consistent laws" (1868, p. 120). During this period, the older attack against developmentalism fused with the anti-Darwinian polemic. Orthodox religionists argued that the moral or cultural qualities that distinguish man from beast are subject to neither the laws of progress and natural selection nor the jurisdiction of science. Given Tylor's strong commitment to both science and progress, it is not surprising that he took up the challenge. Primitive Culture was an attempt to demonstrate that human culture and above all human religion are products of a natural, regular, continuous, progressive, and law-abiding evolution of the mental capacities of the human animal in the social state and that this evolution is a proper subject of scientific study. In this context, Tylor's interest in the data of independent invention changed. Rather than separating out the products of psychic unity so that he might study man's history, he used them to demonstrate progress and to establish a "science of culture" based on the classification and comparison of ethnological facts (Smith 1933, pp. 116-183).
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The basic tool of the science of culture was the "comparative method," buttressed against the attacks of the degenerationists by Tylor's "doctrine of survivals" (1871, vol. 1, pp. 63-144). Antiquarians had long been fascinated by the irrationality and superstition in the folklore of European peasant life. But to Tylor's eminently rationalist mind, everything in the world of culture was intelligible because it had been created by intelligent men. Applying an archeological analogy, he treated old ideas as mutilated artifacts of an earlier stage of intellectual development. Thus he made European peasantry a link between savage man and civilized society and at the same time created a methodological tool of general applicability (Hodgen 1936). As Andrew Lang later suggested, the ethnologist was no longer compelled to seek reason where none existed: "The most irrationalseeming customs were the product of reason like our own, working on materials imperfectly apprehended, and under stress of needs which it is our business to discover, though they have faded from the memories of the advanced savages of today" [1907, p. 12; see also the biography of LANG]. Because man's reason did not advance at the same pace all over the world, it is possible to trace the spiritual culture of European man backward, through successive vestiges of past reason surviving in later ages as superstition, to a level analogous to that of contemporary savages. While Tylor's major methodological contribution in the late 1860s was the doctrine of survivals, his major theoretical contribution was the related concept of animism. Animism was religion in its minimal, most primitive, and, therefore, broadest form— "the belief in Spiritual Beings." As Tylor himself indicated, the idea can be traced back through Comte to de Brosses's notion of "fetishism." Tylor, however, went behind their idea that "man conceived of all external bodies as animated by a life analogous to his own" to the basis of this tendency within man himself, arguing that "a conception of the Human Soul is a crude but reasonable inference by primitive man from obvious phenomena"— dreams and visions, life and death. Simultaneously, "the notion of a ghost-soul as the animating principle of man" is "extended by easy steps to souls of lower animals, and even of lifeless objects" to provide a "complete philosophy of Natural Religion." The major part of Primitive Culture is an attempt, using the evidence of recurrence and survival, to trace the evolution of religious belief forward to the "outcome of the Animistic Philosophy" in the great monotheistic religions (1871; 1877, pp. 142, 145).
The sense of social conservatism that prevented some Victorian intellectuals from making more forthright attacks on religion was, in a way, built right into Tylor's evolutionary scheme. Religion and morality, unrelated in the state of savagery, become linked in the higher stages of civilization through the idea of retribution in a future life. But Tylor did not accept this linkage as irrevocable. On the contrary, he thought it possible that a "positive morality . . . shall of its own force control the acts of men" (1871, vol. 2, p. 407). Explicitly opposing animism to "materialism," he saw human cultural development as a "long-waged contest between the theory of animation which accounts for each phenomenon of nature by giving it everywhere a life like our own, and a slowly-growing natural science which in one department after another substitutes for independent voluntary action the working out of systematic law" (1866, p. 83). Within this context, the doctrines of animism and survival took on broader significance, and the "science of culture" became "essentially a reformer's science," exposing and marking out for destruction "the remains of crude old culture which have passed into harmful superstition" (1871, vol. 2, p. 410). Despite the focus on evolutionary origins and stages, which shunted the study of historical diffusion into the background in Primitive Culture, and despite its nomothetic and polemical purposes, Tylor's method did not lend itself to the ridicule which orthodox historians heaped on certain other practitioners of the "comparative method." Tylor rarely allowed his cultural preconceptions or his nomothetic purpose to override his evidence; he always retained a deep commitment to the "canons of sober historical criticism"; he never lost the historian's touch with documentary material. Continuity of Tylor's anthropology. Although Tylor was active in anthropology for more than three decades after 1871, his theoretical work in that period was largely reiterative. His only other book, Anthropology (1881), a popular introduction to the field, was a demonstration of the fact of evolution in each of the various aspects of human culture. His developmentalist commitment is evident in most of his later work. In the 1890s he wrote a series of articles on the Tasmanians as representatives of paleolithic man, explicitly shoring up once again one of the basic assumptions of the "comparative method." Two aspects of Tylor's later work are, however, particularly worthy of note. In the late 1870s he turned again to a question he had touched on in Anahuac and which continued to occupy him on and off through 1896—the origins of civilization
TYLOR, EDWARD BURNETT in the New World. In 1861 he had been inclined to regard this civilization largely as an independent growth (1861, p. 104; cf. p. 243, p. 280). Now, having established the fundamental similarity between the Aztec game patolli and Indian pachisi, he concluded that this and other elements suggested that Mexican civilization was "in large measure" the result of Asian influence (1878, p. 128). But despite his renewed interest in historical diffusion, Tylor's interest in developmentalism remained strong until his death. His most significant later work was a dramatic reassertion of the possibility of establishing a science of culture; he titled it "On a Method of Investigating the Development of Institutions: Applied to Laws of Marriage and Descent" (1888). Here he summarized data on 350 peoples in tabular form so as to note the "adhesions" between such customs as avoidance, couvade, and matrilocal or patrilocal residence. Tylor argued that the total pattern of more-thanchance associations revealed in his tables supported the by-then traditional picture of an evolution from maternal to paternal institutions. But despite this "unilinear" evolutionist conclusion, Tylor regarded his study primarily as a methodological exercise illustrating the possibilities of applying statistics to anthropology. Although Sir Francis Galton attacked the logical basis of the whole procedure by noting the possibility of historical connections between the various tribes that Tylor treated as independent units, the article did in fact have an important impact, and the issues Galton raised are still debated today. [See ETHNOLOGY.] Tylor's failure to complete any major anthropological work after 1881 has been attributed to his preoccupation with the organization and propagation of anthropological science. He was twice president of the Royal Anthropological Institute and an important contributor to the successive editions of Notes and Queries on Anthropology prepared for "the use of travellers and residents in uncivilized lands." In 1884 his address as first president of the anthropological section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science provided the stimulus for a study of the tribes of the Northwest Coast of Canada. Although Tylor was for 12 years the chairman of the supervising committee, it was Franz Boas who did the field work, achieving thereby his extensive professional competence as an anthropologist. In 1883 Tylor was appointed keeper of the University Museum at Oxford and from then on was busy with the supervision and expansion of the Pitt-Rivers collection of cultural artifacts. The following year he began regular lectures at the museum, first as
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reader and then, from 1896 until his retirement in 1909, as Oxford's first professor of anthropology. In 1907 Andrew Lang mentioned that he was looking forward to the completion of a "great work" with which Tylor had been "long occupied." However, the years until Tylor's death in 1917 were a period of mental decline, and the book was never finished. It was apparently intended to be a reworking of the Gifford lectures which Tylor had given between 1889 and 1891. The detailed outline of these lectures in the annotated bibliography of Tylor's writings indicates that they covered essentially the same ground as Primitive Culture. Therefore, another reason Tylor did not publish any books in his last decades may have been that he thought he had said all that he had to say on the major issues which concerned him. By 1890 the battle for a broadly evolutionary view of human origins had been won: "the mission of primitive man" had been accomplished. As Tylor himself suggested in a letter to Boas in 1895, the time was at hand for a "reformation" in anthropology. Tylor's influence and contribution. Tylor has been called "the father of anthropology in all its British developments," but this is hardly a precise estimate of his role. Tylor did little in physical anthropology except insofar as the counterweight of his influence may have helped prevent physical anthropology from dominating anthropology in Britain as it did in France in the 1860s. Within the range of his major interests, Tylor's influence in his own lifetime was great, especially on the humanist margin of anthropological study. His major works were widely translated and continuously reprinted until as late as 1920. Andrew Lang and James G. Frazer came to the study of religion through reading Primitive Culture, and the book's ideas continued to influence students of comparative religion on into the twentieth century. The doctrine of survivals gave stimulus and focus to more than a generation of folklorists in England and elsewhere and was employed by scholars in all countries in such varied disciplines as law, economics, literature, and, of course, anthropology. However much Tylor may have helped prepare the acceptance of anthropology, he actually trained few anthropologists, and only at the very end of his tenure at Oxford did anthropology as an organized discipline achieve more than nominal status. And although some of Tylor's technical terminology has been incorporated into the modern study of social structure and aspects of his work have made it easier for British anthropologists to accept the influence of L. H. Morgan and Emile Durkheim, twentieth-century British functionalist social an-
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thropology represents on the whole a sharp break with the Tylorian tradition. It has also been suggested that whereas Morgan founded modern British social anthropology, Tylor founded American cultural anthropology. Insofar as this paradox is based on the assumption that Tylor "invented" the culture concept in its modern anthropological sense, it must be seriously questioned. Despite the famous definition on the first page of Primitive Culture (for discussion, see Stocking 1963), Tylor's idea of culture lacks a number of the central elements of the modern idea of culture—functional integration, cultural relativity, meaningful historicity, and behavioral determinism. In fact, his commitment to the developmentalist "comparative method" tended to inhibit rather than encourage the emergence of these central concepts. True, there are traces of functionalism in Tylor's work, but the very "first step in the study of civilization" involved the fragmentation of human cultures (although Tylor never used the plural) into elements that might be compared, with little regard for context, in order to reconstruct a single evolving human culture. True, Tylor insisted that even what he frequently called "uncultured" savages had systems of morality, religion, and the germs of culture, but his commitment to progress and his anthropological method required that these be in some real sense inferior to European forms. Despite his self-conscious concern with method, there was a point where his method was rooted in the European's inherited assumption of his own superiority. The stages of cultural evolution coexisted in the present. "All that is hypothetical . . . is the sequence in which they are supposed to have arisen one out of another" (1866, p. 85); and as to that, "few would dispute that the following races are arranged rightly in order of culture:—Australian, Tahitian, Aztec, Chinese, Italian" (1871, vol. 1, p. 24). Even an agnostic Quaker could see that the Church of England was a less barbaric form of religion than the Church of Rome (1871, p. 450). Although Tylor emphasized the slowly cumulative continuity of human culture and the tenacity of custom, he had no real theory of the processes of cultural transmission or persistence through time, beyond the notion of nonfunctional survival. Nor did Tylor's concept of culture really take into account the frequently nonrational mechanisms through which a culture "determines" the behavior of its members; on the contrary, it was because Tylor saw culture as above all a matter of conscious, rational processes that he was led into error in the explanation of religious phenomena (Marett 1936). To firmly establish Matthew Arnold's humanist culture as a legitimate
subject of scientific inquiry was no small contribution to the development of anthropology. But the emergence of the modern pluralistic concept required a change both in theoretical orientation and in methodology. When it finally did emerge after 1900, it was in the work of Boas and other men who had rejected an evolutionism that submerged the variety of human cultural manifestations in a single evolving human culture and who devoted themselves to the systematic study of human cultures in the field (Stocking 1966). On the other hand, there is evidence to suggest that Tylor, somewhat paradoxically, did have an important influence on the diffusionist orientations which arose in opposition to evolutionism in the early twentieth century. Paul Radin once suggested that Tylor's study of adhesions was "the corner stone of all distribution studies since his time" (1933, p. 133). Boas' correspondence indicates quite clearly that Tylor's article served as a methodological catalyst for Boas' own statistical investigations of the diffusion of myth elements, to which much of later culture area work may be traced. In the case of Rivers and the British diffusionists, who tended to see Tylor as their main antagonist (Smith 1933), the debt is at best indirect. But it may perhaps be traced through the German diffusionist Graebner, who although critical of Tylor's evolutionism incorporated the notion of adhesions into his own methodology (1911, pp. 86-91, 119). In any case, this important but rather indirect influence had exhausted its force by the 1930s. To judge by current textbooks, Tylor has little to say to anthropology today. The idea of animism is basic to our understanding of religion but not in Tylor's universal terms. The notion of survival has had a hard time surviving in a functionalist milieu. Modern methods of comparison are not the same as Tylor's "comparative method." Now that some anthropologists are turning once again to problems of human evolution, they may find Tylor's works of greater interest. But in reassessing his historical and theoretical significance, it would be well to keep in mind the very different context in which Tylor wrote. He was a nineteenth-century cultural evolutionist. This is not to suggest that he accepted such evolutionist vagaries as the promiscuity of the primitive horde or even that he rejected the diffusion of culture. His primary commitment was to an overall progressionism, not to any specific mechanism of progress. Nomothetic purpose and comparative method may have led him to emphasize independent invention; he nevertheless granted a considerable role to diffusion and even suggested several of the technical criteria of the later diffusionists.
TYPOLOGIES This is not to say that Tylor was in any rigid sense a "unilinear" evolutionist; he admitted that the "history of Culture as a whole" is not the same as "the history of particular tribes" (1865, p. 190). It is rather to suggest that Tylor's overriding purpose was to show that the development of European civilization has been part of an evolutionary process that links it to the processes of nature in the inorganic and subhuman organic realms and that the scientific point of view that applies in these realms is therefore applicable to the study of man. We have long since come to take for granted the burden of Tylor's message. Today we look with a more jaundiced eye at European progress; we are not at all sure that history can be in any easy way subsumed by science; and we have largely rejected historical reconstructions based on the "comparative method." But no anthropologist would doubt that human culture is the product of an evolutionary development linked to the physical evolution of man. GEORGE W. STOCKING, JR. [See also ANTHROPOLOGY, article on THE FIELD; CULTURE; RELIGION, article on ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDY; and the biographies of BOAS; FRAZER; LANG; LEVYBRUHL; MARETT.] WORKS BY TYLOR Freire-Marreco (1907) annotated a bibliography of Tylor's lectures and published writings. Such manuscripts as Tylor left are for the most part in the Pitt-Rivers Museum at Oxford; they consist largely of notebooks and folios of references which he used in teaching and writing. 1861
Anahuac: Or, Mexico and the Mexicans, Ancient and Modern. London: Longmans. (1865) 1878 Researches Into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilization. 3d ed., rev. London: Murray. -» An abridged paperback edition was published in 1964 by the University of Chicago Press. 1866 The Religion of Savages. Fortnightly Review 6:7186. 1868 Remarks on Language and Mythology as Departments of Biological Science. Pages 120-121 in British Association for the Advancement of Science, Report. London: Murray. (1871) 1958 Primitive Culture: Researches Into the Development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Art and Custom. 2 vols. Gloucester, Mass.: Smith. -> Volume 1: Origins of Culture. Volume 2: Religion in Primitive Culture. 1877 Mr. Spencer's "Principles of Sociology." Mind 2: 141-156. 1878 On the Game of Patolli in Ancient Mexico and Its Probably Asiatic Origin. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 8:116131. -> Contains two pages of discussion. (1881) 1907 Anthropology: An Introduction to the Study of Man and Civilization. New York: Appleton. -> An abridged paperback edition was published in 1960 by the University of Michigan Press.
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(1883) 1888 LANG, ANDREW; and TYLOR, EDWARD B. Double Ballade of Primitive Man. Pages 44-46 in Andrew Lang, XXXII Ballades in Blue China. London: Routledge. (1888) 1961 On a Method of Investigating the Development of Institutions: Applied to Laws of Marriage and Descent. Pages 1-28 in Frank W. Moore (editor), Readings in Cross-cultural Methodology. New Haven: Human Relations Area Files. -> First published in Volume 18 of the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY
BIDNEY, DAVID 1953 Theoretical Anthropology. New York: Columbia Univ. Press. BOCK, KENNETH E. 1956 The Acceptance of Histories: Toward a Perspective for Social Science. University of California Publications in Sociology and Social Institutions, Vol. 3, No. 1. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press. BURROW, JOHN W. 1966 Evolution and Society: A Study in Victorian Social Theory. Cambridge Univ. Press. FREIRE-MARRECO, BARBARA 1907 A Bibliography of Edward Burnett Tylor From 1861 to 1907. Pages 375409 in Anthropological Essays Presented to Edward Burnett Tylor in Honour of His 75th Birthday. Oxford: Clarendon. GRAEBNER, FRITZ 1911 Methode der Ethnologic. Heidelberg: Winter. GRUBER, J. W. 1965 Brixham Cave and the Antiquity of Man. Pages 377-402 in Melford Spiro (editor), Context and Meaning in Cultural Anthropology. New York: Free Press. HODGEN, MARGARET T. 1936 The Doctrine of Survivals: A Chapter in the History of Scientific Method in the Study of Man. London: Allenson. LANG, ANDREW 1907 Edward Burnett Tylor. Pages 115 in Anthropological Essays Presented to Edward Burnett Tylor in Honour of His 75th Birthday. Oxford: Clarendon. LOWIE, ROBERT H. 1937 The History of Ethnological Theory. New York: Farrar & Rinehart. MARETT, ROBERT RANULPH 1936 Tylor. New York: Wiley. MURPHREE, IDUS L. 1961 The Evolutionary Anthropologists: The Progress of Mankind. American Philosophical Society, Proceedings 105:265-300. RADIN, PAUL 1933 The Method and Theory of Ethnology: An Essay in Criticism. New York: McGraw-Hill. SMITH, G. E. 1933 The Diffusion of Culture. London: Watts. STOCKING, GEORGE W. JR. 1963 Matthew Arnold, E. B. Tylor, and the Uses of Invention. American Anthropologist New Series 65:783-799. STOCKING, GEORGE W. JR. 1966 Franz Boas and the Culture Concept in Historical Perspective. American Anthropologist New Series 68:867-882. W. T.; and T. R. J. 1865 An Obituary Notice of Henry Christy, F.L.S., F.G.S. Geological Magazine 2:287 only.
TYPOLOGIES Taxonomy occupies a vital place in the corpus of any empirical science. Since science is grounded on the assumptions of the orderliness of natural phenomena and the rational apprehension of this
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order by man, the systematic classificatory grouping of phenomena and the explication of the rationale for the classification are indeed tantamount to the codification of the existing state of knowledge in a discipline. Typological classification, as a subdivision of taxonomy, has characterized a considerable part of the culture of the social sciences; paradoxically, the notion of types and this method of classification have also been the object of severe methodological and ideological opposition. "Few subjects in taxonomy are understood in more different ways or are more misunderstood than the nature and use of types . . ." (Simpson 1945, p. 28). Formal and methodological aspects A type, as its etymology suggests (from the Greek typos, an impression, a cast, a model) has recurrent, general, distinctive features which are not properties of the individual as such. Those essential features which stamp an aggregate with a certain cachet or physiognomy constitute a type. Since various arrangements of forms may be discerned in any given population, there are no inherent limitations to the number of types which may be used to describe or characterize it. As a formalization of the study of types, typology is thus closely related to morphology, the study of forms. However, the concept of type is more indefinite in some ways. It connotes something broader than the idea of a mold or abstract category which underlies the notion of "form." The notion of type also suggests an entity as a visible manifestation, an external appearance or embodiment which points to an inner or latent state of being; a type has frequently been treated as a symbol whose referent forms part of a more complex, covert reality. A type is analogous to a photographic negative, from which a great number of identical positives can be developed. A typological classification is one in which the fundamental categories of ordering, the types, are inductively arrived at rather than formally deduced a priori; they are taken as "natural" groupings, finite and discrete. The type is the categorical unit which is the focal point of the classification, though considerable attention may be given to categories within the type, which are called subtypes. This implies that in such a classificatory system, more concern will be given to differences between units on the same plane than to similarities found across levels (e.g., there will be greater attention to describing differences between types A, B, and C than to the common denominators they possess which permit them to be subsumed under family 1). These aspects of typologies notwith-
standing, typological classifications may be viewed methodologically as any classificatory system used in qualitative analysis. As a specific instance of the general logic of classification, the typological procedure requires that (a) each and every member of the population studied may be classified in one and only one of the major types delineated, which is equivalent to requiring that the typological classification must be comprehensive and its terms mutually exclusive; ( b ) the dimension(s) which is (are) differentiated into types must be explicitly stated; (c) this dimension must be of central importance for the purpose of the research. Additional methodological criteria for a "good" typological classification would include the criterion of fruitfulness (the typology may have heuristic significance in facilitating the discovery of new empirical entities) and the criterion of parsimony (the fewest meaningful or significant major types possible to cover the largest number of observations). However, categorizing a given population into a few types or subtypes may reduce validity if the variance within single categories or types is thereby unduly increased. Parsimony, therefore, is not always a virtue. The methodological functions and significance of typological classification are basically twofold: codification and prediction. A typology goes beyond sheer description by simplifying the ordering of the elements of a population, and the known relevant traits of that population, into distinct groupings; in this capacity a typological classification creates order out of the potential chaos of discrete, discontinuous, or heterogeneous observations. But in so codifying phenomena, it also permits the observer to seek and predict relationships between phenomena that do not seem to be connected in any obvious way. This is because a good typology is not a collection of undifferentiated entities but is composed of a cluster of traits which do in reality "hang together." Thus there is much affinity between the notion of "type" and the psychological notion of "gestalt," since both derive from a study of apparently natural "wholes" as primary units of observation. Let us assume, therefore, that we have a typological classification of a given population (e.g., chemical elements, plants, political parties) such that three main types—A, B, and C—have been isolated. We have found that with A are associated traits «!, a 2 , a 3 , • • • , an, that with B are associated traits bi, b 2 , b 3 , • • • , b w , and correspondingly with C. Now suppose we come across an element of the population, X, and recognize X to be a representative of type A. We would then be able to pre-
TYPOLOGIES diet with some degree of confidence that we would find in X a significantly higher incidence of traits #!, a2, « 3 , • • • , an than of either of the other two sets. Of course, it would be most gratifying if a concrete X manifested all the traits associated with A; in that case X would be a "pure" specimen and would coincide with the type. Such pure types can only be exceedingly infrequent in a population; indeed, much of the methodological usefulness of typologies lies in their being synthetic constructions from the data so that no specific actual instance or element would be taken for the type itself. It might be further suggested that the more explicitly stated the typology, including the relationships between types, the more the typology functions as a theoretical model. A theoretical model, of which Weber's notion of the "ideal type" is a special case, is useful in its explanation of the virtual tendencies of a system, in light of which actual discrepancies may be investigated. Of course, the construction of a typology (as that of any other theoretical model), including its dimensions, is not dictated by logical considerations but entails, to an important extent, an initial creative act on the part of the researcher. It should be kept firmly in mind that, from a strict scientific point of view, there is no classification of entities by types which is more or less "natural" than any other; nevertheless, the reification of typologies (the feeling that types are not arbitrary but are actually to be found "there") is a frequent temptation and pitfall in the use of such classifications. A set of categories that is, from a scientific viewpoint, essentially arbitrary, may thus come to be confused with something intrinsically real. Once the typology is constructed, more formal rules of procedure are warranted. Thus, each type should be related logically and meaningfully to every other type of the same dimension in the classification. To take a negative example, a typology of men's attitudes toward women which has as female types (1) blonde, (2) faithful, (3) intellectual, (4) plump, has no methodological merit, because the types are not mutually exclusive. Also, the traits associated with each type should have a logical and meaningful coherence with each other. Following these and other rules of procedure of this sort, it is rather easy to construct a typological classification for any order of phenomena—as may be attested by the plethora of ad hoc typologies to be found in the research literature. Yet this very ease of construction may also lead to one of the major shortcomings of typological classification. Classification in general, by structuring the manifold dimensions of concrete experience, also dis-
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torts it, i.e., it emphasizes discontinuities where subjective experience finds process and continuities. In fact, there are a number of ways in which typological classification may lead to a certain sterility in dealing with concrete phenomena. First, a given member of a population may manifest traits belonging to different sets, so that classifying this member as an instance of only one type (and therefore as being identical to all other such instances) takes on an arbitrary aspect. Ironically, this goes counter to the very spirit of typologizing, which aims at the setting up of "natural" and readily identifiable categories. In other words, though the typological approach is most useful to differentiate meaningfully the aggregates of a population, it lacks the flexibility to deal with individuals on their own merits. Second, typological classification is rarely contextual; the determination of types tends to exclude temporal and spatial considerations. Moreover, the very success and acceptance of a typological classification may, paradoxically, have a stultifying effect on the development of a scientific discipline, if the typological classification "freezes" the level of explanation. Since typologies have much more of a de facto explanatory status in the social sciences (especially sociology and psychology) than in the physical sciences, typological classification must share some of the responsibility for the retardation of more powerful theoretical explanations. In some unguarded moments, researchers may give the impression that typological classification is tantamount to causal explanation. Thus, in describing the state of an individual's behavior, premature reduction of explanation may take the form of the statement "X is a heavy smoker and drinker because he is essentially of the oral-erotic type," or "Y votes Democratic, since he belongs to the working class." To give typological classification this methodological status of being a first cause is to introduce stereotyping as a mode of scientific explanation. It should be seen that to assign an element of a population to a given type is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for explaining the particular attribute(s) and behavior of the individual. To explain away something by assigning it to a type is to short-circuit the explanation of that entity's properties and actions in areas or dimensions different from those covered by the typology but equally significant in other respects. Typological explanation may be of some importance in accounting for nonhuman biological behavior (where there may be discernible species-specific instinctive reactions), but the greater differentiation of humans
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that results from the interaction of a complex genetic pool, learning ability, and conscious choice, as well as the historicity of human lives, makes any fixed types of doubtful value in explaining individual human behavior. The capacity of individuals, no less than human groupings, to change significantly (e.g., "conversion" experiences or social revolutions) must be kept firmly in mind by anyone who works with typologies. In brief, even the most elegant and sophisticated typology cannot be taken as an end in itself, but must always be seen as a link in the long chain of scientific understanding. The tradition and its sources In this section will be discussed some of the various intellectual sources which form a background for the typological tradition in the social sciences. We shall point out that there exist everrecurrent ideological controversies which, going beyond sheer methodological objections, have left their mark on the typological approach as it appears in a wide variety of contexts. One of the oldest genealogical branches of the typological tradition is the anatomical-physiological approach that is identified with Hippocrates, the father of medicine: since health is a normal state of affairs, medicine begins where the state of the body deviates from its healthy course. Hippocrates developed a classification consisting of two major types, one characterized by a long and thin body (the phthisic habitus), the other by a short, thick physique (the apoplectic habitus). Recognizing the physical type was of heuristic significance for the physician, since each type (as the name suggests) pointed to a constitutional predisposition to a deviant state of health. By drawing extreme physical types and correlating them with observable behavior (or, rather, with inner constitutional predispositions which, if not guarded against, would become manifest in pathological body states), Hippocrates quite early elaborated the rationale of a typological classification and its major characteristic: an external sign or physical condition pointing to an inner condition. This branch of the tradition, then, was a forerunner of all those constructed on the basis of human constitutional differentiation. Specific classifications have included the differentiation of the human physique into types of temperaments (sanguine, phlegmatic, etc.) related to the basic elements of earth, air, fire, and water, with all this culminating in the notions of the zodiac, which is a complex typology of temperaments based on cosmic forces; racial types; geographical types
(these and racial types being combined loosely, as in the types of Alpine, Nordic, Mediterranean, etc.); blood types; and so forth. These typologies have in common the feature of seeking to determine the propensities for behavior on the basis of physical structure. This constitutional school of psychology has had such adherents in modern times as Cesare Lombroso, Ernst Kretschmer, and, more recently, the American psychologist and medical researcher W. H. Sheldon (1940; 1942). It is worth noting that, since Hippocrates, such a typological approach tends to stress pathological deviations from a golden mean of normality-, certain extreme physical conditions are regularly taken to correlate with types of inner mental conditions, which then become manifest in behavior of an undesirable sort (e.g., criminality, juvenile delinquency). A related historical tradition also going back to classical antiquity is the field of characterology and personality studies. In this context, Plato's Republic contains a systematic typological classification which may well be taken as a model for contemporary research in the field of "personality and social structure." Plato constructed an ideal society, the republic, whose political organization is marked by optimal structural differentiation and functional interdependence of social aggregates, with each social stratum contributing to the welfare of the republic according to its abilities. The type of individual whose personality integration matches this harmonious ideal is the philosopherking. Plato also created other types of societies, and their corresponding types of individuals, along a line of diminishing rationality of social organization and a corresponding decreasing order of happiness (the latter being the criterion to evaluate social being). Thus, Plato emerged with a typology of personality and social structure consisting of five major types, four of which are deviations from an ideal type of society. Not only are all the essential features of the methodology of typological classification contained in this seminal work, but it also provides a theoretical model of social change by specifying conditions under which change from one type of polity to another occurs. This feature of Plato's thought is worth keeping in mind, since it suggests that a typological classification need not be concerned solely with the "static" analysis of social structure, nor need it neglect social processes. Aristotle (who may be called the grandfather of taxonomy) devised, in his theory of social action, a sophisticated typology of social character (see, in particular, Ethics, books 3-5). Different types of motivation are distinguished by using the doc-
TYPOLOGIES trine of the golden mean as a reference point; polar extremes are constructed so that for each basic type of motivation three social character types are isolated. Thus, the giving of wealth characterizes the Liberal Man; polar extremes of this motivation typify the Prodigal Man and the Stingy Man. For another grouping of individuals, it is the pursuit of honor which has motivational primacy; the person who seeks it in just proportion is the Brave Man, and polar deviations on either side characterize, as types, the Rash Man and the Coward. This typology of Aristotle's (which is just one of his many attempts at the systematic classification of phenomena) may be taken as the prototype of all studies of human values that distinguish various types of personalities in terms of their basic motivational dispositions. In modern times, an important philosopher in this tradition is Wilhelm Dilthey, with his investigations of types of basic attitudes toward life (the study of Weltanschauungen}. Dilthey in turn greatly influenced Karl Mannheim, who dealt with fundamental types of political thought and motivation (e.g., "Utopian" and "ideological" attitudes). Mention should also be made of Eduard Spranger's major work (1914), which differentiates six basic types of attitudes or values as characterizing the mental life of individuals. Spranger's research has been followed up by the well-known Allport-Vernon test of personal values, which is an empirical instrument that facilitates the typological study of character. All this thought and research may justly be called Aristotelian. Another early source in the history of typological classification is that of theology. Indeed, typology as a specific discipline first emerged in the theological study of symbols relating the Old Testament to the New Testament. Theologians found in the Old Testament not just historical accounts or religious admonitions but also symbolic prefigurations (or prototypes) of Christian revelation in the New Testament: for example, Jonah spending three days in the whale as a prefiguration of Christ's descent into hell and resurrection on the third day. This theological aspect of typology deserves more than passing mention because, among the classic typological studies in sociology, those having an important religious dimension are perhaps the best known. Thus, if the "ideal type" methodology in sociology received its most sophisticated treatment in the research of Max Weber, it should be remembered that it was above all in the field of religious organizations and religious authority that Weber developed this approach. The sociology of religion can also claim the important
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typological studies of Ernst Troeltsch, Joachim Wach, and Howard Becker. Moreover, typological classification in sociology has another root in religious studies: the social dualism of Augustine, which made him see all history in terms of two types of social organization— the city of God and the city of man (De civitate dei, books 15-18; see the discussion in Dawson [1930] 1960, pp. 57-61, 66-73). This dualism is the principal intellectual ancestor of so much that is central to religious thought and behavior in western Europe that it is not fanciful to compare St. Augustine's "two cities" with the sacred-secular distinction as developed by such theorists of social organization as Ferdinand Tonnies, Emile Durkheim, Robert Redfield, and Howard Becker. Finally, like Augustine, the sociologists and anthropologists who have made use of this polarity have done it primarily as a heuristic device, as a crucial standpoint from which to interpret historical processes of social change unfolding before the observer. In the natural sciences, the major intellectual influence in the development of typological classification is Georges Cuvier, whose career spanned the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and who made the systematic classification of animals into an accepted scientific discipline. At the same time that Immanuel Kant was trying to rescue knowledge from the skepticism of Hume by introducing the notion of judgments that were both synthetic and a priori, Cuvier sought to rescue zoology from the skepticism of Buffon, who had placed stress on the infinite multiplicity of individual organisms. Cuvier's equivalent of the Kantian synthetic a priori was a concept of classification based on the morphological stability of species (Coleman 1964, p. 74). In Cuvier's system, the prime unit of classification is the type (or species); it is assumed that the organism has a natural "wholeness"—or, in other words, that there is a distinctly functional significance both in the continuing relationship between the parts of an organism and in the persistence of its morphological form. It is no accident, therefore, that Cuvier, one of the founders of comparative anatomy, has also been called "the high priest of typology"; indeed, he may be seen as standing in the line of direct descent from Aristotelian teleology. More germane to our purpose, Cuvier's methodology contains all the major premises and the approach of structural-functional analysis in modern sociological theory. Structural—functional analysis, which has been purged of its teleological aspect in the works of Talcott Parsons, Robert K. Merton, Kingsley Davis, and others (while the teleological element was very
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much present in its formulation by Brom'slaw Malinowski and A. R. Radcliffe-Brown), has its source in biological explanation; and this in turn can be traced back to Cuvier's typological approach in comparative anatomy. In all these various traditions (philosophical, biological, theological) typologies have been subjected to important recurrent controversies of an ideological nature which go beyond the methodological criticisms of typological classification noted in the previous section. In philosophy, typological classification and its significance are involved in one of the oldest of all philosophical controversies: nominalism versus realism. The question as to whether essences, "forms," or ideas exist ontologically, as the Platonic realist tradition holds, or whether the form is no more than an abstraction given in nomenclature, as the nominalist position would argue, has embroiled the notion of type in the same dispute. Are types just constructs, or are they necessarily dictated to observation by a natural arrangement of phenomena into organic wholes? In theology, the controversy involving typology has been no less acute. One focus here has involved the question of treating objects taken from one context as prefigurative symbols heralding later events—-that is, the question of whether there is an organic relation between the Old Testament and the New Testament (as the typologist school held) or whether they are essentially discrete. Another theological controversy was that in Byzantium between the iconoclasts and iconodules: here the problem was essentially whether an image (icon) of Christ had efficacious power deriving from its symbolic referent, and hence merited being worshiped, or whether it was just a concrete representation not related to anything covertly existent. This type of controversy concerning the nature of ultimate reality may seem both abstruse and idly speculative; however, typologies have often been involved in ideological controversies which are only lower-level instances of broad metaphysical problems, and these controversies cannot be ignored by social scientists. At heart, the upholding of typologies and a typological classification is a conservative position, while an antitypological perspective is associated with a liberal ideology (Marxist thought is no exception to this since, although seemingly in favor of change, it has shown itself conservative in maintaining, for instance, that bourgeois and proletarian are fixed types). This may seem a rather unexpected statement; but when controversies involving typologies in various disciplines and at
various times are examined, the conclusion is inescapable. The ideological criticism leveled at typologies based upon morphological structures is fundamentally that they are "undemocratic," inasmuch as they assign individuals to fixed groups; moreover, those who have been the most ardent proponents of typological classifications have also had a perspective of the world that stresses traditional religion, the "fixity" of the creation, and the hierarchical arrangement of nature into welldefined strata. In fact, almost regardless of the discipline, typological classifications tend to have an evaluational component which goes against the grain of an individualistic-egalitarian outlook. Thus, the famous classification of Linnaeus (Linne 1758) not only has a hierarchical arrangement of the plant and animal kingdoms, but within the latter the species of mankind are evaluated into higher and lower positions. The linguistic typology of Friedrich von Schlegel (1808) evaluated inflectional languages (Indo-European) as having a certain vitality not shared by affix languages; and even such a recent study as that by T. W. Adorno and others, The Authoritarian Personality (1950), which focuses on two distinct personality types, carries an evaluational bias in favor of the one "good" type. Hence, the use of typologies has not been "affectively neutral"; rather, it has been attended by an unwitting moral evaluation of hierarchically drawn types—even if the types were originally taken to be on the same plane. It may be pointed out that, in our own times, typological methods and approaches are in disrepute. The causes of this can be traced to the individualistic and egalitarian ideals of the French Revolution, on the one hand, and the impact of evolutionary doctrine, on the other. The ideology of the revolution constituted an attack against all static and hierarchical categorizations of human beings, because it attacked the idea of allotting any individual to a predetermined social status. The theory of evolution, with its stress on the adaptation of an animal population over time through variation, is opposed to the Linnaean doctrine of the eternal fixity of species (species tot sunt, quot formae ab initio creatae sunt). In any case, there is a deep cleavage between the traditional typological and the modern antitypological outlooks. The "new" perspective on typologies and taxonomy (Simpson 1961) is in terms of a nominalist position; types are used for nomenclature only. Even so, the classification of specimens in a field seemingly so remote from current events as paleontology (Washburn 1963) is still very much affected by ideological controversies.
TYPOLOGIES In relation to its general task of taxonomy, the traditional typological outlook was never able to eliminate the problem of how to account for observable species variations and gradations. The evolutionary taxonomist of today is faced with the converse problem: how to account for the continuity and uniformity that can be observed in all species. Both approaches have their dangers; for instance, if the typologist is so concerned with the central tendency of a population that he may disregard dispersion (in space and time), so also may the antitypologist run the risk of being so concerned with individual deviations that he may lose sight of the central tendency that gives the group its mean or aggregate characteristic. As limiting cases, the pure case for typology would be established if, for given behavioral items, human groups had for each group one and only one score or response; the strict case against typologies would require, correspondingly, that there be as many different responses as there are individuals measured. It should be clear to all but extreme dogmatists that the question of whether types are "real" is a metaphysical one and should be left to philosophers. What may be asserted here is that for purposes of scientific research, types treated as central tendencies are no less necessary than variations from the type. Sophisticated users of typologies have fully realized that quantitative differences between individuals assigned to the same category may be, for another part of the investigation, as significant as qualitative differences between the categories themselves. In other words, differences in degree are as essential to a good typology as differences in kind. If this caveat is observed, and if one also remembers that, in our everyday life, we experience nature as a continuum (Natura non facit saltus}, the social scientist may put typological classification to fruitful use and bypass the ideological issues. Some modern contributions Although typological classification has been the source of much controversy, the development of the social sciences during this century has involved typological research to a considerable extent. For instance, the "ideal type" is of pivotal importance in Max Weber's theoretical and comparative analyses of social structures and social change. The "theory of action" developed by Talcott Parsons and associates not only owes much to Weber for its inspiration, but may be seen, in terms of the present context, as an elaborate typological classification of interrelated systems of action. Georg Simmel, a contemporary of Weber's in Germany
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(a country which, for reasons still unclear to this writer, has been the radiating center for typological investigations of all sorts ), independently developed an approach to sociological theory that is fundamentally morphological and typological. Unlike Weber, his interests in social types and forms of interaction led him to a mainly descriptive rather than an interpretive use of types. Simmel's studies of types greatly influenced Robert E. Park and such associates of his in the Chicago school as Louis Wirth. A recent contribution to this tradition is Orrin E. Klapp's study (1962) of American national character as revealed by the high or low esteem in which Various social types are held. At the level of general sociological theory, the use of typology in the Work of Georges Gurvitch is as important as it is in the work of Parsons. Gurvitch stated ([1950] 1963, p. 478) that the method of sociology is typological, and he has given much attention to the typology of social structures and social groupings, particularly to types of global societies (1958, pp. 216^233). Since Weber's death, the use of his ideal type analysis has been extended, notably by Howard Becker and John C. McKinney (1966) in their elaboration of the methodology of "constructive typology." At a different level, Paul F. Lazarsfeld (1937) developed the logic of "qualitative analysis," which is related to the "latent structure" analysis that he later developed for use in the measurement of attitudes. It should be noted that this approach explicitly rests on the assumption of stable types of attitudes; it therefore constitutes a refined, formalized, and quantifiable elaboration of typological procedures. Studies of attitudes in social psychology by means of scales and other measurements are in spirit typological, since they presuppose the existence of underlying attitude types. Indeed, it may be suggested that Guttman scales conform to Simpson's description (1945, p. 3) of "archetypal" classifications found in the Linnaean system [see SCALING]. German-speaking scholars have been among the most important figures in the development of social psychology. Here, again, the influence of Dilthey has been immense. In the field of personality studies, the outstanding example of the typological approach is undoubtedly Jung's Psychological Types (1921), which owes part of its inspiration to Dilthey. The cornerstone of Jung's "analytic psychology" is the comprehensive relation of four basic types of activity (thinking, feeling, sensation, intuition) to the libidinal flow of intentionality (subject versus object orientation, or introversionextraversion). At the level of personality, this
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conjunction yields two major types, each having four distinct varieties. In extending his studies historically and crossculturally, Jung further developed the notion of archetypes as primitive molds or images of the psyche that structure our psychological apprehension of the world. Although the heat of controversy involving this concept still obscures its heuristic merit, archetypes may be thought of as having the function, at the psychic level, that the Kantian categories fulfill at the conscious level. Most clinical psychology is heavily indebted to the notion of "personality type"; indeed, clinical studies implicitly look for deviations from an imagined "normal" person. Thus the delineation of clinical syndromes is, in effect, a constructive typology at the personality level, though wide variations exist between researchers as to what sorts of traits are seen as clustering. In fact, many of the problems of therapy stem from the difficulty of applying the existing diagnostic categories to cases that were never envisaged when these categories were first devised. Jung's treatment of personality types owes some of its inspiration to Nietzsche, who formulated, as two dialectically related types of cultural personality, the affective Dionysian and the rational Apollonian. This conceptual dichotomy has been almost as influential in the intellectual history of the social sciences as Tonnies' division of types of social structure into Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft. Nietzsche's influence has loomed particularly large in the attempt to characterize types of sociocultural systems which has been one focus of attention in cultural anthropology. The distinction between Apollonian and Dionysian is reflected in Oswald Spengler's notions of Classical and Faustian civilizations; it also reappears in Ruth Benedict's Patterns of Culture (1934). In this context might be mentioned the research of Pitirim Sorokin into fundamental types of sociocultural systems, and the more recent work of Florence Kluckhohn. Ruth Benedict's work stimulated new research in national character, a field that presupposes the existence of natural "types" of personality. The most widely read of recent studies in this genre is probably The Lonely Crowd (1950), by David Riesman and his associates. The future of typological research In an essay first published in 1903, Emile Durkheim, in collaboration with Marcel Mauss, called for the development of a branch of sociology, to be known as "social morphology," whose primary task would be to develop the systematic classification of
social types or species in relation to social structure. Recent events have underscored the need for a precise typology of societies so as to avoid an oversimplified view of social and economic change. Much of the literature on economic development has suffered from problems involved in the simplistic dichotomy of "developed" and "underdeveloped" countries. If heed were paid to Durkheim, more attention would be placed on codifying the empirical materials by means of an elaborate and rigorous typology of societies. But there is another vast area involving typologies which is just now beginning to be investigated, although it was outlined long ago by Durkheim and Mauss. Its general content can be outlined as follows. If, in spite of acute controversies and criticisms, the construction of types (as we have seen) remains an ever-present feature of empirical investigations, it may well be that typologizing, in the sense of structuring the world or perceiving it by means of categorial types, is a basic orientation of human agents to their situation. Further, it can be seen as a fundamental perceptual activity which may well be subject to sociocultural conditioning in the socialization process. The grouping and classification of objects into distinct types is, in this sense, a basic human activity presupposed in more complex behavior patterns. Durkheim and Mauss (1903) insisted that types are not just logical categories, but also affective collective symbols of classification. Implicit in their discussion is the notion that sociology and social anthropology should also concern themselves with the "natural typologies" found in various societies; that is, the symbolic classification of entities into types should be treated as primary ethnological data. They call attention to the theoretical significance of "folk classifications"—which might be termed "existential typologies," since they reflect conditions of existence of human subjects themselves. In recent years, considerable attention has been given to the methodology of constructed typologies; but what has been overlooked, for the most part, is that these may be thought of as special instances of human typologizing. However, the significance of classifications, and the symbolic aspects of groupings and categories, have aroused fresh interest in modern structural anthropology, notably in the writings of E. R. Leach and Rodney Needham in England, Thomas Beidelman in the United States, and, perhaps best known, Claude LeviStrauss in France (1962; 1964). These authors have concentrated their attention on the cognitive structures implicit in certain "folk classifications"
TYPOLOGIES of such things as plants, animals, colors, and kinship terminology. Finally, we may note an important convergence between sociology and anthropology in this context. The phenomenological approach in sociology, which owes much of its inspiration to both Max Weber and Edmund Husserl, has placed great emphasis upon the everyday typifications which structure the life-world (Lebenswelt) of actors. Attention to such typologizing of social reality as a primary datum of sociological analysis has been given in the writings of Alfred Schutz (1962) and his followers, such as Maurice Natanson and Harold Garfmkel. It is an extension of this path of research which seems particularly promising, since a phenomenology of typologies opens up a host of meaningful interdisciplinary research problems. What cultural variations are significant in differentiating folk typologies? What are the major dimensions of these existential typologies? How do individual actors and collectivities integrate multiple typologies? Under what conditions do actors "test" their typologies and adopt new ones? Which typological classifications are more impervious to social change? What sort of correspondence is there between scientific or constructive typologies and existential ones? These and many related questions are suggestive of the important research problems which typological classification still offers to sociology, psychology, and anthropology, both separately and in collaboration. EDWARD A. TIRYAKIAN [Directly related are the entries HISTORY, article on THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY; KNOWLEDGE, SOCIOLOGY OF; LINGUISTICS; MULTIVARIATE ANALYSIS, article On CLASSIFICATION AND DISCRIMINATION; SOCIOLOGY, article on THE DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIOLOGICAL THOUGHT. Other relevant material may be found in CONTENT ANALYSIS; PHENOMENOLOGY; SOCIAL STRUCTURE; and in the biographies of ARISTOTLE; AUGUSTINE; BECKER; BENEDICT; DILTHEY; DURKHEIM; JUNG; KANT; KRETSCHMER; LOMBROSO; MALINOWSKI; MANNHEIM; MAUSS; PARK; PLATO; RADCLIFFEBROWN; REDFIELD; SCHUTZ; SIMMEL; SOROKIN; SPENCER; SPENGLER; TONNIES; TROELTSCH; WEBER, MAX; WIRTH.] BIBLIOGRAPHY ADORNO, THEODOR W. et al. 1950 The Authoritarian Personality. The American Jewish Committee, Social Studies Series, No. 3. New York: Harper. -» See especially Chapter 19. BARTON, ALLEN H.; and LAZARSFELD, PAUL F. (1955) 1961 Some Functions of Qualitative Analysis in Social Research. Pages 95-122 in Seymour M. Lipset and Neil J. Smelser (editors), Sociology: The Progress of a Decade. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. BECKER, HOWARD 1950 Through Values to Social Interpretation: Essays on Social Contexts, Actions, Types
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and Prospects. Durham, N.C.: Duke Univ. Press. -> See especially Chapters 2 and 5. BENEDICT, RUTH (1934) 1959 Patterns of Culture. 2d ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. -» A paperback edition was published in 1961. BOER, JULIUS DE (1939) 1963 A System of Characterology: Polar Synergy of Feeling, Willing, and Thinking as the Dynamic Principle for the Classification of Characters. Assen (Netherlands): Van Gorcum. -» First published as Polaire affectieve functies. BONNER, HUBERT 1961 Psychology of Personality. New York: Ronald Press. --> See especially Chapter 3. COLEMAN, WILLIAM 1964 Georges Cuvier, Zoologist. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. DARWIN, CHARLES (1859) 1964 On the Origin of Species. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. DAWSON, CHRISTOPHER (1930) 1960 St. Augustine and His Age. Pages 15-77 in Saint Augustine, by Martin C. D'Arcy et al. New York: Meridian. DURKHEIM, EMILE; and MAUSS, MARCEL (1903) 1963 Primitive Classification. Translated and edited by Rodney Needham. Univ. of Chicago Press. -» First published as "De quelques formes primitives de classification" in Annee sociologique. FREUD, SIGMUND (1931) 1932 Libidinal Types. Psychoanalytic Quarterly 1:3-6. -» First published in German. GREENBERG, JOSEPH H. 1960 A Quantitative Approach to the Morphological Typology of Language. International Journal of American Linguistics 26:178-194. GURVITCH, GEORGES (1950) 1963 La vocation actuelle de la sociologie. Volume 2: Antecedents et perspectives. 3d ed. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. GURVITCH, GEORGES 1958 Traite de sociologie. Volume 1: Vers la sociologie differentielle. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. HEMPEL, CARL G. (1952) 1963 Typological Methods in the Social Sciences. Pages 210-230 in Maurice A. Natanson (editor), Philosophy of the Social Sciences. New York: Random House. JUNG, CARL G. (1921) 1959 Psychological Types: Or the Psychology of Individuation. London: Routledge. -» First published in German. JUNG, CARL G. Collected Works. Volume 9, part 1: The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. Edited by Herbert Read et al. New York: Pantheon, 1959.—> First published in German. KLAPP, ORRIN E. 1962 Heroes, Villains, and Fools: The Changing American Character. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. LAZARSFELD, PAUL F. 1937 Some Remarks on the Typological Procedures in Social Research. Studies in Philosophy; Zeitschrift fur Sozialforschung 6:119-139. LEVI-STRAUSS, CLAUDE (1962) 1966 The Savage Mind. Univ. of Chicago Press. -> First published in French. LEVI-STRAUSS, CLAUDE 1964 Le cru et le cuit. Paris: Plon. LINNE, CARL VON (1758) 1956 Systema naturae. 10th ed. London: British Museum. MCKINNEY, JOHN C. 1954 Constructive Typology and Social Research. Pages 139-198 in John T. Doby (editor), An Introduction to Social Research. Harrisburg, Pa.: Stackpole. MCKINNEY, JOHN C. 1957 The Polar Variables of Type Construction. Social Forces 35:300-306. McKiNNEY, JOHN C. 1966 Constructive Typology and Social Theory. New York: Appleton.
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MAYR, ERNST; LINSLEY, E. G.; and USINGER, R. L. 1953 Methods and Principles of Systematic Zoology. New York: McGraw-Hill. RIESMAN, DAVID 1950 The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press. SCHLEGEL, FRIEDRICH VON 1808 Uber die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier. Heidelberg (Germany): Mohr & Simmer. SCHUTZ, ALFRED Collected Papers. Volume 1: The Problem of Social Reality. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1962. SHELDON, W. H. 1940 The Varieties of Human Physique: An Introduction to Constitutional Psychology. New York: Harper. SHELDON, W. H. 1942 The Varieties of Temperament: A Psychology of Constitutional Differences. New York: Harper. SIMPSON, GEORGE G. 1945 The Principles of Classification and a Classification of Mammals. Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, Vol. 85. New York: The Museum.
SIMPSON, GEORGE G. 1961 Principles of Animal Taxonomy. Columbia Biological Series, No. 20. New York: Columbia Univ. Press. SPRANGER, EDUARD (1914) 1928 Types of Men: The Psychology and Ethics of Personality. 5th ed. Halle (Germany): Niemeyer. -» First published as Lebensformen: Geisteswissenschaftliche Psychologic und Ethik der Personlichkeit. STEIN, MORRIS I. 1963 Explorations in Typology. Pages 280-303 in Robert W. White (editor), The Study of Lives: Essays on Personality in Honor of Henry A. Murray. New York: Atherton. STEINMETZ, S. RUDOLF 1898-1899 Classification des types sociaux et catalogue des peuples. Annee sociologique 3:43-147. WASHBURN, S. L. (editor) 1963 Classification and Human Evolution. Chicago: Aldine. WEBER, MAX (1904-1917) 1949 Max Weber on the Methodology of the Social Sciences. Translated and edited by Edward Shils and Henry A. Finch. Glencoe7 111.: Free Press. -> First published in Archiv fur Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik and in Logos.
UL'IANOV, VLADIMIR IL'ICH See LENIN. UNCONSCIOUS PERCEPTION See under PERCEPTION. UNCONVENTIONAL WARFARE See INTERNAL WARFARE. UNDERDEVELOPMENT, ECONOMIC See ECONOMIC GROWTH; MODERNIZATION; STAGNATION; TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE. UNDEREMPLOYMENT See EMPLOYMENT AND UNEMPLOYMENT; see also AGRICULTURE, article on DEVELOPING COUNTRIES. UNEMPLOYMENT See EMPLOYMENT AND UNEMPLOYMENT; UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE.
UNEMPLOYMENT
INSURANCE
Unemployment insurance is a program of social insurance designed to compensate workers for part of the wage loss caused by involuntary joblessness. Weekly benefits are paid to eligible workers as a matter of right, according to benefit schedules or formulas stipulated in the law. Benefit eligibility and amounts are related to previous contributions by or on behalf of the worker. In addition to the primary purpose of providing employees with a measure of economic security through wage-loss compensation, unemployment
insurance helps to cushion economic slumps by supplying consumer purchasing power. It can therefore serve as an important "automatic economic stabilizer." Also, unemployment insurance may preserve work skills and training by reducing pressures on the unemployed to accept lower-level jobs, and it may provide additional incentive, through differentiated employer taxes, for managements to regularize their employment. Methods. Most national systems of unemployment insurance are compulsory, in the sense that coverage is required by law and the taxing power is used for financing benefits. In the Scandinavian countries the program consists of funds voluntarily organized and administered by trade unions and subsidized by the state from tax monies. The United States has a federal-state program. Essentially the federal government, under the Social Security Act of 1935, forced the states to enact programs of unemployment insurance by levying an unemployment tax on employers and offering to pay the full cost of administration of a state program approved under the terms of the federal act. The federal unemployment tax on employers' payrolls is subject to 90 per cent offset (1) for employer payments of state payroll taxes for unemployment benefits or (2) for reductions in or exemptions from such a state tax under a program of experience rating. Thus, each state is free to determine its own benefit level and duration and its own tax rates under company-by-company experience rating based on benefits or layoffs charged to individual employers; benefit provisions and tax rates differ widely among the states. In addition to the federal-state program, there is a separate national unemployment insurance system for railroad employees. That system is
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financed by a uniform federal tax on all the carriers and has a single, nationwide benefit schedule. Under the state laws, unemployment benefits are related to previous earnings. An individual's eligibility for benefits will depend on his total earnings or weeks of work in a base year. The amount of his weekly benefit and, in most states, the number of weeks that he can draw benefits will vary with his base-year earnings or work experience. Relating wages to previous earnings tends to restrict coverage and limits total claims on a state's fund. Historical development. Generally, unemployment has been the last major economic risk of workers to be covered by social insurance. Programs on a national scale began with state subsidies to voluntary schemes in France (in 1905), Norway (in 1906), and Denmark (in 1907). The first national law establishing a compulsory program on a country-wide basis was enacted by Great Britain in 1911. The second was enacted by Italy in 1919. Germany adopted a compulsory program in 1927, Japan in 1947, and Canada in 1955. As previously noted, the federal-state system in the United States started with passage of the Social Security Act in 1935, and by mid-1937 all states had enacted unemployment insurance laws complying with the provisions of the federal act. Issues. Disagreement concerning objectives, mechanisms, and effects helps to explain the delayed development of unemployment insurance programs. Sharp differences of opinion have arisen on a number of issues. Both individual and total unemployment are unpredictable, yet they are subject to various influences and controls. Government monetary, fiscal, and foreign-trade policies affect the volume of unemployment. It is also claimed that workers and managements are, in some measure, responsible for joblessness. Unemployment benefits may have an impact on wage levels and on worker incentives and mobility. Tests of availability for work and of willingness to accept a suitable job present practical difficulties. For such reasons, unemployment has not seemed to be a risk suitable for private underwriting, and no insurance company has sought such business. The chief controversies in unemployment insurance have centered around five issues: (1) How much should the insurance purpose of wage-loss compensation be modified by considerations of worker needs and incentives? (2) What are "adequate" benefits? (3) How should the program be financed, and to what extent should a concept of blame or responsibility influence the financial arrangements? (4) What restrictions on worker cov-
erage, benefit eligibility, and benefit disqualification are necessary in order to maintain the integrity of the program? (5) Are separate state and industry programs preferable to a single, national program? The different aspects of unemployment insurance (coverage, benefit level and duration, eligibility, disqualifications, financing, and level of policy determination) are interrelated parts of a coordinated scheme. Flat benefits go with flat contributions; liberal benefits stimulate restricted eligibility and severe disqualifications. Views on any aspect of the program are affected by one's conception of the purposes of unemployment insurance and one's philosophy of economics and of government. Therefore, in discussing the five policy issues, it is necessary to bear in mind the interconnections between the parts and their relation to a general economic philosophy. Insurance versus need. Whether the program should be strictly one of compensation for wage loss from short-term joblessness or should make allowance for need factors (family size, cost of living, difficulty of re-employment, training needs, etc.) is a basic philosophical issue in unemployment insurance. Generally, under the state laws, weekly benefit amounts vary directly with the individual's previous earnings. Organized labor in the United States has strongly supported benefit levels varying with regular wage differentials and benefit ceilings sufficiently high so that only a minor fraction of the beneficiaries would have a flat benefit rate at the ceiling level. However, there has been strong sentiment in some unions for dependents' allowances, which would mean that workers with the same wage record would receive different benefits, depending on family size. With respect to benefit duration, important elements in organized labor have tended to stress needs rather than earnings. They have favored uniform duration regardless of the individual's total previous earnings or length of employment and have supported ad hoc 50 per cent extensions of duration in periods of heavy long-term unemployment. Generally, business management in the United States has stressed maintenance of the insurance principle and avoidance of any mixing of unemployment insurance and unemployment relief based on individual and family need. However, some elements in management have favored a minimum program with relatively low benefit ceilings, in order to limit costs and to restrict the role of unemployment insurance to a subsistence minimum. The result would be flat or uniform benefits for most recipients, not benefits compensating in pro-
UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE portion to wage loss. Also, there has been some management sentiment for relating benefits to the individual's net (after taxes and other deductions) pay rather than his gross earnings. Modification of the insurance principle by considerations of beneficiaries' needs may take other forms. Some state laws provide continued and additional duration of benefits for jobless workers who are participating in an approved training program, during which they may not be available for work and, therefore, are not involuntarily unemployed. At times some sentiment has existed to make the performance of public work a condition for continued receipt of unemployment benefits—at least for some workers under extended benefit programs, such as those in the United States in 1958-1959 and 1961-1962. This would involve a mixture of unemployment insurance and work relief. Adequacy of benefits. No consensus exists with respect to the criteria for adequacy of benefit levels or duration. One suggested test is that benefits should be sufficiently large to enable workers to meet all nondeferrable expenses for necessities (variously defined) throughout the period of their unemployment. Despite special studies in six states, this test has proved difficult to quantify. A frequently mentioned standard for weekly benefits is 50 per cent of gross weekly pay. Because of the restrictive effects of low benefit ceilings, the average rate of compensation in the United States has been around 40 per cent. Incomplete coverage, waiting periods, benefit disqualifications, nonfiling by eligibles, and exhaustion of benefit rights have resulted in a percentage of wage-loss replacement for total unemployment of about 20 per cent for the country as a whole. For purposes of economic stabilization the percentage should be considerably larger. This is especially true in view of the fact that, by and large, recession unemployment is compensated at no higher rate than nonrecession joblessness. Supplemental unemployment benefits negotiated under collective bargaining in such high-wage industries as auto, steel, and rubber have established a standard of 65 per cent of net pay, which averages perhaps 55 per cent of gross pay. Experience indicates that for heads of households benefits would need to be much closer to 100 per cent of net pay in order to have significant adverse effects on incentives to work. The duration of benefits raises the question of the types of unemployment that the insurance program is designed to meet. Although complete agreement is lacking, most students of the subject would limit benefits for one period of unemployment to
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between 26 and 39 weeks. This is not only for cost reasons but also because of the need for re-examination of the recipient's case and his possible readjustment in order to avoid the debilitating effects of extended benefits as a matter of right. Of course, pressures build up for special extension of benefits in periods of heavy unemployment, in the absence of a satisfactory program of unemployment relief and proper arrangements for worker retraining and relocation. In the United States, benefit duration under the state laws has been lengthening to an average of about 25 weeks as long-term unemployment has become more serious. In some negotiated plans for supplemental unemployment benefits, benefit duration is 52 weeks, as it is under the national program in Canada. Financing. In almost all countries, unemployment insurance is financed by equal employer and employee contributions, with either a contribution by the state or some state subvention for administrative costs. In the United States, however, in all except three states, taxes levied on the employer's payroll meet the full cost of benefits and administration. Vague notions about the causes of unemployment, of possible preventive action by individual employers, and of allocation of the benefit costs according to responsibility lie behind sole reliance on employer taxes under experience rating in the United States. In addition, complete reliance on employer contributions permits employees to escape any personal income tax on income used for social insurance contributions. Experience rating of individual employers for tax purposes gives each employer a direct interest in the denial of benefits to his former employees because in most states he can thereby make a tax saving. Such employer interest, it is claimed, helps to prevent abuse. Under experience rating some employers are completely exempt from the state tax in one-fourth of the states because of their favorable employment or benefit records, and in some twenty other states many firms are taxed at a rate 10 to 30 times that applied to employers on the most favorable rate. Since many competing employers are likely to be at both the minimum rate and the maximum rate, the bulk of the incidence of the state taxes appears to rest on the employer. In most states, experience rating results in the rising or falling of tax rates as total benefits increase or decline, with a year's lag. That tends to accentuate the business cycle. In addition, the most favorable tax rate can be acquired by an employer who contracts his employment through normal
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attrition, whereas with a rapidly expanding labor force and high unemployment levels, it would seem desirable to reward expansion in employment and especially in the hiring of disadvantaged workers. Coverage, eligibility, disqualifications. Unemployment insurance is faced with several difficult problems of administration and definition. In addition to their technical aspects, such problems involve questions of social insurance philosophy. A strict insurance viewpoint may result in more restricted coverage and tighter eligibility requirements than in stress on need for benefit protection. Particularly where the tax is levied completely on the employer, small businesses with two or three employees and nonprofit institutions of all sorts may resist inclusion in coverage. In addition, administrative difficulties may preclude inclusion of migratory farm workers and other casual labor. Nevertheless, coverage has tended to expand gradually. Benefit eligibility involves problems of defining "regular" attachment to the labor market and "involuntary unemployment." There is, for instance, a question whether short-season workers should be eligible for benefits when they are jobless during the off-season. Under state laws, eligibility is defined in terms of qualifying wages or weeks of employment; either way, it usually means that it takes 14 to 20 weeks of covered employment to qualify. In some states, the receipt of other employee benefits (i.e., a pension, dismissal compensation, or workmen's compensation) may render a worker ineligible or reduce his unemployment benefit accordingly. In addition, in order to draw benefits a worker must be registered at a public employment office and be available for work. Although the states have not increased their wage qualifications as rapidly as earnings have risen, benefit disqualifications have been tightened considerably. Levy of the full tax on the employer and the allocation of benefits to particular employers under experience rating have been largely responsible for that development. An unemployed worker who is discharged for misconduct, or who (in about half the states) voluntarily quits, even for good personal or economic reasons, or who refuses a job offer considered suitable will have his benefits postponed, reduced, or canceled. The nature of the penalty and the restriction of good cause for leaving to employer responsibility have reduced benefit eligibility. Decentralized versus national systems. Most countries have a single, national system with nationwide pooling of reserves. In Scandinavia, the
Netherlands, and Switzerland there are separate regional, industrial, or occupational funds. In the United States the existence of separate state systems encourages interstate competition for industry through low benefits, severe disqualifications, and the resulting low tax rates. Some states offer a worker with a particular wage record twice as much in total benefits as other states do. In addition, the incidence of unemployment by states is quite uneven, with the low-benefit states also being the low-unemployment states. The arguments for separate state unemployment programs are in terms of the maintenance of state functions under a federal system of government, the advantages of state experimentation, and the desirability of decentralization and adaptation to local or regional conditions. Fear exists that centralization of policy determination may lead to inflexible uniformity and national use of unemployment insurance for political purposes. Clearly, there is need for thorough analyses of experience in various countries to determine the validity of different assumptions and reasoning about unemployment insurance. Resources devoted to independent research on the subject are most meager compared with total expenditures. In view of marked differences in financial burdens and the precarious position some state funds have been in, a mechanism for broader sharing of the risk seems highly desirable in the United States. If unemployment insurance is to play an important role as an automatic stabilizer, more stress must be placed on national economic interests in the program. That may mean some type of federal standards for benefit levels and some national sharing of the extraordinary costs of recession unemployment in particular states. RICHARD A. LESTER BIBLIOGRAPHY
Current data and reports on unemployment insurance may be found in the following periodical publications: U.S. Bureau of Employment Security, Comparison of State Unemployment Insurance Laws; Unemployment Insurance Review; U.S. Unemployment Insurance Service, Unemployment Insurance Statistics. BECKER, JOSEPH M. 1953 The Problem of Abuse in Unemployment Benefits: A Study in Limits. New York: Columbia Univ. Press. BECKER, JOSEPH M. (editor) 1965 In Aid of the Unemployed. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press. -> See especially pages 63-78, "Unemployment Insurance: Risks Covered and Their Financing," by Merrill G. Murray; pages 79-111, "The Adequacy of Benefits in Unemployment Insurance," by Joseph M. Becker; pages
UNIVERSITIES 112-136, "Supplementary Unemployment Benefits," by Joseph M. Becker and V. K. Boman. BURNS, EVELINE M. 1956 Social Security and Public Policy. New York: McGraw-Hill. HABER, WILLIAM; and MURRAY, MERRILL G. 1966 Unemployment Insurance in the American Economy: An Historical Review and Analysis. Homewood, 111.: Irwin. LESTER, RICHARD A. 1960 The Economic Significance of Unemployment Compensation, 1948-1959. Review of Economics and Statistics 42:349-372. PRINCETON UNIVERSITY, INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS SECTION 1962 The Economics of Unemployment Compensation, by Richard A. Lester. Research Reports, Series No. 101. Princeton, N.J.: The University, Industrial Relations Section. Unemployment Insurance Review. -»• Published since 1964. U.S. BUREAU OF EMPLOYMENT SECURITY Comparison of State Unemployment Insurance Laws. -» Published since 1948. U.S. SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION, OFFICE OF PROGRAM RESEARCH 1967 Social Security Programs Throughout the World. Washington: Government Printing Office. U.S. UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE SERVICE Unemployment Insurance Statistics. -> Published since 1964. WERMEL, MICHAEL T.; and BEIDEMAN, GERALDINE M. 1957 Supplemental Unemployment Benefit Plans: Their Economic and Industrial Relations Implications. California Institute of Technology, Benefits and Insurance Research Center, Publication No. 4. Pasadena, Calif.: The Institute, Industrial Relations Section.
UNIONS See LABOR UNIONS; for related material, see INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS, article on THE SOCIOLOGY OF WORK; LABOR RELATIONS. UNITED NATIONS See INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION. UNIVERSITIES Universities are organizations engaged in the advancement of knowledge; they teach, train, and examine students in a variety of scholarly, scientific, and professional fields. Intellectual pursuits in universities define the highest prevailing levels of competence in these fields. The universities confer degrees and provide opportunities both for members of their teaching staffs and for some of their students to do original research. Since the beginning of the nineteenth century, much diversification has taken place in the disciplines taught and the research conducted in universities. However, there is variation from country to country in the subjects included in the university curriculum; only the humanities and the natural sciences constitute an important part of the curriculum of universities in all countries. The
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functions performed by the universities in a particular country are related to their position in the total educational system of that country: the functions of these educational systems as wholes are uniform, and universities have to be treated as parts of a more comprehensive system. Because of their high level of competence, the professional staffs of universities have generally been able to exercise great freedom both in carrying out their scholarly and teaching functions, in recruiting new staff members according to professional standards, and in controlling other university policies. The key prerequisite for this independence is functional specificity; such guildlike traditions in universities as collegiate self-government and the election of deans and rectors do not exist uniformly in all universities and are not as important in safeguarding academic freedom. The medieval European university The European university as a distinct type emerged in the twelfth century. Groups of students and masters from all parts of the Christian world gathered in certain cities and organized themselves into corporations (hence the name universitas, meaning a community or corporation of any kind). Of the first two universities, which served as models for the rest, Bologna was mainly a corporation of students (or rather a federation of student corporations), and Paris was principally a corporation of masters. Corporate privileges included jurisdiction in civil and, in certain cases, criminal matters, the granting of degrees, and, in principle, the right to teach in all universities (licentia ubique docendi}. The most important safeguard of university integrity was the right to strike or to leave town in protest against some insult to the university. The principal universities were legally recognized as corporations by the pope, and their members were either clerics or were regarded as clerics even when they had not taken orders. The first universities were supervised by the local bishop or by one of his high officials—the chancellor. However, the importance of the chancellor receded quite early, and the elected head of the corporation—the rector—became the principal figure of the university. Sometimes, as at Oxford, the chancellor became an elected official of the corporation. At Bologna, a relatively secular university specializing in law, the chancellorship was mainly an honorific post. The universities thus became to a considerable degree independent of the local church. The protection of the papacy was, however, often sought by the universities when they came into
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conflict with local bishops and townspeople, and since the Roman Catholic church considered itself responsible for education, this protection was granted readily. Furthermore, since the universities were international institutions in close contact with each other, and since their scholars and masters wandered from university to university, they served a papal cause: the unification of the Christian world. To the members of the universities this close tie to the papacy was acceptable not only because of the protection it provided but also because it accorded with their belief—at least in the twelfth century—in the essential unity of all knowledge and in faith as the highest order of knowledge. In spite of sporadic clashes, the relationship of the universities to the church and in particular to the papacy was based on mutual consent and common interests. The ties with the church created no feeling of constraint; the universities were able to accommodate all the important intellectual currents of the time, and, until the fifteenth century, any limitations on their secular character were selfimposed, arising from the beliefs to which they subscribed. The most characteristic aspect of the teaching at medieval universities was the method of study known as scholasticism. This method was, on the one hand, based on authority: the acceptance of the Christian faith, of the Holy Scriptures, and of the works of certain classical authors; on the other hand, it implied an absolute belief in the power of reason, which, if correctly applied, had to lead to the discovery of all truth. Textual exegesis was thus used as a way of asking "questions" about all kinds of problems, which then gave rise to disputations conducted according to accepted laws of logic and, finally, to original solutions (determination. Although much of this abstract speculation now seems futile, it was carried on in an environment that facilitated the emergence of professional intellectual activity and eventually a series of intellectual revolutions. Scholars discussed the difference between religiously revealed truth and logically discovered truth; they applied dialectical methods to the interpretation of Aristotelian texts and to observed natural phenomena. This led to the emergence of secular thought and to the formulation of physical theories that were important for the genesis of modern natural science. The medieval university was the organizational form embodying the public recognition of the corporate autonomy of specialized intellectuals who performed important social functions. These intellectuals were mainly theologians, lawyers, and physicians. As a stable social structure with sources
of income, buildings, permanent personnel, and legal regulations, the university was able to foster the continuity of the intellectual traditions and the creative intellectual efforts of the age. It also provided a setting for the formation of informal groups; as a permanent enterprise, it made risky or ephemeral ventures possible (an example of a risky venture being the study of natural science). Differentiation of the academic system During the period from the fourteenth to the eighteenth century, universities, like other successful corporations, became part of the system of estates. Professors claimed hereditary privileges for their posts, using their positions like patrimonies and gaining income from fees, bribes, and even moneylending. Some of them became very rich, and in the carefully graded social hierarchy of the time their status tended to be equated with that of knights. A development that particularly affected the universities of Paris, Oxford, and Cambridge was the rise of colleges. These were originally charitable foundations serving as hostels for needy scholars, but they soon came to be used for academic lectures. (In this way, for example, the Paris faculty of theology and, later, the university as a whole became identified with the college founded in 1253 by Robert de Sorbon.) In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries colleges grew very rich through real-estate operations; like some of the monasteries, they became seigneuries ruled by small oligarchies, and these oligarchies dominated the whole university. The colleges monopolized the teaching of the liberal arts and became institutions that catered to the sons of the privileged classes rather than to the international community of scholars. While the earliest universities—Bologna, Paris, and Oxford—had been spontaneous gatherings of scholars, from the thirteenth century on universities were deliberately founded to gain the political support of intellectuals, to strengthen Christianity in areas of contact with heretics or Muslims, or to increase local or national prestige. The University of Naples was founded in 1224 by Frederick n as a rival to the influence of the Guelph city of Bologna. The University of Toulouse was founded in 1229 as part of a scheme for recapturing the heretical lands of the Midi for the church. Similar politico-religious considerations led to the establishment of several Spanish universities in the thirteenth century. Before the fourteenth century, the university movement was predominantly international in character; only Oxford was established as a na-
UNIVERSITIES tional university from its very beginning. It was the founding of the University of Prague in 1348—by Pope Clement vi in response to a petition of Charles iv—that marked the beginning of a movement that turned the universities into national institutions. In the course of the next century and a half many universities were established in the German states, in Scotland, Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark, and—after some early faltering—in Poland and Hungary. By the end of the fifteenth century there were 79 universities in Europe. The extent to which these universities could serve as centers for the development of new ideas was limited. Their chief goal was to prepare men for the professions of law, theology, and medicine, and this precluded the possibility of paying serious attention to intellectual ventures in humanism, natural science, vernacular literature, painting, sculpture, architecture, and music. The flexibility of the universities was further limited by their involvement in the system of estates and in religious controversies. As a result, the intellectual ferment that had started in the universities and had been centered in them until the fifteenth century began to manifest itself both in new types of teaching institutions and in organizations that were primarily engaged in research. The new teaching institutions were colleges, Gymnasiums, and academies (to be distinguished from learned societies, which were also called academies). They provided a more practical education than the universities and enrolled mainly the sons of the growing middle classes and of the lower gentry. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the most famous among them were the Jesuit colleges in France, the Pietist schools of Germany, and the Dissenting academies in England. Some of these last were relatively secular institutions founded by private educational entrepreneurs. These schools were not universities in the legal sense, since they had no charters of corporation; however, their functions were parallel to those of the university arts faculties, and some of them taught everything that a university did, including theology, law, and medicine. In the curriculum of the new schools certain innovations were developed, such as the study of Greek, Hebrew, and modern languages, and the new schools were among the first to inaugurate the study of history, modern mathematics, and some natural science. Moreover, they experimented with methods of education, some of which were the precursors of the seminar and the laboratory. Some of the new colleges were devoted to advanced learning for its own sake, the most famous of these
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being the College des Lecteurs Royaux—later the College de France—in Paris and Gresham College in London. Yet these new colleges did no more than the older universities to foster the development of the natural sciences or the new developments in literature, painting, sculpture, and music. It was left to individuals working on their own to cultivate these two areas, although these individuals were usually connected with some learned society or academy. There are interesting parallels between the emergence of learned societies in the seventeenth century and the beginnings of the universities in the twelfth century. The learned societies started as spontaneous gatherings of people who were interested in scholarship and science and who needed an institutional framework both to facilitate the exchange of ideas and to provide support—psychological and, more rarely, material—for their activities. In the second half of the seventeenth century, the learned societies were granted royal charters and public recognition; princes all over Europe became interested in founding academies. Where there were few savants, as in Russia or Prussia, they were invited to come from other countries. The outstanding scientists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries—men like Oldenburg, Descartes, Leibniz, Euler, and Lagrange—spent much of their time as itinerant savants. Unlike the universities, the academies (with the exception of academies of art) did no teaching. Members were elected in recognition of merit, but some aristocrats were also included. In England, France, and Italy, the functions of intellectual institutions became differentiated: private colleges took over general higher education; universities trained for the ministry, medicine, and, frequently, the law; while research was undertaken independently by scholars associated with the academies. In the newer and smaller centers of learning (especially in Scotland, Holland, Switzerland, Germany, and Sweden) the universities continued to combine the three functions. This was probably due partly to their smallness, which did not allow much division of labor, and partly to their newness, which spared them a great deal of the traditionalism based on hereditary privileges and other vested interests. These smaller centers became leaders in the new fields of learning; they taught natural science, medicine, history, and philology at an advanced level, whereas in the great cultural centers of France, England, and Italy these subjects could generally be studied only privately. But in spite of the fact that the superiority of the
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peripheral universities was so widely recognized that they were able to attract students from foreign countries, they had no influence on the institutional structure of higher learning. Instead of serving as models, they tended to adopt the prestigious and obsolete traditions of the older centers. By the end of the eighteenth century, the universities were being strongly criticized, and many intellectuals regarded them as moribund institutions. University instruction was under attack because it almost entirely ignored new developments in science and scholarship. This exclusion of the highest levels of intellectual activity from the universities might not in itself have aroused protest (today a similar situation exists in the creative arts) if the universities had not allied themselves, in some of the absolutist countries, with the church and the state in interfering with the freedom of education and publication. In the economically more backward areas, where there were few channels of mobility for talented young people, the universities blocked the only attractive intellectual career opportunities. Many intellectuals, therefore, had the same contempt for the universities that the new entrepreneurs had for the monopolistic guilds, and they envied the privileges of the academies as the middle classes envied the privileges of the aristocracy. Since the results of university teaching were poor, some critics recommended the replacement of the universities by professional schools. Such schools were indeed established by some of the absolutist monarchs, especially in medicine and in the new profession of civil and mining engineering. In England professional schools arose without the intervention of the state, especially in medicine. Hospitals and proprietary medical schools became the accepted means for medical training in England and spread from there to the United States. The emergence of the modern university During the last decade of the eighteenth century the academic system was thoroughly transformed. In France, the obsolete university corporations as well as the academies were abolished in 1793, but in the Napoleonic era they gradually reappeared in a changed form as parts of a centrally conceived and directed system of higher education. The new system was pragmatic, using the different types of institutions that had evolved over the centuries to train people for different purposes. New institutions were also established in response to new needs, and the whole system was placed under the direction of the central civil service. In Germany, although the mood of the intelli-
gentsia was also revolutionary, a different course was followed. The universities retained their corporate privileges and their place among the traditional estates of society, but their organization was brought into conformity with the administrative realities of modern state financing and supervision. The level of intellectual activity was raised by making the faculties of arts and sciences the central parts of the universities and by appointing members of the new intelligentsia to chairs in these faculties. In England the transition was gradual. Beginning in the sixteenth century, a great variety of professional and scientific associations had been established there, as in France. But unlike those in France, the English institutions were founded and financed by private individuals. Their increasing prestige, relative to that of the old universities, threatened the intellectual hegemony of the upper classes. About 1840, in response to this threat and to pressure from both the government and from public opinion, the universities began to reform themselves, and by the end of the century they once again dominated the academic scene. Toward the middle of the nineteenth century, the quality of the German university system became outstanding. The universities were at that time an almost autonomous subsystem of German society. Because of the political and economic backwardness of the German-language area and the consequent shortage of attractive career opportunities, there was a large supply of able aspirants for academic careers. Education and culture became the most effective bonds between the various parts of the politically fragmented nation. The universities were lavishly supported by the different states and were vigorously competitive. Under these conditions, academic interests flourished: new fields of purely scientific interest could develop without having to convince government departments or charitable laymen of their usefulness, and research was recognized as an important function of the university. The success of the German university system convinced academic public opinion in other countries that an academic system composed of relatively autonomous, multipurpose units was superior to a centrally coordinated system of specialized institutions. The German system came to serve as a model: it was copied in central and northern Europe and decisively influenced the reformation of the English and American academic systems; to a more limited extent, it exerted an influence in eastern Europe (German influence there was somewhat attenuated by that of the French) and on
UNIVERSITIES the French, Italian, and Spanish-Portuguese academic traditions. Under the impact of the German innovations, universities consisting of several faculties were re-established in France in 1896. The German system was also adopted in Japan. Contemporary academic systems. At the end of the nineteenth century there were three influential academic systems: the German, the French, and the English. (The importance of the Italian universities had receded since the sixteenth century; although the United States had evolved the most important features of its academic system, this system was not yet influential.) All the major European systems (as well as the system in the United States) had the following characteristics: education was free of church control; hereditary claims to university posts were abolished; a clearcut distinction was made between secondary and higher education; modern scientific and humanistic subjects were accorded a central place in the curriculum; and technological studies were given university status. At present, the typical institution in Germany, England, and the United States is the university in which a wide variety of subjects is taught and in which research is conducted; most of the "pure" subjects and many of the applied ones are covered. In these countries there exist institutes of technology with university standing; the institutes teach many different subjects—often the social sciences and the humanities as well as the natural sciences. Because of the variety of their functions, both universities and institutes have great potentiality for growth. Specialized research and training institutions play a relatively marginal role in these systems. The special characteristics of the U.S. system evolved between 1860 and 1910. Before this period, the system of higher education consisted principally of church-affiliated colleges and a variety of professional schools. The Morrill Act of 1862 was the first step in the transformation of the system; it provided grants of land to the states to be used or sold for the support of colleges that would emphasize the teaching of agriculture and the "mechanic arts." This legislation provided an impetus for the development of academic teaching and research in agriculture, as well as in engineering and a variety of other applied fields. In the course of time most of the land-grant colleges developed into full-fledged universities, thus establishing the basis for a wide-spread and relatively open system of higher education. The view that higher education can legitimately be practical and diversified was not confined to the land-grant institutions but was
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also adopted by many of the older universities. As a result, American universities have become much more differentiated institutions than European ones. They teach and train students at three different levels: a minimally specialized liberal education (bachelor's degree) such as does not exist in Europe at all; professional training (LL.B., M.D., master's degree) in a much greater variety of fields than European training offers; and the training of scholars and researchers (PH.D.), of which only the beginnings exist in Europe. The French system consists of universities that perform teaching functions comparable to those performed by universities elsewhere and a governmental research organization—the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)—that runs parallel to the universities, often employs the same staff as the universities, and provides facilities and funds for research. In addition, there are the Grandes Ecoles: the Polytechnique and the Ecole Normale Superieure provide professional education for a highly selected elite, and the College de France and the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes offer high-level instruction untrammeled by the requirements of degree courses. Furthermore, the Academie Frangaise still has important symbolic functions. In France, each type of institution performs a limited range of functions, and the system as a whole is centrally directed. An essentially similar structure was adopted in the Soviet Union after the Revolution. The different types of academic systems reflect differences in general social and political organization. In France and the Soviet Union, a central bureaucracy makes academic policy for the whole country, while the United States and Germany have federal political structures and systems of independent, competing universities. The social and political organization of Britain has produced a system that is somewhere between the other two: on the one hand, Britain is a centralized state— London playing a role similar to that of Paris in France—but, on the other hand, there exist important traditions of cultural autonomy in Scotland, Wales, and the centers of religious dissent in the North and the Midlands. Universities rather than specialized institutions predominate, but the system has a centralized, hierarchic structure, with Oxford, Cambridge, and the University of London at the apex of the hierarchy. Universities and the social structure. Although the university reforms of the nineteenth century recognized the importance of modern scientific and scholarly subjects and of the intellectuals interested in them, these reforms did not change the
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place of the universities in the rigidly hierarchic European class system. The universities, therefore, continued to emphasize training for the established professions of law, medicine, and—where this remained within the university—theology. Secondary school teaching was the only "new" profession for which nineteenth-century universities provided training. The introduction of such disciplines as engineering, bacteriology, physiological chemistry, psychiatry, the social sciences, and contemporary philosophy usually met with resistance. This rigidity gave rise to a new wave of intellectual dissatisfaction, which in the mid-nineteenth century found its expression in polemical writings and led to the radicalization of students and intellectuals in general. There were other sources of discontent among the intelligentsia, some of them inherent in the very process of university education. Universities and other academic institutions had been established in central and eastern Europe to foster autonomous national cultures and to develop the professional manpower needed for the services of the state. Tuition was free or relatively cheap, and students and faculty enjoyed enviable privileges exempting them from harassment by the police and by local authorities and from the oppressive religious and social control characteristic of villages and provincial cities. Becoming a student, therefore, was an attractive path to quasi social mobility. Even if they lived in poverty, students enjoyed some of the privileges of upper-middle-class status, as well as the pleasures of living in large cities with numerous cultural facilities. For these reasons young people were attracted to the universities, regardless of their interests and abilities or of the demand for the services of graduates. Many of these students were practically unemployable because the European universities trained them in a very limited range of disciplines. Moreover, they were, in a sense, spoiled: not only were they unwilling to forgo their privileges as students for risky careers but also, having experienced life in the capital cities during their studies, they were reluctant to return to the backward provinces. The provinces, which were most in need of educated manpower, were thus drained of their ablest young men, while university graduates emerged as a revolutionary intelligentsia that formed the vanguard of subversive movements. To some extent, of course, the size of the student body increased in response to a demand for certain kinds of professional men—secondary school teachers, civil servants (who were required to have law degrees), and doctors. But these spurts
of growth were invariably followed by waves of unemployment. Such a recession occurred in Germany, mainly as a result of the satiation of the demand for doctors, and as a result the studentpopulation ratio dropped from 6.5/10,000 in the 1890s to 5/10,000 in the next decade (calculated from statistics in Samuel & Thomas 1949, p. 112). Following World War I there was a steep rise in the demand for law graduates to man the newly established civil services in those countries that had gained their independence or had been granted new territories—the Baltic countries, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Rumania, and Yugoslavia; but with the inevitable slowdown of the rate of new employment of civil servants, a slump followed. In the countries that had lost territory, especially Austria and Hungary, there was an excess supply of professionals after the war. The disproportion between the supply of university graduates and the demand for their services became acute in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s, a problem that was aggravated but not basically caused by the economic depression. The studentpopulation ratios, which ranged in 1913 from 7/10,000 to 11/10,000, rose by 1934 to a range of 11/10,000 to 30/10,000 (Ben-David 19631964, p. 263). Curriculums, however, had changed very little, and approximately half of the students studied law and medicine (ibid., pp. 266-267). To cope with the unemployment of intellectuals and their consequent alienation, university expansion was drastically curtailed by governmental action or by the workings of the free manpower market. The only academic systems that escaped serious crises during this period were those in the United States and the Soviet Union. The relatively open class structure of the former and the governmentenforced egalitarianism in the latter led to important changes in the curriculums in their academic institutions. In the United States, expansion took place especially in such new fields as education, the social sciences, business, social work, engineering, and technological studies; in the Soviet Union, the fields of education and technology were greatly expanded. These academic systems, therefore, adjusted with little friction to the manpower needs of the changing economies in the two countries and expanded without hindrance. In the United States the student-population ratio grew to 83/10,000 in 1934 and to 185/10,000 in 1958; the comparable ratios for the Soviet Union were 31/10,000 in 1934 and 105/10,000 in 1958 (ibid., p. 263). In neither of these countries was the alienated intelligentsia an important social category in the
UNIVERSITIES 1920s and 1930s; instead, the professional expert became increasingly important. Academic systems since World War n Because of their success in research and the creation of professional expertise, as well as their political and economic importance, the United States and—to a somewhat more limited extent—the Soviet Union have furnished the main academic models for other areas of the world. They account for about half of the world's student population, and their contribution to research is overwhelming. Their influence is limited only by the political cleavage in the world and by the prevalence of English and French traditions in the previously colonial countries of Africa and of Spanish-Portuguese traditions in Latin America. Since World War n higher education has greatly expanded in Asia. In Japan, which has one of the highest student-population ratios in the world, expansion has led to the founding of many new universities of different types and the adoption of a pattern of studies modeled on the diversified American curriculum. The influence of the American pattern has also been considerable in India. Despite the increase in the number of universities in Asia, there is still not nearly enough room for the admission of all applicants, nor has it been possible to prepare the growing number of students adequately for professional service or to prevent their studying fields for which there is little demand. The problem of useless training is most severe in India and Indonesia, where, following European and local traditions, higher education is still regarded as a means of access to the privileged classes rather than as training for productive work. Although similar traditions existed in prerevolutionary China, they have been counteracted by the adoption of the Soviet system, in which students are assigned fields of study according to manpower plans. However, prerevolutionary conditions of secondary education still limit the number of candidates for higher education; despite China's rapid rate of growth—enrollment in institutions of higher education increased from 116,500 in 1949/1950 to 434,000 in 1957/ 1958—the number of students relative to the population is still very low (Orleans 1961, pp. 68-69) as compared with India, which had 833,450 students in 1957, and Japan, which had 636,200 students in 1958 (Ben-David 1963-1964, p. 262). Although the rate of growth in Africa has been high—an increase from 70,000 students in 1950 to 141,000 in 1959—most of this growth has occurred in the United Arab Republic, which alone has more than 100,000 students. South Africa also
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has a large concentration of students (37,000 in 1958), most of whom are white (United Nations . . . 1963, vol. 1, pp. 113, 119-124). This rapid growth has created problems of intellectual underemployment similar to those in Asia. The development of higher education in west, central, and east Africa is only beginning, and the universities in these regions face the immediate problem of finding a sufficient number of qualified students and staff; the latter are to a large extent foreigners. Development in South America has been relatively slow, the number of students increasing from 179,000 to 326,000 during the period 1950-1959 (ibid., p. 113). Even this modest increase has, however, created serious problems. The universities have coped with the growing numbers of students by limiting enrollment and by introducing difficult examinations at the end of the first year. These measures make the university attractive to potentially mobile young people faced with relatively rigid class structures, but do not provide these youths with efficient means for actual mobility. The result is the emergence of a student body that is frustrated in its aspirations and prone to revolutionary action. The rate of growth of the student population in Europe has been somewhat accelerated since World War n. Student-population ratios have almost doubled since the 1930s and in 1958 ranged from 30/10,000 to 50/10,000 in most European countries. Only in Britain and Norway were the ratios as low as 20/10,000; since 1958 there has been a steep rise in the student-population ratio in Britain (Ben-David 1963-1964, p. 263). The problem of the underemployment of intellectuals has disappeared, and in the natural sciences, technology, and the social sciences there is often a shortage of trained people. In eastern Europe there has been a reform of the system of higher education based on the Soviet pattern. Most of the expansion has taken place by the establishment of new specialized institutions of technology and education; the universities have grown very little. In western Europe the university has remained the most prevalent form of higher educational institution, but without any basic reform in organization or structure. A number of new universities have been founded, and all the existing ones have been considerably expanded—average enrollment per university in western Europe grew from about 3,590 in 1950 to 4,350 in 1959 (United Nations . . . 1963, vol. 1, p. 132). There has been a marked decrease in the proportion of law and medical students (Ben-David 1963-1964, pp. 266-267).
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Training in technological fields, the social sciences, business, and other professions has been expanded or introduced at a great many universities. But only in England, where colleges of technology have been granted university status and there are plans to raise teacher training to university level, is there a true diversification of higher education. JOSEPH BEN-DAVID [See also ACADEMIC FREEDOM; EDUCATION; TEACHING.] BIBLIOGRAPHY
ANDERSON, C. ARNOLD 1956 The Social Status of University Students in Relation to Type of Economy: An International Comparison. Volume 5, pages 51-63 in World Congress of Sociology, Third, Transactions. London: International Sociological Association. ANDERSON, C. ARNOLD; and BOWMAN, MARY JEAN (editors) 1965 Education and Economic Development. Chicago: Aldine. ANDERSON, C. ARNOLD; and SCHNAPER, MIRIAM 1952 School and Society in England: Social Backgrounds of Oxford and Cambridge Students. Washington: Public Affairs Press. ANGER, HANS 1960 Problems der deutschen Universitdt: Bericht iiber eine Erhebung unter Professoren und Dozenten. Tubingen (Germany): Mohr. ARMYTAGE, W. H. G. 1955 Civic Universities: Aspects of a British Tradition. London: Benn. ASHRY, ERIC 1958 Technology and the Academics: An Essay on Universities and the Scientific Revolution. London and New York: Macmillan. ASHRY, ERIC 1964 African Universities and Western Tradition. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. ASHRY, ERIC 1966 Universities: British, Indian, African. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. BEN-DAVID, JOSEPH 1963-1964 Professions in the Class System of Present Day Societies: A Trend Report and Bibliography. Current Sociology 12:247-330. -> Provides a social history of the transformation of the professions; emphasizes relations with higher education; includes a bibliography. BEN-DAVID, JOSEPH; and SLOCZOWER, A. 1962 Universities and Academic Systems in Modern Societies. Archives europeenn.es de sociologie; European Journal of Sociology 3:45-84. BERELSON, BERNARD 1960 Graduate Education in the United States. New York: McGraw-Hill. BILLROTH, THEODOR (1876) 1924 The Medical Sciences in the German Universities: A Study in the History of Civilization. New York: Macmillan. -» First published in German. BRUNSCHWIG, HENRY 1947 La crise de I'etat prussien a la fin du XVIIIs siecle et la genese de la mentalite romantique. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. BRYSON, GLADYS 1945 Man and Society: The Scottish Inquiry of the Eighteenth Century. Princeton Univ. Press. BUSCH, ALEXANDER 1956 Stellenplan und Lehrkorperstruktur der Universitdten und Hochschulen in der Bundesrepublik und in Berlin (West) 1953—1954. Untersuchungen zur Lage der deutschen Hochschullehrer, Vol. 2. Gottingen (Germany): Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
BUSCH, ALEXANDER 1959 Die Geschichte des Privatdozenten: Eine soziologische Studie zur grossbetrieblichen Entwicklung der deutschen Universitdten. Stuttgart (Germany): Enke. CAPLOW, THEODORE; and McGEE, REECE J. 1958 The Academic Marketplace. New York: Basic Books. -> A paperback edition was published in 1961 by Wiley. CARDWELL, DONALD S. L. 1957 The Organisation of Science in England: A Retrospect. Melbourne and London: Heinemann. CARR-SAUNDERS, A. M.; and WILSON, P. A. (1933) 1964 The Professions. Oxford: Cass. COLEMAN, JAMES S. (editor) 1965 Education and Political Development. Studies in Political Development, No. 4. Princeton Univ. Press. COMMISSION ON HUMAN RESOURCES AND ADVANCED TRAINING 1954 America's Resources of Specialized Talent: A Current Appraisal and a Look Ahead. New York: Harper. CONFERENCE ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF HIGHER EDUCATION IN AFRICA, TANANARIVE, 1962 1963 The Development of Higher Education in Africa: Report. Paris: UNESCO. CORSON, JOHN J. 1960 Governance of Colleges and Universities. New York: McGraw-Hill. COUSIN, VICTOR (1846) 1850 Instruction publique (en France sous le gouvernement de juillet). New ed., 3 vols. Paris: Pagnerre. CURLE, ADAM 1963 Strategy for Developing Societies: A Study of Educational and Social Factors in Relation to Economic Groivth. London: Tavistock. DEWITT, NICHOLAS 1961a Education and Professional Employment in the U.S.S.R. Washington: National Science Foundation. DEWITT, NICHOLAS 1961fo Reorganization of Science and Research in the U.S.S.R. Science 133:1981-1991. FARMER, PAUL 1950 Nineteenth-century Ideas of the University: Continental Europe. Pages 3-24 in Margaret A. Clapp (editor), The Modern University. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press. FERBER, CHRISTIAN VON 1956 Die Entwicklung des Lehrkorpers der deutschen Universitdten und Hochschulen 1864-1954. Untersuchungen zur Lage der deutschen Hochschullehrer, Vol. 3. Gottingen (Germany): Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. FLEXNER, ABRAHAM 1925 Medical Education: A Comparative Study. New York: Macmillan. FLEXNER, ABRAHAM 1930 Universities: American, English, German. Oxford Univ. Press. GREAT BRITAIN, COMMITTEE ON HIGHER EDUCATION 1963 Higher Education. Report of the committee appointed by the Prime Minister, under the chairmanship of Lord Robbins, 1961-1963. Papers by Command, Cmnd. 2154. London: H.M. Stationery Office. HALSEY, A. H. 1962 British Universities. Archives europeennes de sociologie; European Journal of Sociology 3:85-101. HANS, NICHOLAS A. 1951 New Trends in Education in the Eighteenth Century. London: Routledge. Higher Education in East Africa. White paper issued jointly by the governments of Kenya, Tanganyika, Uganda, and Zanzibar. 1958 Entebbe (Uganda): Government Printer. KINDLE, BROOKE 1956 The Pursuit of Science in Revolutionary America: 1735-1789. Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press.
UNWIN, GEORGE HOFSTADTER, RICHARD; and METZGER, WALTER P.
1955
The Development of Academic Freedom in the United States. New York: Columbia Univ. Press. INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF UNIVERSITY PROFESSORS AND LECTURERS 1961 The Status of University Teachers: Reports From Sixteen Countries. Prepared with the assistance of UNESCO. Edited by Richard H. Shryock. Ghent (Belgium): The Association. IRSAY, STEPHEN D' 1933-1935 Histoire des univer-sites; francaises et etrangeres des origines a nos jours. 2 vols. Paris: Picard. -> Volume 1: Moyen age et renaissance. Volume 2: Du XVI siecle a 1860. A supplement by Rene Aigrain, Les universites catholiques, was published in 1935. KERR, CLARK 1963 The Uses of the University. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. KNELLER, GEORGE F. 1955 Higher Learning in Britain. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press. KONIG, RENE 1935 Vom Wesen der deutschen Universitdt. Berlin: Runde. KOTSCHNIG, WALTER M. 1937 Unemployment in the Learned Professions: An International Study of Occupational and Educational Planning. Oxford Univ. Press. LAZARSFELD, PAUL F.; and THIELENS, WAGNER JR. 1958 The Academic Mind: Social Scientists in a Time of Crisis. A report of the Bureau of Applied Social Research, Columbia University. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. -» With a field report by David Riesman. LE GOFF, JACQUES 1957 Les intellectuels au moyen age. Paris: Editions du Seuil. MERZ, JOHN T. (1903-1914) 1912-1928 A History of European Thought in the Nineteenth Century. 4 vols. Edinburgh and London: Blackwood. Nachwuchsfragen im Spiegel einer Erhebung, 1953—1955. Untersuchungen zur Lage der deutschen Hochschullehrer, Vol. 1. 1956 Gottingen (Germany): Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. ORGANIZATION FOR EUROPEAN ECONOMIC COOPERATION 1964 Aspects economiques de Venseignement superieur. Paris: The Organization. ORLEANS, LEO A. 1961 Professional Manpower and Education in Communist China. Washington: Government Printing Office. ORNSTEIN, MARTHA (1913) 1963 The Role of Scientific Societies in the Seventeenth Century. 3d ed. Hamden, Conn.: Shoe String Press. PAULSEN, FRIEDRICH (1893) 1906 The German Universities and University Study. New York: Scribner. -» First published in German. PEVSNER, NIKOLAUS 1940 Academies of Art: Past and Present. Cambridge Univ. Press; New York: Macmillan. POWICKE, FREDERICK M. (1951)1964 Ways of Medieval Life and Thought. New York: Biblo & Tannen. -» See especially pages 149-197 and 213-229 on the medieval university. RASHDALL, HASTINGS (1895) 1958 The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages. New ed., 3 vols. Oxford Univ. Press. -*• Volume 1: Salerno, Bologna, Paris. Volume 2: Italy, Spain, France, Germany, Scotland, etc. Volume 3: English Universities; Student Life. Ross, EARLE D. 1942 Democracy's College: The Landgrant Movement in the Formative Stage. Ames: Iowa State College Press. SAMUEL, RICHARD; and THOMAS, R. HINTON 1949 Edu-
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cation and Society in Modern Germany. London: Routledge. SCHNABEL, FRANZ 1925 Die Anfange des technischen Hochschulwesens. Pages 1-44 in Karlsruhe, Technische Hochschule, Festschrift anldsslich des 100 jdhrigen Bestehens der Technischen Hochschule . . . . Karlsruhe (Germany): Miiller. SCHNABEL, FRANZ 1934 Deutsche Geschichte im neunzehnten Jahrhundert. Volume 3: Erfahrungswissenschaften und Technik. Freiburg (Germany): Herder. STORR, RICHARD J. 1953 The Beginnings of Graduate Education in America. Univ. of Chicago Press. TEWKSBURY, DONALD G. 1932 The Founding of American Colleges and Universities Before the Civil War: With Particular Reference to the Religious Influences Bearing Upon the College Movement. New York: Columbia Univ. Press. UNITED NATIONS EDUCATIONAL, SCIENTIFIC AND CULTURAL ORGANIZATION 1963 The International Study of University Admissions: Access to Higher Education. 2 vols. Paris: UNESCO & International Association of Universities. U.S. OFFICE OF EDUCATION 1955 Education for the Professions. Washington: Government Printing Office. VEBLEN, THORSTEIN (1891-1913) 1961 The Place of Science in Modern Civilisation, and Other Essays. New York: Russell. VEBLEN, THORSTEIN (1918) 1957 The Higher Learning in America: A Memorandum on the Conduct of Universities by Business Men. New York: Sagamore. VEYSEY, LAURENCE R. 1965 The Emergence of the American University. Univ. of Chicago Press. WEBER, MAX (1919) 1946 Science as a Vocation. Pages 129-156 in Max Weber, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. Translated and edited by H. H. Gerth and C. W. Mills. New York: Oxford Univ. Press. -» First published as "Wissenschaft als Beruf." WILSON, LOGAN 1942 The Academic Man: A Study in the Sociology of a Profession. Oxford Univ. Press.
UNWIN, GEORGE George Unwin (1870-1925), English economic historian, was born at Stockport, the eldest of six children of working-class parents. He left school when he was 13 to become an office boy in a firm of hatmakers for which his mother had previously worked. He was fortunate, however, to have an employer who kindled in him an interest in books and in politics; this interest was developed by attendance at the Unitarian Chapel, the Mechanics Institute, and the Stockport Literary Society. At the age of 20 he won a scholarship to the University College of Cardiff, but the £20 this brought him annually did little more than cover his fees. It was to the privations of the three years at Cardiff that he used to attribute the frailty of his constitution in later life. A second scholarship opened the way to Oxford, which he entered at the age of 23 (along with another youth of humble origin from Stockport, Ernest Barker, who was to rise to eminence
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as a political philosopher and historian). After four years of exciting intellectual activity, culminating in a first in Greats, he spent a few months under Schmoller at Berlin and from there went to the London School of Economics, where he collected voluminous material on the history of the fraternities, guilds, and companies of the City. Unwin's first salaried post was as private secretary to Leonard (later Lord) Courtney—then engaged in vigorous opposition to the Boer War— who was to be his close, lifelong friend and adviser. The post allowed him leisure to continue historical research, and in 1904 he produced a tightly packed volume, Industrial Organisation in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, in which the essential economic conflict of the period is displayed, not as between capital and labor, but as between trading capital and industrial capital. This was followed by an illuminating study of the woolen industry of Suffolk and, in 1908, by The Gilds and Companies of London, with a brilliant opening chapter on the place of the guilds in the history of western Europe. The same year saw his appointment as lecturer in economic history at Edinburgh, and in 1910 the University of Manchester created for him the first chair in the subject in England. At the University of Manchester, Unwin taught in the history school directed by T. F. Tout. A volume of essays written by him and several of his postgraduate students, Finance and Trade Under Edward HI (1918), demonstrated, among much else, that far from having been "the father of English commerce," Edward was a serious impediment to its development. William Cunningham's generous acceptance of this revision was the source of great satisfaction to Unwin. During his 14 years at Manchester, Unwin planned and began works on several major themes; but the demands made on him by his students and an urge to engage in political protest against both the imperialist and the socialist trends of thought of his day made the completion of them impossible. The discovery by an extramural student of a mass of business documents in an old stable in Derbyshire, however, led to the publication in 1924 of Samuel Oldknow and the Arkwrights, in which the industrial revolution was depicted, not as the disaster many have thought it, but as a seedbed of those various voluntary communities (the modern family, friendly societies, trade unions, churches, schools, universities, and so on) which in Unwin's view were more fundamental to the growth of society than was the compulsory, authoritarian state. A few months after it appeared, Unwin died, at the height of his powers, in his 56th year.
Much of Unwin's most characteristic work was published posthumously in a volume of papers edited, with a masterful biography, by R. H. Tawney (see Unwin 1927, especially Tawney's essay on pp. xi-lxxiv). But it was in informal conversations, rather than in writings or lectures, that his wealth of historical learning, his gentle irony, his native shrewdness and humanity, were most fully revealed. His economic ideas were drawn largely from Adam Smith; his political doctrines from T. H. Green, William James, and (in later years) R. M. Maclver. He regarded the state as a lion in the path of progress, inimical to the voluntary associations on which his social philosophy centered. It was the decline of state intervention in the late eighteenth century that led not only to a rapid growth of industry but also to a rise of workingclass organizations in England long before these appeared in more closely regulated societies abroad (1904, p. 227). By demonstrating, for each period he touched, the inefficacy or hurtfulness of "policy," he opened the way for historical interpretations more in line with the thought of economists and sociologists. His influence on economic history in England has extended far beyond the field, wide as this was, of his own specialized researches. T. S. ASHTON [For the historical context of Unwin's work, see the biographies of CUNNINGHAM and TOYNBEE; for discussion of the subsequent development of Unwin's ideas, see HISTORY, article, on ECONOMIC HISTORY.] WORKS BY UNWIN
(1904) 1957 Industrial Organisation in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. London: Cass. 1907 Industries. Volume 2, pages 247-289 in The Victoria History of the County of Suffolk. Edited by William Page. London: Constable. (1908) 1964 The Gilds and Companies of London. 4th ed. New York: Barnes & Noble. (1918) 1962 Finance and Trade Under Edward HI. London: Cass. 1924 Samuel Oldknow and the Arkwrights: The Industrial Revolution at Stock-port and Marple. Manchester Univ. Press; New York: Longmans. 1927 Studies in Economic History: The Collected Papers of George Unwin' . . . . Edited with an introductory memoir by R. H. Tawney. London: Macmillan. -» A bibliography appears on pages 465-471. SUPPLEMENTARY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BARKER, ERNEST 1953 Age and Youth: Memories of Three Universities and Father of the Man. London and New York: Oxford Univ. Press. -> Details of Unwin's career are given on page 294. DANIELS, GEORGE W. 1926 George Unwin: A Memorial Lecture. Manchester Univ. Press; New York: Longmans.
URBAN REVOLUTION: Introduction URBAN PLANNING See PLANNING, SOCIAL, article on REGIONAL AND URBAN PLANNING.
URBAN REVOLUTION i. INTRODUCTION ii. EARLY CIVILIZATIONS OF THE NEW WORLD in. THE CONCEPT OF CIVILIZATION
Robert McC. Adams Rene Millon Pedro Armillas
INTRODUCTION
"Urban revolution" is a term introduced by V. Gordon Childe, an eminent Old World prehistorian, to describe the process by which preliterate agriculturists living in villages and towns first came to form larger, more complex, civilized societies. This process seems to have occurred, essentially independently and at different times, in several areas of the world. Not surprisingly, the precise qualities by which the first achievement of a civilized way of life in particular areas can be recognized are not always the same. Indeed, even the two features emphasized in Childe's formulation of the concept—the formation of cities and the invention of writing—apparently were not present in all instances. But although different cultural traditions exhibit very different formal characteristics, the effect of the urban revolution everywhere was to bring a new set of social and economic institutions decisively and relatively rapidly into positions of dominance. The term "urban revolution" describes the functional core of this process. Thus it is perhaps as apt as any to express the underlying regularities that appear in all the separate manifestations of the process. This was a transformation which, in its crucial importance for man's cultural development, is analogous to the neolithic (or foodproducing) revolution, which preceded it by many millenniums, and to the industrial revolution of our own era. The equation of "urbanism" with "civilization" is not new. For example, Strabo, the thoughtful and widely traveled Greek geographer, simply classified countries of his day that lacked cities as uncivilized. Fifteen hundred years later the spectacle of the great Aztec capital city in central Mexico prompted the invading Spaniards to compare Mesoamerican civilization with that of Europe; these comparisons have been eloquently preserved in the account of Bernal Diaz and in letters of Hernan Cortes to the Spanish emperor. However, the more immediate background for the concept of an urban revolution
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lies not in the gradual systematization of this old equation but in the cultural evolutionism of Lewis Henry Morgan. Writing at a time when only scant knowledge of prehistory and early history existed, Morgan used contemporary ethnography and classical studies to posit a universal series of successive stages of cultural development. The sequence of savagery, barbarism, and civilization was marked by the cumulative growth of technology and the progressive unfolding of social institutions. Morgan's work turned attention away from the ethnocentric, valueladen connotations of "civilization" and toward its use as a term denoting an objective, qualitatively distinguishable stage of cultural complexity. He had the insight to recognize that the invention of writing was a convenient criterion of this development, if hardly its omnipresent or most essential feature. He failed, however, to recognize the advent of cities as a decisive development associated only with the stage of civilization in both its technological and institutional aspects. Childe's criteria of civilization During the sixty years separating Morgan's work and the beginnings of Childe's interest in the sequence of stages leading to civilization, early Near Eastern archeology and history had emerged as scholarly disciplines. Evidence became available, as it had not been earlier, through which urbanization could be identified as an axis of change accompanying the introduction of writing at the onset of civilization. Thus, when Childe came to identify other criteria of civilization, he was able to use an inductive approach and eschew pure speculation. Among these criteria Childe included classes of full-time specialists and rulers exempt from ordinary subsistence tasks, mechanisms such as taxes or tribute by which the "social surplus" could be concentrated in the hands of an elite, monumental public buildings devoted to the rulers or to the gods they served, the elaboration of exact and predictive sciences, extensive and regular foreign trade, and the emergence of a political organization based on residence rather than on kinship. This is, to be sure, a mixed bag of characteristics. Some, like monumental architecture, can be unequivocally documented from archeological evidence but are also known to have been associated with noncivilized peoples. Others, like exact and predictive sciences, are largely matters of interpretation from evidence that is at best fragmentary and ambiguous. Moreover, many of Childe's criteria, if not most, obviously must have emerged through a gradual, cumulative process in which it is
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not easy to distinguish differences in kind from those of degree. But if in this respect Childe's approach fails to exclude a subjective element, it also reflects a distinct conceptual advance over approaching the study of civilization within the framework of evolutionary stage theory. The concept of an urban revolution, after all, encourages us to view the attainment of civilization not as two disjunctive "before" and "after" steps but as a process of transformation in basic institutional patterns that occurred over a period of time. Distinguishing features of early civilized societies such as those elucidated by Childe obviously represent an extremely limited selection from the total range of cultural phenomena. However, their selection was not random but represents an emphasis on particular institutions thought to be somehow basic or crucial to the developmental process. For Childe himself, the central causative agencies behind the urban revolution were the cumulative growth of technology and the amassing and controlled utilization of food surpluses by newly emergent class societies. To some degree, this view undoubtedly reflects his commitment to a materialistic philosophy of history. Yet those who attach greater importance to changing ecological adaptations as the primary creative process leading to the appearance of civilizations find little to add to or take away from Childe's criteria. There are two reasons for this congruence of views. One is that the available evidence imposes severe limitations upon possible reconstructions. Since developed systems of writing appeared only as civilized societies approached maturity, documentary evidence is generally of secondary importance for understanding the initial periods of civilization. And in spite of substantial advances during recent years in the recovery and identification of organic materials (in some cases even permitting quantitative assessments of diet), the archeologist's interpretations of socioeconomic institutions and activities still rest heavily on inferences drawn from the imperishable vestiges of tools and weapons, ornaments, pottery, and architecture. Hence it is not surprising that the dominant archeological approach has remained phenomenological, with attention focused on the temporal and spatial relationships of the material objects themselves. There has been more emphasis on establishing chronological outlines and drawing up inventory lists for particular periods than on reconstructing the societal settings in which the objects were made and used. Furthermore, as interpretation becomes more disciplined, it becomes clear that fidelity to data of this limited
kind can only tend to impose a generally materialistic emphasis. A second reason for the congruence of views on the essential characteristics of early civilizations derives from the milieu of study in which prehistorians are trained. Since this milieu is primarily anthropological in character (particularly in the United States), some aspects of the traditional world view of anthropology have influenced the kinds of questions that are asked and the hypotheses and assumptions with which early urban development is analyzed. In general, anthropology has paid little attention to widespread regional or national patterns of culture or to the relationships of towns and cities to their hinterlands. The study of the emergence of cities also has tended to ignore these themes or to reduce them to the study of the diffusion of particular cultural elements. As the unit of study for anthropologists generally has been the community, so that of the prehistorian or protohistorian dealing with the urban revolution has been the excavation and analysis of the individual site. Not surprisingly, this study has become infused with a strongly integrative view of cultural development. Rather than dealing with the disorganization and dissonance of increasingly heterogeneous social groups, surely as potent a source of change as any, study has been focused mainly on the traditional styles, symbols, rituals, and institutions that uniquely distinguished a particular early civilization and that bound its components together. Despite differences over causal explanations, specialists on the problem have tended to unite in the assumption that the growth of the city can best be studied and understood as an organic, internal process, devoid of sharp discontinuities and significant external stimuli. They view civilization as both concentrated in and led by the major creative centers. Changes in subsistence The earliest zones in which the urban revolution took place were the great alluvial valleys of the Near East. While the food-producing revolution also seems to have occurred earliest in that general area, it is important to note that these two processes were not directly linked. Whatever its secondary effects on other aspects of culture and social organization, the food-producing revolution consisted essentially of a change in patterns of subsistence, a more selective and intensive adaptation of small communities to their immediate natural environments. The urban revolution, on the other hand, cannot be identified with substantial changes in subsistence.
URBAN REVOLUTION: Introduction It is primarily a matter of profound increase in the scale and complexity of society, together with the emergence of new political and religious institutions capable of organizing and integrating diverse social groups in an unprecedented urban setting. Nevertheless, in spite of differences in basic character, these two transformations do form a "unilineal" sequence. Without agriculture, without the production of storable food surpluses that could be concentrated by an elite and used for the support of persons engaged in activities not related to primary subsistence needs, the achievement of urban civilization would not have been possible. Of course, as shown by the long-continued practice of agriculture in many areas without the indigenous development of civilization, it follows only that the food-producing revolution was a necessary, not a sufficient, condition for this further transformation. That there were substantial differences between the agricultural regime of the village zone and that of the lowlands where civilization first developed, and that these may have furnished part of the stimulus which set the urban revolution in motion, is apparent not only from historical and archeological sources but also from the environmental conditions within the zones. The early villages occupied a diverse terrain of scattered oases, upland steppes, dissected hill flanks, and isolated mountain valleys, while the earliest instance of the urban revolution took place on the more compact and less differentiated lower plain of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Here, agriculture always required irrigation to supplement the inadequate rainfall. With irrigation, agricultural yields from the alluvial plain were probably always significantly higher than in the uplands, in relation to both cultivated area and labor input, even if Herodotus' claim of a two to three hundredfold return on seed is not borne out by temple records. On the plains, then, there was the possibility of substantial surpluses, particularly after the invention of the plow had vastly improved the methods of cultivating and irrigating the level, stoneless soils. But since the realization of this possibility was by no means inherent in the possibility itself, the concept of surplus is one that continues to arouse much debate. While the term may be used to describe a precondition for urban life, it must be carefully applied. As Polanyi and his co-workers have argued, actual agricultural surpluses are always defined and mobilized in a particular institutional setting. Too frequently the term is used loosely to imply that the production of the agriculturalist that was in excess of his family's own needs was a
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kind of prior, self-generating, independent variable and that the social arrangements for extracting that surplus from him were introduced later. Perhaps this is so, but one might also argue that it was the growth of the religious and political institutions characteristic of civilization that induced or compelled farmers to convert their leisure and local specialization into agricultural produce delivered to distant elites. The evidence currently available simply does not permit a definitive choice among these and similar alternatives. There were several other subsistence features that appeared during the fifth and fourth millenniums B.C. that were just as important in precipitating the urban revolution as the magnitude of potential agricultural surpluses on the plains. The subsistence system was, in the first place, a complex system, involving products of field, garden, and fruit cultivation as well as animal husbandry and fishing, each with its own annual cycle of activities, variations in output, and specialized technology. Hence it must have encouraged the growth of the exchange and redistributive agencies characteristic of an urban setting, in contrast to the economic self-sufficiency and isolation of the early villages in which agriculture first was practiced. Second, each of the major components of subsistence was exposed to highly destructive natural hazards—floods, droughts, and insect infestations, to mention only three—while at the same time the relatively dry climate and the nature of the foodstuffs permitted extended periods of storage. Here we see an apparently strong inducement to the accumulation of food surpluses and thus perhaps also to the formation of political institutions for their collection, retention, and allocation. Finally, certain consequences of intensive agriculture, and especially of irrigation, surely helped set in motion those processes of increasing social stratification which lay at the core of the urban revolution. The available evidence on population density, patterns of settlement, and prices paid for fields in early Mesopotamia, fragmentary as it is, strongly suggests that potentially cultivable land on the alluvial plain was never in short supply in relation to population over the region at large. By contrast water for irrigation must always have been the scarce, primary variable, as indeed it remains today. And scarcity of water in turn implies that disproportionate importance and value must have been attached to lands adjacent to, and capable of being commanded by, the major sources of irrigation water. Such lands, together with the canals that supplied them, constituted both a capital resource
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and a balanced system capable of only limited expansion. In this sense, with the focus on the particular locality instead of the wider region, limitations in the supply of cultivable land must have rapidly become a potent source of economic inequality and intercommunity political rivalry. It also has been argued that the practice of irrigation was directly responsible for the formation of a managerial elite that in time came to exercise a monopoly of political and economic power. According to this "hydraulic theory," the planning, operation, and maintenance of large-scale irrigation systems necessarily placed despotic powers in the hands of administrative specialists, enabling these specialists to concentrate surpluses in their hands and to consolidate the earliest state apparatuses. This view, however, considerably overestimates the degree of centralized control needed for what were prevailingly canal systems of very limited scale and complexity. Moreover, ethnographic evidence suggests that the problems of irrigation were successfully met at the level of the local community throughout the period when the new elites characteristic of a civilization were being formed. Hence, at least in the Mesopotamian context, the managerial requirements of irrigation systems seem to represent a less important historical force in the precipitation of the urban revolution than the differential degrees of access to the main productive resources, land and water, differences that tended to encourage political rivalries and social stratification. The Mesopotamian prototype As it first occurred in lower Mesopotamia in the centuries immediately before and after 3000 B.C., the core of the urban revolution as a process of change seems to have consisted of a series of linked trends that were manifested in, but were not fully synonymous with, the criteria set forth by Childe. Apparently the first specialized administrative group, or ruling stratum, was composed of hierarchies of priests. These priests were associated with monumental temples and were in the service of gods who were regarded as resident in the individual communities. Why the initial emphasis should have been placed on a priesthood, as indeed also seems to have been the case in the formative stages of other early civilizations, remains a matter of conjecture. It may be argued that the concurrent emergence of unprecedentedly diverse and often conflicting social groups that characterized the urban revolution initially demanded a unified and heightened ritual expression of certain essential
structural themes simply in order to maintain social cohesion. But it should also be noted that part of the early prominence that we attach to religious institutions is only a reflection of the more formal, highly stylized setting and character of religious forms of social integration as compared with their political counterparts. It is, after all, only the physical remnants of these institutions with which the archeologist must work, and archeological evidence for ritual activities suggestive of a priesthood almost always will be inherently less ambiguous than for the more rapidly shifting channels and fluid forms of expression of political power. Overtly political controls maintained by these groups of religious specialists are not apparent, but the earliest written evidence indicates that they were already engaged in widely diversified economic activities. The temples constituted integrated economic units in which production and redistribution were not limited to subsistence products but gradually expanded to include the support of craftsmen as well as specialized scribes, priests, and administrators. As the bonds linking together the extended kin groups originally occupying certain communities were dissolved by emerging class differences, these communities came more and more to assume the characteristics of private estates. Both textual and archeological evidence clearly points to this process of social stratification and organization of sacred and secular communities along manorial lines as one of the central features of the urban revolution. But while the bulk of the agricultural population may have gradually assumed a serf-like status, outright slavery was not an important feature in the countryside. Even in the cities the percentage of slaves remained small, although since they were concentrated in the larger secular and sacred establishments, their presence may have had a strategic effect in accelerating the stratification process as a whole. An equally strategic and closely related process was the emergence of an explicitly political basis for the organization of new and larger communities comprising a number of manorial units. To judge from the sequence of societal forms implied by myths and semihistorical epics thought to have originated during this period, the role of temporary war leader was institutionalized and made permanent at about the same time as monumental private residences ("palaces") and tombs richly stocked with luxury goods and weapons appear in the archeological record. Warfare seems to have become more chronic and sanguinary, encouraging the con-
URBAN REVOLUTION: Introduction solidation of dispersed settlements into composite city-states, where it became the business of hereditary dynasts to organize the defense with walls, supplies of costly weaponry such as chariots, regular soldiery, and militia drawn from the populace at large. These first cities, having evolved in a few centuries from small, temple-dominated towns of about the same size as the numerous agricultural villages that were widely scattered over the alluvial landscape, grew to include up to 400 hectares within their walls and probably were occupied by up to several tens of thousands of inhabitants. The king of such a city-state, increasingly free of the traditional restraints imposed by other manorial groupings similar to the one from which he (or his ancestors) had first emerged as a successful war leader, naturally sought to consolidate both his internal and external position through conquest of his neighbors. Foodstuffs, luxury goods from looted temples, arable lands, and war captives to serve in the palaces and temples were among the prizes of battle. Foreign trade, involving the exchange of textiles and metal implements for timber, ores, and other raw materials, was necessarily expanded greatly. It now had to meet not only the enhanced military and ritual demands of the king and the temple but also the increasing private demand of craft specialists for the exchange of their products through a market. If the foregoing reconstruction is reasonably accurate, it prompts further scrutiny of the criteria previously identified with the urban revolution. The development of social stratification and the replacement of kin-based and temple-based modes of organization by increasingly autocratic political institutions were clearly evident trends that seem to have been primary motive forces for the change. Urbanization, on the other hand, is more difficult to identify as an independent factor. While eventually it may be found that there was substantial population growth during this period, according to present evidence the physical process of urbanization involved primarily the redistribution of population, through the abandonment of hundreds of smaller settlements in the hinterlands and the coalescence of formerly scattered settlements. This process in turn was consequent upon the rising importance of politico-military leadership. Further light can be shed on this problem only by diverting some of the archeological attention that is now concentrated on the aesthetically more promising city ruins toward the tracing of the fortunes of smaller outlying settlements. The case is similar with regard to the increasing
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specialization of the crafts, the proliferation of nonfood producers, and the greatly expanded volume and variety of foreign trade. If it is always futile to seek to completely disentangle "causes" and "effects" in a complex historical sequence, at least it can be said that these developments were largely posterior to, and hence hardly responsible for, the major political and economic trends that initially constituted the urban revolution. There does not seem to be any factual basis for regarding advances in the organization of the crafts and in the distribution of their products, or advances in Mesopotamian technology itself, as primary and essentially selfenergizing factors leading to the achievement of civilization. It has also been demonstrated through ethnographic example that full-time and part-time specialists were intergraded with one another, confounding the expectation of the modern analyst that those entirely divorced from a role in primary subsistence pursuits should form a distinct and separate group. Another set among our original criteria—namely, the elaboration of systems of writing and measurement and the appearance of the predictive "sciences"—stands in a still different relationship to the growth of civilization in Mesopotamia. While perhaps not a part of the nexus of cause and effect at the core of the urban revolution, these criteria certainly were more than just a part of its penumbra. They developed hand in hand with the major institutional forces, exercising a substantial influence on both their rate and direction of growth. To be sure, the presence of knowledge deserving to be called exact and scientific at this early period can be deduced only very tentatively from the existence of elaborately kept records and carefully replicated craft procedures. But since emphasis on both accounts and craft technologies was a vital part of Mesopotamia's long-standing cultural tradition, it seems justified to infer an early trend toward some more abstract and systematic view of the procedures that went into them. The effects of literacy are even more apparent. Invented at the very outset of the urban revolution, writing greatly enhanced both the scale and complexity of the administrative capabilities of the temple and the state. Perhaps still more important, it provided for the preservation and accumulation of knowledge and a world view through time, making possible the conscious synthesis and elaboration of a great tradition out of the variable and shortlived little traditions of the preliterate, preurban countryside. However, all but the formally recorded terminal point in the process is irrecoverable, since
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the preliterate archeological record is limited not merely to material remains but to relatively imperishable ones at that. Other early Oriental civilizations Most of the other areas of early and essentially autochthonous civilization in the Old World are even less adequately documented than Mesopotamia. However, since the substantive details of the rise of civilization in various centers are less significant for our purpose than the general process they represent, certain limited conclusions can be drawn. Insofar as the evidence permits comparison, it suggests that this process was essentially the same everywhere, even though the formal criteria by which it may be recognized differ considerably from case to case. At the same time, a brief survey of some of the major instances may serve not only to underline the patterns of regularity but also to indicate the range of differences. Closest to Mesopotamia was the civilization of Egypt; it was almost contemporary with that of Mesopotamia and apparently influenced by the latter for a brief but significant period just as its essential forms were crystallizing. Yet in matters of cultural content Egypt rapidly branched off onto an entirely independent course. At a broad institutional level, for example, the following contrasts may be noted: the strikingly early and successful imposition of unified state controls over an entire realm of hundreds or even thousands of component communities; the early and apparently sudden, yet fully elaborated, emergence of the ruler as both king and deity, and the failure of temple hierarchies to appear (at least according to present evidence) as agencies of smaller-scale administrative control prior to the ruler's emergence; and the relative stagnation of technology in spite of raw materials more abundant than Mesopotamia ever possessed. It has even been suggested by some authorities that Egypt lacked true cities until late in the second millennium B.C., although in the present state of Egyptian archeology there is little evidence either for or against this proposition. But beneath these clearly different structural features, the onset of Egyptian civilization still can be described in terms of the linked processes of increasing social stratification and the institutionalization of political leadership to supplement less formal and authoritarian patterns of control within a greatly expanded territorial state. At least in this general sense, Egypt can be said to have gone through an urban revolution similar to that of Mesopotamia, whether or not cities were present during the third millennium. The origins of the other early civilizations of
Asia, particularly those of the Indus Valley and north China, are still more obscure. If purely archeological modes of inference are reliable (the script has not been deciphered), Indus civilization was much like early Egypt with respect to the contrastive features mentioned above—save possibly that its twin capitals unquestionably were cities of a large (about one square kilometer) and exceptionally well-regulated kind. Chinese civilization, on the other hand, seems to have followed more closely the internally warring, urban, technologically precocious Mesopotamian model. The Indus Valley and probably also the north China plain supported irrigation societies, engendering additional similarities to Egypt and Mesopotamia. Both the Indus and Chinese civilizations developed considerably later than the civilizations of the Near East (the Indus perhaps half a millennium later, China probably less than a millennium and a half) and hence have sometimes been dismissed as merely derivative. Whatever the ultimate source of the stimuli that prompted their growth, however, each represented an essentially independent synthesis in response to historical and ecological forces within its own area and was in no sense imposed from outside. The years since Morgan's work on cultural evolution have brought a substantial and irreversible erosion in the universal series of immutable stages he had visualized as steps toward civilization taken, at a more or less rapid rate, by cultures all over the world. We are left with what can no longer be called a "unilinear" but instead must be considered a "multilinear" process. This process consists of a common core of certain basic trends that operated through time in widely different ways to transform a certain general type of society found in broadly similar ecological settings into a type of society that reflected a higher level of sociocultural scale and complexity. It has become equally clear that the transition from one organizational level to another was not "unidirectional" in the sense of smoothly modifying institutional patterns moving toward closer and closer approximations of patterns with which we are directly familiar. Urbanism in our own day, for example, is widely regarded as synonymous with pronounced social heterogeneity, secularism of outlook, impersonality of an increasing proportion of interpersonal contacts, and preoccupation with nonsubsistence pursuits. Yet in its initial appearance, as reflected in the examples discussed above, the city seems to have emerged as a physical form of settlement accompanied by few, and in some cases none, of these characteristics. For all the intensely
URBAN REVOLUTION: The New World rich and important potentialities that the urban revolution held for precivilized societies, it was only the initial step in the much fuller and longer process of urbanization as we know it today. ROBERT McC. ADAMS [See also CITY, article on FORMS AND FUNCTIONS; and the biography of CHILDE.] BIBLIOGRAPHY
ADAMS, ROBERT McC. 1966 The Evolution of Urban Society: Early Mesopotamia and Prehispanic Mexico. Chicago: Aldine. BRAIDWOOD, ROBERT J.; and WILLEY, GORDON R. (editors) 1962 Courses Toward Urban Life: Archeological Considerations of Some Cultural Alternates. Viking Fund Publications in Anthropology, No. 32. Chicago: Aldine. CHILDE, V. GORDON (1928) 1953 New Light on the Most Ancient East. 4th ed. New York: Praeger. -» First published as The Most Ancient East. CHILDE, V. GORDON 1950 The Urban Revolution. Town Planning Review 21:3-17. CHILDE, V. GORDON 1951 Social Evolution. New York: Schumann. FRIED, MORTON H. 1960 On the Evolution of Social Stratification and the State. Pages 713-731 in Stanley Diamond (editor), Culture in History: Essays in Honor of Paul Radin. New York: Columbia Univ. Press. JACOBSEN, THORKILD 1957 Early Political Development in Mesopotamia. Zeitschrift fur Assyriologie und vorderasiatische Archdologie 52:91—140. POLANYI, KARL; ARENSBERG, CONRAD M.; and PEARSON, HARRY W. (editors) 1957 Trade and Market in the Early Empires: Economies in History and Theory. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. REDFIELD, ROBERT 1953 The Primitive World and Its Transformations. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press. SJOBERG, GIDEON 1960 The Preindustrial City: Past and Present. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. STEWARD, JULIAN H. (editor) 1955a Irrigation Civilizations: A Comparative Study. Pan American Union, Social Science Monographs, No. 1. Washington: Pan American Union. STEWARD, JULIAN H. 1955b Theory of Culture Change: The Methodology of Multilinear Evolution. Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press. SYMPOSIUM ON URBANIZATION AND CULTURAL DEVELOPMENT IN THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST, UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO, 1958 1960 City Invincible. Edited by Carl H. Kraeling and Robert McC. Adams. Univ. of Chicago Press. II EARLY CIVILIZATIONS OF THE NEW WORLD
In the early sixteenth century, Spanish conquerors destroyed flourishing urban civilizations in central Mexico and Peru. The conquerors' accounts of the cities and civilizations of the New World captured the imagination of Europe. In the four following centuries a great body of literature on these early civilizations accumulated, some of it histori-
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cal or sociological; some anecdotal, theological or philosophical; some wildly speculative, some carefully reasoned. Two questions repeatedly occur throughout this literature: Where did these civilizations come from? How are they like and how are they different from the civilizations of the Old World? In the answers to these questions lies the significance of these civilizations for the social sciences, for the comparative study of early civilization in the Old World must reckon with the evidence from the New World. When the Spanish reached the Valley of Mexico in the high plateau of central Mexico, seven thousand feet above sea level, they marveled at the capital city of the Aztecs on the island in the valley's shallow lake system. They could not know that the city they were seeing, with its great pyramidtemples, market places, palaces, and gleaming white dwellings, was the product of a long period of growth and development, and that the earliest cities in Mexico antedated it by almost fifteen hundred years. Only comparatively recently, through archeology, has this become clear. Much the same is true of the Inca capital of Cuzco, in the central highlands of Peru. This city, with its spectacular stone masonry and megalithic architecture, was the product of a long period which saw the growth of major urban centers in other places and times. Cities and civilization V. Gordon Childe's concept of "the urban revolution" greatly influenced prehistorians and others concerned with the rise of cities and civilization, both in the Near East and in other parts of the world. Childe's formulation centered on the social and cultural transformations wrought by the urban revolution in the Near East, and he wrote of "the urban revolution" and "the birth of civilization" as though they were aspects of the same phenomenon. And indeed, the development of the city and the development of civilization appear to have been closely linked in ancient Mesopotamia. But the same does not seem to be true for the New World, or at least not for Middle America, where civilization appears to have arisen in a nonurban setting hundreds of years before the development of cities. In Peru the evidence is less clear. The concepts "civilization" and "city" cannot easily be delineated in preindustrial settings. Attempts to utilize minimal criteria, such as those suggested by Childe, in a pigeonholing operation in which cities are separated from towns, the civilized from the noncivilized, are Procrustean and self-defeating, for they lead to meaningless arguments which obscure the points at issue.
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"Civilizations" and "cities" are conceptually distinct and should not be confused. "Civilization" refers to qualities pervading a whole society or several societies (see, for example, Redfield 1962, pp. 364-414). A preindustrial "city," on the other hand, is a concrete entity, a densely settled community, with a relatively large, concentrated, essentially permanent population. A city has many of the qualities of a civilization. For example, the social structure of a city is markedly stratified, the occupational hierarchy is highly differentiated, and the political structure is that of a state. By various means, a city's elite tends to exercise control over a significant portion of the society's labor and production of goods and services. Integration is at least partly fostered through a state ideology and a ritual system which reaffirm the basic unity of the society and its shared sacred representations, and often provide sanctioned role models for the society's different strata. "City" and "civilization" thus share some characteristics, do not share others, and are not necessarily conterminous. There may be "civilizations" without "cities," "cities" without "civilization." "Civilizations without cities" seem to have existed in parts of Middle America and Peru, in Egypt, and in other parts of the world; "cities without civilization," in parts of aboriginal west Africa and perhaps in parts of pre-Shang China and Peru. For some purposes, the two concepts, together with the "ceremonial" or "temple center" concept discussed below, may be subsumed under the rubric "complex society." But this would not be helpful here, for it would tend to blur the very differences which seem to have had important social concomitants in New World civilizations. Cities and temple centers Students of New World civilizations have argued over the significance of the roles played by ceremonial or temple centers and cities in the growth of civilizations in Middle America and Peru. It is clear that both types of settlements have long histories. Studies of settlement patterns (e.g., Willey 1956) shifted attention to the possible relation of ecological setting to the growth of cities or temple centers. Drawing an analogy from ancient Mesopotamia, earlier archeologists assumed that urban civilizations must have preceded the growth of civilizations around temple centers. For example, the ancient Maya of the tropical lowland forests of Guatemala and environs possessed a flourishing civilization built around such temple centers during the first millennium A.D. But it has been held that Maya civilization could not have originated in such
an ecological setting and thus it must have been "imported" from elsewhere. This argument has been undercut by evidence not only for a long period of indigenous growth of civilization in the Maya area itself (W. Coe 1965) but, significantly, for the growth of Olmec civilization, in an ecological setting at least as forbidding. The Olmec civilization, now thought to be the earliest civilization in Middle America, appears to have developed primarily in the lowland tropical forests of the northern part of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. (For discussion of this point see Covarrubias 1957, pp. 40-83; Drucker et al. 1959; Jimenez Moreno 1966, pp. 7-36; articles by Stirling and M. Coe in Handbook of Middle American Indians 1965, vol. 3, pp. 679-700, 716-775.) Here a number of temple centers were built, the most noted of which is at La Venta, an island in the midst of a swamp. At La Venta a great pyramid temple (of earth) and other platform structures were built; one of the world's great art styles flourished; great basalt columns and other monoliths were brought from sources scores of miles distant; monumental stone heads, altars, bas-reliefs, and other stone sculptures abounded; and figurines and a variety of objects made of jade or other green stone were used in religious offerings. Available evidence suggests that Olmec civilization flowered in the first millennium B.C. for some hundreds of years (the most frequently cited figure is 800-400 B.C.; an earlier, highly developed phase may have begun in the late second millennium— see M. Coe et al. 1967). Olmec civilization apparently was not confined to the tropical lowlands; centers of varying size and importance have been found in the highlands of central Mexico and in lower areas bordering on them, and in highland areas of southern Mexico and neighboring parts of Central America. However, none of these centers seems to have had an urban character; all were apparently temple or shrine centers of varying size, importance, and complexity. On the basis of present evidence, it thus appears that in Middle America the temple center was the first center of civilization and that it preceded the appearance of cities. The same would appear to be true of the central Andes region. The beginnings of civilization in the central Andes are associated with the center and style of Chavin, which may have flourished at approximately the same time as the Olmec. The site of Chavin itself, in the Mosna Valley, ten thousand feet above sea level in the northern highlands of Peru, has usually been described as a ceremonial center (Bennett & Bird [1949] 1964, pp. 91-102; Collier 1962, p. 169; however, see also Rowe 1963,
URBAN REVOLUTION: The New World p. 10). On the basis of existing accounts it is difficult to judge the density of settlement around Chavin's imposing ceremonial buildings, portals, courts, and galleries. Rowe summarizes evidence suggesting that some of the important large sites known to be contemporary with Chavin, and perhaps some that are considerably earlier, may have been cities (ibid., pp. 5—10; the interpretation of this evidence varies, since there are conflicting ideas on what constitutes an urban settlement). In addition, subsequent work has established that a number of temple centers of various sizes existed both on the coast and in the highlands prior to the Chavin florescence. While there is evidence that cities became increasingly important in Middle America, the evidence from the central Andes as a whole is not quite so clear (compare Bennett & Bird [1949] 1964; Collier 1962; and Schaedel 1966 with Rowe 1963, pp. 18-20). The earliest great urban center now known to have developed in Middle America was Teotihuacan. Its ruins lie in the Valley of Mexico, high in the Mexican central plateau, a little over 25 miles northeast of the site of Tenochtitlan, the later capital city of the Aztecs, and some fifty miles southwest of the site of Tula, capital of the Toltecs, the successors of the Teotihuacanos and predecessors of the Aztecs. Civilization in Middle America did not begin at Teotihuacan, site of the mammoth pyramids of the Sun and Moon, but civilized urban life of extraordinary complexity seems to have flourished there during the first millennium A.D. (Sanders [1956] 1964, pp. 123-125; Covarrubias 1957, pp. 122-143; Armillas 1964, pp. 304-310; Willey 1966, pp. 109-116; Jimenez Moreno 1966, pp. 36-56). At Teotihuacan a case can be made for an "urban revolution" comparable to the economic, social, and cultural transformations in Mesopotamia that gave rise to Sumerian civilization (Adams 1966, pp. 130-133, 172-173). At its peak of development the city covered an area of seven to eight square miles. Its population is difficult to estimate; perhaps it was about 75,000. Does Teotihuacan have more in common with the early cities of Mesopotamia and China than it does with the culturally closely related ceremonial centers of Maya civilization, such as Tikal in the tropical lowlands of Guatemala? What were the structural consequences of life in such a crowded, planned urban center as Teotihuacan? It was a city of overpowering, monumental architecture, with scores of temples, large plazas, crowded residential areas, spacious palaces, hundreds of mural paintings, and a forceful art style expressed in many media. It was
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a metropolis and sacred center of great complexity. The many and diverse activities, interests, and beliefs of its populace, the myriad outsiders attracted to its temples, shrines, and markets—all must have contributed to making Teotihuacan a center of extraordinary cultural richness. Was life in Teotihuacan so different from life in the contemporary center of Tikal, largest of the lowland Guatemalan Maya temple centers? Tikal was the locus of a brilliant architectural and artistic florescence beginning before the Christian era and ending a thousand years later. Its towering temples were the highest ever built by the Maya. Its carvings in stone, wood, and other materials and its paintings on walls and on pottery vessels include artistic masterpieces of the highest quality. Calendrical and other inscriptions in Maya hieroglyphic writing are abundant. Tikal appears to have been as large as Teotihuacan but seems to have been much less densely settled. A minimal population of ten thousand recently has been suggested for the great Maya center. William R. Coe has argued that it was more than a ceremonial center, that its social structure was urban, even though it may not have looked like a city (1965, pp. 50-52). The point is not what Tikal should be called— macrotemple center, city, or something else. It is whether there were important structural differences between the societies of Teotihuacan and Tikal which are related to the differences in population densities and sizes and the differing social composition of the two. The exploration and delineation of these differences, if they exist, and their social and cultural concomitants, represent the real point at issue. Its resolution might have implications which would carry beyond the borders of Middle America to Peru or to the Old World. Unfortunately, detailed and comprehensive maps of the great urban and temple centers of the central Andes comparable to those of Tikal and Teotihuacan have yet to be made. For example, the great Chimu capital of Chan Chan in the Moche Valley on the north coast of Peru requires such detailed study (Kosok 1965). Writing and civilization The question of the relation of writing to the development of a peasantry (and, by implication, to the development of civilization) has been raised by Fallers (1961), in connection with some of the "complex polities" of sub-Saharan Africa. He suggested that the development of great cultural gaps between an elite and the cultivators of the soil was impeded in these societies by the absence of literary religious traditions. The development of such cultural gaps, Fallers argued, is a result of the exist-
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URBAN REVOLUTION: The New World
ence of writing, which facilitates the accumulation and elaboration of religious traditions and creates a social barrier between the literate and the illiterate segments of the population. Writing never developed in the central Andes, so far as we know, although the use of the quipu (a counting device made of colored strings) as a mnemonic device undoubtedly facilitated record-keeping and the retention of many other kinds of information—historical, mythological, and religious. The juxtaposition of Fallers' argument and the evidence from Peru illuminates both. Little understanding would be gained by insisting that writing is an indispensable criterion for civilization, thereby excluding the aboriginal central Andes. At the same time, our understanding of Inca society and of the nature of Inca civilization might be advanced by explicitly examining the nature of the limitations imposed on social and cultural differentiation by the absence of writing (see Rowe 1946; Murra 1965; 1967). The result might have "feedback" for the understanding of the societies examined by Fallers. For example, it can be argued that it is not only the absence of writing that is relevant to the differences examined by Fallers. The study of New World civilizations It is axiomatic that theoretical approaches must be rooted firmly in specific bodies of empirical data and that creative interplay between the two is the major impetus to guided exploration and informed interpretation. -That this is not always what happens in practice should surprise no one. One of the most widely employed approaches to the study of New World civilizations is the "ecological," which owes much to the work of Julian H. Steward (1955a). This approach directs attention to how the members of a given society are related to their environment—particularly to how they exploit it and to the network of social relations involved—in an effort to determine in what ways these relations illumine other aspects of their social system. The immediate antecedents of this approach may be found in papers by Pedro Armillas, Wendell C. Bennett, A. L. Kroeber, Julian H. Steward, William Duncan Strong, and Gordon R. Willey (see Bennett 1948). These papers were manifestations of a growing concern among anthropologists after World War n with comparative developmental problems in the analysis of New World civilizations. Settlement pattern data have been fruitfully used in conjunction with and as part of the process of examining ecological relations (Willey 1956). The ecological approach has been as much concerned with processes of change as with the examination
of ecological relations at a moment of time (Sanders 1956). The possible relation of irrigation to the development of centralized authority in the rise of civilization has been of interest in recent years (Wittfogel 1957). Because irrigation was a necessity for intensive cultivation in coastal Peru and was widespread in Middle America when the Spanish arrived, and because irrigation agriculture is so highly productive, it has been the subject of much attention in New World studies. At the same time, it has been clear that Middle American and Peruvian irrigation systems were small in scale as compared with those associated with the great river valley civilizations of the Old World. It is also clear that centralization of authority sometimes preceded the development of unified irrigation systems, rather than the reverse (Symposium on Urbanization . . . 1960, pp. 35-43, 269-295; Adams 1966, pp. 66-67; Braidwood & Willey 1962, pp. 357-358). Because most irrigation systems in Middle America and Peru were so small, there is no need to postulate the existence of centralized political systems to manage them effectively. The role of religion in the origin and growth of New World civilizations has become a subject of increasing concern. Willey (1962) has argued that the Olmec and Chavin art styles may be symbolic expressions of ecumenical religions. The term "ecumenical," however, may be too strong in New World contexts. A safer phrase might be "a religion with ecumenical pretensions." This designation could be applied to the religion of the Inca, for example. Certainly, religion appears to have been an overriding concern of Middle American peoples from at least the beginnings of Olmec civilization. The same seems to be at least partially true of the ancient Peruvians. For example, intense religiosity seems to have permeated the Teotihuacan way of life. The enormous influence of Teotihuacan throughout so much of Middle America may have been due in considerable part to the power and emotional impact of its religious concepts and rituals and to the meaning of its sacred imagery to those who came under its spell. Despite the trend in Teotihuacan's history from traditional domination by priests to increasing secularization and increasing differentiation of the religious and the military, possibly eventuating in a shift in power from the former to the latter, the "Teotihuacan way" seems to have been suffused with the religious up to the time of the city's fall. Most of the other civilized peoples of Middle America also appear to have been dominated by a kind of religiosity that does not seem to have been present among early Chinese city
URBAN REVOLUTION: The New World dwellers, for example. Exploration of the nature of this religiosity and its social concomitants undoubtedly will continue to be of major concern in Middle American studies (see Thompson 1954; Caso 1953a; Jimenez Moreno 1966). Another approach to social cohesion and cultural integration in ancient Middle American centers of civilization has been stressed by Eric Wolf (1959, pp. 17-18, 82-83) and Steward (1955b, pp. 6165, 69-70). This is the possible significance of the sacred center which at the same time developed into a great market center. The interplay of temple and market could support a population of great diversity and ever-increasing complexity and could provide a ruling hierarchy with means for increasing its power. While the age of the temple-market place complex in Middle America is not known, it was so highly developed when the Spaniards arrived that it seems likely to have been long established. Although market place trade and the institutions surrounding it do not seem to have been as highly developed in the central Andes, they did exist and may also have played an important integrating role. In his recent comparison of the growth of urban society in ancient Mesopotamia and pre-Hispanic central Mexico, Adams concluded that "we can identify intelligible, cumulative patterns of change that were strikingly similar" (1966, p. 172). In reviewing the differences between developments in the two areas, culminating in Sargon's Akkadian kingdom and the domain of the Aztecs of Tenochtitlan, he stated: "What seems overwhelmingly most important about these differences is how small they bulk, even in aggregate, when considered against the mass of similarities in form and process. In short, the parallels . . . suggest that both instances are most significantly characterized by a common core of regularly occurring features" (ibid., pp. 174-175). Relations between Middle America and Peru A recurrent problem concerns the possible relations between civilizations in the central Andes and those in Middle America. Arguing largely from an analysis of art style, Willey has recently suggested that Olmec civilization may have been spread widely in Middle America on the crest of an "ecumenical" religion. Similarly, he has suggested that the Chavin art style, associated with the beginnings of civilization in Peru, may be an expression of another "ecumenical" religion in that region, and that Chavin religion may include Olmec concepts which spread to Peru (Willey 1962). In part, his argument grows out of the pervasiveness of the art
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styles in the two areas and out of the conviction that both represent primarily religious expressions. The two styles, Olmec and Chavin, are acknowledged to be quite different, and Willey does not base his case for a connection between the two areas on stylistic relationships. Chavin art is manifested in monumental stone sculptures of great power. It shows mastery in small carvings in stone, bone, and shell, in repousse gold objects, and in modeled and incised pottery (Rowe 1962). Felines and feline and serpent elements on other beings—humans, birds, caymans— form much of its subject matter. Chavin art is widespread in Peru; but its most important centers, in terms of both art and architecture, have been found in northern Peru, in the highlands, where Chavin itself is located, and on the desert coast. The Chavin style may have flourished at approximately the same time as that of the Olmec, in the middle centuries of the first millennium B.C., perhaps beginning a bit later and continuing somewhat longer (700-200 B.C.; see Rowe 1962; Menzel et al. 1964). However, it is also possible that it began late in the second millennium B.C. Willey's argument is stimulating, but many problems remain to be solved before any conclusion can be reached (see also Kidder 1964, pp. 459-463; Lathrap 1966, pp. 271-273). Whatever the influence of Middle American religious conceptions on the rise of civilization in Peru, there is evidence that peoples of the New World's two centers of civilization were intermittently in contact for considerably more than two millennia. Contacts between them were mediated and perhaps in some cases initiated by peoples living in the "intermediate" area, and contacts may also have been made directly by sea (Willey 1955; Braidwood & Willey 1962; Meggers 1964; Meggers et al. 1965; Evans & Meggers 1966; Lathrap 1966). Certain "configurational parallels in the rise of Middle American and Peruvian civilizations" which Willey saw as "not only similar but synchronous" led him to conclude that there was "a powerful argument for historical interrelatedness" (1955, pp. 586, 588). The case for interrelatedness exists on a number of levels (Lathrap 1966, p. 275). However, this "interrelatedness" need not have had the same consequences for social structure that it may have had in a variety of other, often peripheral, contexts. Whether the social and political parallels or the parallels in settlement patterns and ecological relations which existed at various times were sufficiently close either in form and content or in time and process to attribute them to this "interrelatedness" still remains to be determined.
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Middle America and the central Andes compared The ancient civilizations of Middle America and the central Andes resembled each other in many ways. Both arose in settings of spectacular topographic and environmental diversity in tropical zones. Because great mountain chains run through Middle America and the central Andes, major zones of temperate and colder climates are found in both. The climatic and topographic barriers in Middle America and the central Andes served in varying degrees, depending on the area and the time, both to separate and to unite zones having dramatically different environments (Sanders 1956; Wolf 1959, pp. 17-18). Sharp topographical variations mean that different environmental zones may be physically quite close to each other, providing a possible basis for the exchange of distinctive products of each. This potentiality seems to have been exploited more fully in Middle America than in Peru, through institutionalized networks of market place and long-distance trade. In both Middle America and the central Andes there were a number of centers of civilization. Monumental architecture, often in the form of pyramid temples—sometimes in stone, sometimes of earth and/or adobe faced with stone, sometimes of earth or adobe—was widespread in both regions. As we have seen, both the temple center and the city were found in each area. In both areas civilizations rose and fell, in many cases to be supplanted by new civilizations. But in some cases, such as the Maya of the southern lowlands of Guatemala and their environs, the collapse was final and partial depopulation followed (about A.D. 900). Distinctive practices in Middle America included widespread networks of market place trade, often associated with temples or shrines; elaboration of calendrical systems, including a solar calendar of 360 days plus five nameless days, and a ritual calendar of 260 days; use of a vigesimal system of numerical notation; hieroglyphic writing (most highly developed by the Maya); the cultivation of chinampas, a labor-intensive system of garden cultivation in the shallow lakes of the Valley of Mexico; the working of jade and the value placed on it as the most precious of all substances; the widespread use of lime cement and lime plaster in construction; the ritual use of miniature wheeled animals of clay (but, so far as we know, no practical use of the wheel); and a game of ritual character played with a rubber ball on distinctively constructed courts in which vertically positioned rings of stone were often fixed (Kirchhoff 1943).
Distinctive practices in Peru included the domestication of the llama and the alpaca and the use of the llama as a draft animal (no draft animals were used in Middle America); the development of elaborate systems of roads, the most notable being that of the Inca; the great development of metallurgy, the use of alloys of gold, silver, copper, tin, and platinum, and specialized casting techniques (knowledge of certain metallurgical techniques, including the "lost-wax" method, seems to have spread relatively late to Middle America— toward the end of the first millennium A.D.—from neighboring regions of Central America or perhaps from further south); the use of the quipu and the decimal system; and shrines of great prestige where oracles were widely consulted (sometimes important pilgrimage centers, such as Pachacamac, on the central coast of Peru, had branch oracles in faraway places). The cultivation of plants for food and other uses began in several regions of Middle America in the seventh or sixth millennium B.C. or earlier. Among the early domesticates was maize, the New World's most important cereal plant. In Peru a variety of plants other than maize was being cultivated in the fourth and third millennia B.C. Maize cultivation does not appear to have reached Peru until toward the end of the second millennium B.C. If we compare the two regions in terms of political development at the time of the Spanish conquest, it is clear that the empire of the Inca was larger, more complex, more effectively administered, and more secure than that of the Aztecs. Howe argues that the Inca, during their relatively brief rule, had built a nation by the time the Spanish arrived ([1946] 1963, pp. 329-330). The same cannot be said for the Aztecs. Before the rise of Olmec and Chavin civilizations, there was a period in both Middle America and Peru during which settled farming communities of the village type grew larger and more numerous and precursors of the great pyramids and temples of the two regions were built. In both regions the beginnings of this period extend well back into the second millennium B.C. Currently available evidence may indicate that some settlements in Peru at this time were larger and more populous and had larger temples than was the case in Middle America (for example, Las Haldas, on the north-central desert coast, and Kotosh in the north highlands; Rowe 1963; Tokyo Daigaku . . . 1960-1963). Ceremonial structures of impressive size may even date from the third millennium B.C. on the central coast of Peru. The Olmec and Chavin civilizations may have flourished at the same time, but in spectacularly
URBAN REVOLUTION: The New World different ecological settings—Chavin in the temperate highlands and on the desert coast, Olmec primarily in the tropical forests of the coastal lowlands but also in the subtropical to temperate highlands. The institutional settings in which each arose are obscure and not now subject to comparison except in the most general terms. In Middle America, following the decline of Olmec influence, and in some cases arising before that decline, the great regional civilizations developed. These include the ancient Maya (see Handbook . . . 1965, vols. 2 and 3; M. Coe 1966); the people of the dramatic mountain top center of Monte Alban in the Oaxaca highlands, who (rather than the Olmec) may have been the first to use the bar-and-dot system of numeral notation for calendrical purposes, a system later adopted by others and greatly elaborated by the Maya (see articles by Caso, Acosta, and Bernal in Handbook . . . 1965, vol. 3; Paddock 1966); the peoples of lowland Veracruz—of Remojadas, Tres Zapotes, and Tajin; the people who built the great city of Teotihuacan in the Valley of Mexico; the closely related people of Cholula in the adjacent Valley of Puebla, who built the New World's largest pyramid and who continued to flourish long after the fall of Teotihuacan; and the peoples of the southern highlands, including those who built Kaminaljuya in the Valley of Guatemala. There was an early florescence of Maya art, hieroglyphic writing, and calendrical reckoning at Kaminaljuya, but later this center was conquered by or came under strong influence from Teotihuacan (Handbook . . . 1965, vol. 2). These civilizations, while beginning at various times in the first millennium B.C., appear to have existed through a major part of the first millennium A.D. (Caso 1953&; Jimenez Moreno 1966; Willey 1966, pp. 78-152); some, like Cholula, were still important centers when the Spanish arrived. In the central Andes this was also a time of regional diversity. The gifted Moche people were thriving on the north coast of Peru, where they raised monumental pyramids of adobe, put powerful armies into the field, built a small empire, and created a vivid, sophisticated art. Moche art is known to us principally in ceramics that apparently portrayed everything in Moche life, from the most sacred to the most mundane; it ranged from the most esoteric symbols to the most explicitly sexual representations (Larco Hoyle [1946] 1963, pp. 161-175). On the south coast of Peru at approximately the same time, the complex Nasca polychrome style was flourishing in a number of centers. Pachacamac and Cajamarquilla were important centers on the central coast. Tiahuanaco, in the highlands of northern Bolivia, may already
213
have been an important center, although it apparently did not reach maturity until the succeeding period, when most of its monumental architecture seems to have been built. In the central highlands, the great site of Huari, probable capital of a loosely organized empire stretching over much of Peru in the succeeding period, was already an impressive center (Rowe 1963, p. 12; Menzel 1964, p. 66). The succeeding period in the central Andes was a time of empire, or at any rate of military expansion, however transitory may have been the political units created. The capital of this expansive movement appears to have been the city of Huari, the religious inspiration for its cult perhaps stemming from the austere center of Tiahuanaco (Menzel 1964; Kidder 1964, pp. 468-470, 482483). Certainly, important elements of the Huari art style stem from Tiahuanaco, whatever may have been the relation between these two centers. The spread of Huari seems to have occurred toward the end of the first millennium A.D. and may have involved the building of cities and monumental constructions in other parts of Peru. Tiahuanaco itself is a center of great size, with monumental architecture including megalithic constructions, monolithic gateways, superb stone masonry, and a powerful art style known to us primarily from stone carvings and polychrome ceramics featuring human figures, pumas, and birds. In Middle America the period roughly corresponding in time to the Huari expansion is the period of Toltec expansionism. Tula, the capital of the Toltecs, just north of the Valley of Mexico, was the site of majestic temples with colonnades, serpent columns, colossal warrior atlantes, lowrelief carvings of prowling jaguars and coyotes, and painted friezes of serpents and warriors. Toltec expansion reached as far east as Chichen Itza in northeastern Yucatan (see Armillas 1964, pp. 314317). It seems almost certain that Toltec expansionism took the form of conquest; yet if we compare the influence of the Toltecs in Middle America with that of the Tiahuanaco-inspired Huari expansion, the influence of Huari seems more pervasive. To find in Middle America something approaching a parallel of Huari's influence, we must turn to the great city of Teotihuacan. Toward the middle of the first millennium A.D. large parts of Middle America came under the influence, if not the control, of Teotihuacan. This influence did not take the same form as that of Huari, in that conquest may not have been the principal means of expansion. In any event, the people of Teotihuacan influenced a wider area for a longer time than did the Toltecs, who succeeded them. So far as is known, the first gigantic city to de-
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URBAN REVOLUTION: The New World
velop in Peru was associated with the post-Huari Chimii empire on the north coast. The Chimu capital, Chan Chan, covered an immense area; its planned rectangular layout, rows of rooms grouped about courts, pyramids, arabesque-decorated clay surfaces, and giant adobe wall compounds form one of the most impressive achievements of central Andean civilization (Kosok 1965, pp. 70-96; Schaedel 1966, p. 534). But it remains to be established whether even Chan Chan, before its conquest by the Inca of Cuzco, was as highly developed an urban center as Teotihuacan. For that matter, Cuzco itself does not seem to have been an urban center in the same sense as was the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan (Rowe 1963, pp. 17-18). In sum, there appear to be a number of parallels of a relatively general nature among the processes of change distinguishable in the growth of the aboriginal civilizations of Middle America and the central Andes. Among these are parallels in social institutions, in religious and political structures, in urbanization, and in trends toward secularization and increasing differentiation of the religious and the military. These parallels frequently are not close temporally, and they may occur in significantly different structural and ecological contexts. Adequate analyses of most of these parallels and the contexts in which they occur remain to be carried out. Chronology Absolute chronology in Middle America is based on several lines of evidence: (1) the archeological sequence in the Maya lowlands, where calendrical inscriptions have been variously correlated with the Christian calendar (the correlation used is the Goodman-Martinez-Thompson correlation, usually designated the GMT correlation); such Maya "Initial Series" inscriptions roughly span the period from A.D. 300 to 900, using the GMT correlation; (2) the extension of this chronology to other regions of Middle American civilization, either directly, by cross-dating, or indirectly, through the relations of the Maya with Teotihuacan and the relations of Teotihuacan with other regions (this provides at best a loose framework of cross-dating for A.D. 300-900); (3) relating regional sequences to each other by cross-dating at other periods of time, either before or after A.D. 300-900; and (4) absolute dates provided by radiocarbon determinations. The last, while of great value, provide no ready solutions, for they are frequently difficult to interpret and sometimes appear to contradict each other. In Peru much the same procedure has been fol-
lowed, with the important exception that in Peru there is no indigenous system of absolute dating to serve as a reference point. The result is that absolute chronology in the central Andes rests largely on the use of cross-dating of regional sequences of relative chronology and on radiocarbon dating (Rowe 1963). Existing systems of chronological periodization in Middle America and the central Andes are so confusing that they are often self-defeating, because in most of them time periods are confused with developmental "stages." (For discussion of this point see Willey et al. 1964, pp. 477-478; Rowe [1963, pp. 1-2] employs a purely chronological classification, but it is not in general use.) Middle American and Peruvian prehistory can be divided roughly into three great time periods following the full establishment of settled village cultivation: (1) an early period of more than a thousand years during which village life became transformed in some areas by the initial rise of civilization; (2) a middle period, covering most of the first millennium A.D., in which a number of distinct regional civilizations flourished and some perished; and (3) the centuries immediately preceding and including the Spanish conquest of the Aztec and Inca states in the sixteenth century. In Middle America, Olmec civilization would fall in the early period. Teotihuacan would stretch across the latter part of the early period and most of the middle period; the same is true of the ancient Maya of the Guatemala lowlands, except that Maya centers seem to have started earlier and lasted longer. The Toltec expansion would fall in the late period but would begin in the middle period. In Peru, Chavin would fall in the early period, and Moche and Nasca would span the latter part of the early period and the early part of the middle period. The Tiahuanaco-related Huari expansion would span the end of the middle and the beginning of the late period. The most common designations for these three periods are Preclassic (or "formative"), Classic, and Postclassic. The problem with the use of these designations lies in the developmental connotations of terms such as "classic." Learned arguments over whether a given ancient society is "developed enough" to "belong" in the "classic," or whether it "belongs" in the "protoclassic" or something equally contradictory, such as "formative," are sterile. A classification system that is purely chronological can more readily facilitate the making of comparisons if it does not of itself prejudge the comparisons—implicitly or explicitly, intentionally or inadvertently—by clothing chronology in develop-
URBAN REVOLUTION: The New World mental terminology. Analysis of developmental problems is not thereby facilitated; it, too, becomes muddled in extraneous issues. Developmental and chronological systems should be separate and distinct. Possible influences of Old World civilizations Speculations on the possible Old World origins of New World civilizations began almost as soon as the Spanish conquerors had consolidated their hold on the peoples of these native civilizations. Such speculations have continued to the present day, sometimes with and sometimes without critical examination of the evidence. The problem here is to sort evidence which may bear on the rise of civilization and cities from evidence which may support earlier or later contacts (Heine-Geldern 1966; Meggers et al. 1965; Tolstoy 1966). Gordon Ekholm recently rephrased the perennial question as follows: "The question of transpacific contacts . . . , whether or not the civilizations of the Old World significantly influenced the origin and development of those in the New World, . . . has . . . significant . . . implications [for] theoretical considerations . . . of the factors involved in the growth of civilizations" (1964, p. 489). Some measure of influence from Asia may be present in the civilizations of the New World, but to date none of fundamental significance has been demonstrated. It has been argued that parallels are to be found between the emphasis and mode of representation of the feline in the art of Shang China (late second millennium B.C.) and in Chavin and Olmec art. The great interest in jade and the consummate skill with which it was worked by artisans in Shang and Chou China and in Olmec Middle America may be significant (ibid., pp. 503504). Nevertheless, as Ekholm admits, "no one has very seriously suggested an Asiatic origin for some of the major elements in the Olmec complex" (ibid.}. The possibility that Old World peoples significantly influenced New World civilization cannot be dismissed, and investigators should continue to search for supporting evidence (Caso 1962; Tolstoy 1966). At the same time, the reader should bear in mind that at this writing, available evidence indicates that New World civilizations arose independently, without any decisive influences from Old World centers (Phillips 1966; Willey 1966, pp. 21-25). Prospects Future studies of early civilizations in the New World can be expected to make contributions to
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the social sciences in two related areas: (1) in achieving greater understanding of the distinctive qualities of nonindustrial urban societies in their ecological settings, through studies of ancient urban centers and through systematic comparisons of such centers with other complex settlements in their respective settings; (2) in achieving far greater understanding of processes of growth of urban and other complex settlements in nonindustrial settings through comparisons both of New World civilizations and of early civilizations and later nonindustrial civilizations in the Old World. In both of these areas it is reasonable to anticipate that increasing use will be made of the findings of social anthropology, comparative sociology, and the sociology of religion, in particular as these bear on such matters as corporate groupings and their functions, the strengths and limits of ecological interpretations, structural and other relationships directly related to cohesion and integration, the polities of nonindustrial civilizations, and the relation of differing religious forms and belief systems to problems of motivation, integration, growth, stability, and change. In turn, modification of some of these findings may occur—as, for example, in the simple conceptual distinction between "civilization" and "city"—when placed in the context of New World evidence. Where few or no historical data exist and where archeological evidence alone is involved, limitations on inferences naturally will be immensely greater. Clearer and more precise specification of social, cultural, and other differences between great urban centers such as Teotihuacan and Tenochtitlan, on the one hand, and great temple centers such as Tikal, on the other, may be achieved through techniques of computer analysis, for such techniques greatly facilitate the juxtaposition and comparison of many variables. When more is known about Chan Chan, it should be possible to compare it substantively with Teotihuacan, Tenochtitlan, and other Middle American centers and thus arrive at a clearer conception of the concomitants of urbanism in Peru. Perhaps similar clarification of the nature of urbanism at Cuzco may be expected. A most important development which might greatly facilitate comparisons would be major progress in the deciphering of Maya hieroglyphic writing, particularly since the recent work of Tatiana Proskouriakoff has shown it probable that many Maya inscriptions relate to "political" history (Thompson 1965, pp. 635-636), Similarly, greater understanding of the processes of urban growth may be expected to derive from more precise comparisons between the societies of
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URBAN REVOLUTION: The New World
the Aztec and the Inca, between the growth of civilizations in the Valley of Mexico and in the coastal areas of Peru, and between New World centers and such Old World centers as early north China. Current investigations, principally by anthropologists, utilizing sophisticated methods to explore a wealth of unpublished documentary sources, many of them of a legal nature, on the Aztec, the Inca, and some of their contemporaries, should yield important new data and interpretations. Existing evidence of independent recurrences of a social, cultural, and processual nature suggests that a growing number of structural and developmental regularities will be found in future comparative studies. REN£ MILLON [See also ARCHEOLOGY, article on THE FIELD; ECOLOGY, article on CULTURAL ECOLOGY; EVOLUTION, article on CULTURAL EVOLUTION. Other relevant material may be found in DIFFUSION; MIDDLE AMERICAN SOCIETY.] BIBLIOGRAPHY ADAMS, ROBERT McC. 1966 The Evolution of Urban Society: Early Mesopotamia and Prehispanic Mexico. Chicago: Aldine. ARMILLAS, PEDRO 1964 Northern Mesoamerica. Pages 291-329 in William Marsh Rice University, Houston, Texas, Prehistoric Man in the New World. Edited by Jesse D. Jennings and Edward Norbeck. Univ. of Chicago Press. BENNETT, WENDELL C. (compiler) 1948 A Reappraisal of Peruvian Archaeology. Society for American Archaeology, Memoir No. 4. Menasha, Wis.: The Society. BENNETT, WENDELL C.; and BIRD, JUNIUS B. (1949) 1964 Andean Culture History. 2d ed., rev. American Museum of Natural History Handbook Series, No. 15. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday. -> A paperback edition was published in 1964. BERNAL, IGNACIO (compiler) 1962 Bibliografia de arqueologia y etnografia: Mesoamerica y norte de Mexico, 1514-1960. Mexico City: Institute Nacional de Antropologia e Historia. BRAIDWOOD, ROBERT J.; and WILLEY, GORDON R. (editors) 1962 Courses Toward Urban Life: Archeological Considerations of Some Cultural Alternates. Viking Fund Publications in Anthropology, No. 32. Chicago: Aldine. -> The contents of this volume result from a symposium held at the European headquarters of the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research in Austria, July 3-11, 1960. CASO, ALFONSO (1953a) 1958 The Aztecs: People of the Sun. Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press. -» First published as El pueblo del sol. CASO, ALFONSO 1953& New World Culture History: Middle America. Pages 226-237 in International Symposium on Anthropology, New York, 1952, Anthropology Today: An Encyclopedic Inventory. Univ. of Chicago Press. CASO, ALFONSO (1962)1964 Relations Between the Old and New Worlds: A Note on Methodology. Volume 1, pages 55-71 in International Congress of Americanists, 35th, Mexico, 1962, Adas y memorias. Mexico,
D. F.: Institute Nacional de Antropologia e Historia. -> First published in Spanish in Volume 21 of Cuadernos americanos. COE, MICHAEL D. 1966 The Maya. New York: Praeger. COE, MICHAEL D. et al. 1967 Olmec Civilization, Veracruz, Mexico: Dating of the San Lorenzo Phase. Science 155:1399-1401. COE, WILLIAM R. 1965 Tikal: Ten Years of Study of a Maya Ruin in the Lowlands of Guatemala. Expedition: Bulletin of the University Museum of the University of Pennsylvania 8, no. 1:5-56. COLLIER, D. 1962 The Central Andes. Pages 165-176 in Robert J. Braidwood and Gordon R. Willey (editors), Courses Toward Urban Life: Archeological Considerations of Some Cultural Alternates. Chicago: Aldine. COVARRUBIAS, MIGUEL 1957 The Indian Art of Mexico and Central America. New York: Knopf. DRUCKER, PHILIP; HEIZER, ROBERT F.; and SQUIER, ROBERT J. 1959 Excavations at La Venta, Tabasco, 1955. U.S. Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin No. 170. Washington: Government Printing Office. EKHOLM, GORDON F. 1964 Transpacific Contacts. Pages 489-510 in William Marsh Rice University, Houston, Texas, Prehistoric Man in the New World. Edited by Jesse D. Jennings and Edward Norbeck. Univ. of Chicago Press. EVANS, CLIFFORD; and MEGGERS, BETTY J. 1966 Mesoamerica and Ecuador. Pages 243-264 in Handbook of Middle American Indians. Volume 4: Archaeological Frontiers and External Connections. Austin: Univ. of Texas Press. FALLERS, LLOYD A. 1961 Are African Cultivators to Be Called "Peasants"? Current Anthropology 2, no. 2: 108-110. Handbook of Middle American Indians. Edited by Robert Wauchope. Vol. 1— 1964— Austin: Univ. of Texas Press. -> Four volumes have been published to date. HEINE-GELDERN, ROBERT 1966 The Problem of Transpacific Influences in Mesoamerica. Pages 277-295 in Handbook of Middle American Indians. Volume 4: Archaeological Frontiers and External Connections. Austin: Univ. of Texas Press. JIMENEZ MORENO, WIGBERTO 1966 Mesoamerica Before the Toltecs. Pages 1-82 in John Paddock (editor), Ancient Oaxaca: Discoveries in Mexican Archeology and History. Stanford Univ. Press. KIDDER, ALFRED V. 1964 South American High Cultures. Pages 451-486 in William Marsh Rice University, Houston, Texas, Prehistoric Man in the New World. Edited by Jesse D. Jennings and Edward Norbeck. Univ. of Chicago Press. KIRCHHOFF, PAUL (1943) 1952 Mesoamerica: Its Geographic Limits, Ethnic Composition and Cultural Characteristics. Pages 17-30 in Sol Tax et al. Heritage of Conquest: The Ethnology of Middle America. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. -> First published in German in Volume 1 of Acta americana. KOSOK, PAUL 1965 Life, Land and Water in Ancient Peru. New York: Long Island Univ. LARCO HOYLE, RAFAEL (1946)1963 A Culture Sequence for the North Coast of Peru. Pages 149-175 in Julian H. Steward (editor), Handbook of South American Indians. Volume 2: The Andean Civilizations. U.S. Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin No. 143. New York: Cooper Square. LATHRAP, DONALD W. 1966 Relationships Between Mesoamerica and the Andean Areas. Pages 265-275 in
URBAN REVOLUTION: The New World Handbook of Middle American Indians. Volume 4: Archaeological Frontiers and External Connections. Austin: Univ. of Texas Press. MEGGERS, BETTY J. 1964 North and South American Cultural Connections and Convergences. Pages 511526 in William Marsh Rice University, Houston, Texas, Prehistoric Man in the New World. Edited by Jesse D. Jennings and Edward Norbeck. Univ. of Chicago Press. MEGGERS, BETTY J.; EVANS, CLIFFORD; and ESTRADA, EMILIO 1965 Early Formative Period of Coastal Ecuador: The Valdivia and Machalilla Phases. Smithsonian Contributions to Anthropology, Vol. 1. Washington: Smithsonian Institution. MENZEL, DOROTHY 1964 Style and Time in the Middle Horizon. Volume 2, pages 1-105 in Nawpa Pacha: An International Series for Andean Archaeology. Berkeley, Calif.: Institute of Andean Studies. MENZEL, DOROTHY,- HOWE, JOHN H.; and DAWSON, L. 1964 The Paracas Pottery of lea: A Study in Style and Time. California, University of, Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology Vol. 50. MURRA, JOHN V. 1965 Herds and Herders in the Inca State. Pages 185-215 in American Association for the Advancement of Science, Man, Culture and Animals: The Role of Animals in Human Ecological Adjustments. Publication No. 78. Washington: The Association. MURRA, JOHN V. 1967 On Inca Political Structure. Pages 339-353 in Ronald Cohen and John Middleton (editors), Comparative Political Systems: Studies in the Politics of Pre-industrial Societies. Garden City, N.Y.: Natural History Press. Nawpa Pacha: An International Series for Andean Archaeology. Vol. 1— 1963— Berkeley, Calif.: Institute of Andean Studies. PADDOCK, JOHN (editor) 1966 Ancient Oaxaca: Discoveries in Mexican Archeology and History. Stanford Univ. Press. PHILLIPS, PHILIP 1966 The Role of Transpacific Contacts in the Development of New World Pre-Columbian Civilizations. Pages 296-315 in Handbook of Middle American Indians. Volume 4: Archaeological Frontiers and External Connections. Austin: Univ. of Texas Press. REDFIELD, ROBERT 1962 Papers. Volume 1: Human Nature and the Study of Society. Edited by Margaret Park Redfield. Univ. of Chicago Press. ROWE, JOHN H. (1946) 1963 Inca Culture at the Time of the Spanish Conquest. Pages 183-330 in Julian H. Steward (editor), Handbook of South American Indians. Volume 2: The Andean Civilizations. U.S. Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin No. 143. New York: Cooper Square. ROWE, JOHN H. 1962 Chavin Art: An Inquiry Into Its Form and Meaning. New York: Museum of Primitive Art. ROWE, JOHN H. 1963 Urban Settlements in Ancient Peru. Volume 1, pages 1-27 in Nawpa Pacha: An International Series for Andean Archaeology. Berkeley, Calif.: Institute of Andean Studies. SANDERS, WILLIAM T. (1956) 1964 The Central Mexican Symbiotic Region: A Study in Prehistoric Settlement Patterns. Pages 115-127 in Gordon R. Willey (editor), Prehistoric Settlement Patterns in the New World. Viking Fund Publications in Anthropology, No. 23. New York: Johnson Reprint.
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SCHAEDEL, RICHARD P. 1966 Urban Growth and Ekistics on the Peruvian Coast. Volume 1, pages 531-539 in International Congress of Americanists, 36th, Valencia, 1964, Actas y memorias. Seville (Spain): No publisher given. SOUSTELLE, JACQUES (1955) 1961 Daily Life of the Aztecs, on the Eve of the Spanish Conquest. New York: Macmillan. -> First published as La vie quotidienne des Azteques a la veille de la conquete espagnole. STEWARD, JULIAN H. (editor) (1946) 1963 Handbook of South American Indians. Volume 2: The Andean Civilizations. U.S. Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin No. 143. New York: Cooper Square. STEWARD, JULIAN H. 1955a Theory of Culture Change: The Methodology of Multilinear Evolution. Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press. STEWARD, JULIAN H. (editor) 1955fe Irrigation Civilizations: A Comparative Study. Pan American Union, Social Science Monographs, No. 1. Washington: Pan American Union. SYMPOSIUM ON URBANIZATION AND CULTURJ&, DEVELOPMENT IN THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST, UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO, 7958 1960 City Invincible. Edited by Carl H. Kraeling and Robert McC. Adams. Univ. of Chicago Press. THOMPSON, J. ERIC S. 1954 The Rise and Fall of Maya Civilization. Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press. THOMPSON, J. ERIC S. 1965 Maya Hieroglyphic Writing. Pages 632-658 in Handbook of Middle American Indians. Volume 3: Archaeology of Southern Mesoamerica, Part 2. Austin: Univ. of Texas Press. TOKYO DAIGAKU, ANDESU CHITAI GAKUJUTSU CHOSADAN, 1958 1960-1963 Andes: The Report of the University of Tokyo Scientific Expedition to the Andes in 1958. Vols. 1-3. Tokyo: Kadokowa. TOLSTOY, PAUL 1966 Method in Long Range Comparison. Volume 1, pages 69-89 in International Congress of Americanists, 36th, Valencia, 1964, Actas y memorias. Seville (Spain): No publisher given. WILLEY, GORDON R. 1955 The Prehistoric Civilizations of Nuclear America. American Anthropologist New Series 57:571-593. WILLEY, GORDON R. (editor) 1956 Prehistoric Settlement Patterns in the New World. Viking Fund Publications in Anthropology, No. 23. New York: WennerGren Foundation for Anthropological Research. WILLEY, GORDON R. 1962 The Early Great Styles and the Rise of the Pre-Columbian Civilizations. American Anthropologist New Series 64:1-14. WILLEY, GORDON R. 1966 An Introduction to American Archaeology. Volume 1: North and Middle America. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. WILLEY, GORDON R.; EKHOLM, GORDON F.; and MILLON, RENE F. 1964 The Patterns of Farming Life and Civilization. Pages 446-498 in Handbook of Middle American Indians. Volume 1: Natural Environment and Early Cultures. Austin: Univ. of Texas Press. WILLIAM MARSH RICE UNIVERSITY, HOUSTON, TEXAS 1964 Prehistoric Man in the New World. Edited by Jesse D. Jennings and Edward Norbeck. Univ. of Chicago Press. WITTFOGEL, KARL A. 1957 Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press. -> A paperback edition was published in 1963. WOLF, ERIC R. 1959 Sons of the Shaking Earth. Univ. of Chicago Press. -> A paperback edition was published in 1962.
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URBAN REVOLUTION: The Concept of Civilization HI THE CONCEPT OF CIVILIZATION
Civilization is a concept used by anthropologists in opposition to the notions of primitive and folk cultures. As a taxonomical category it applies to cultural types characterized by organic heterogeneity and correlatively complex societal structures. Civilized societies are typically stratified and segmented, and the culture of civilization is correspondingly diversified. Organic heterogeneity means functional differentiation of subcultures—high and low, hierarchic and lay, town and country—within the whole cultural fabric of a single civilization. In evolutionary terms, the achievement of civilization represents a definite stage in the development of society and culture; as such, it contrasts with savagery and barbarism, the levels of integration that preceded civilization in the course of mankind's progress. Criteria of civilization The achievement of civilization presupposes the attainment of a considerable degree of efficiency in food production; the economic foundations of civilization are everywhere based firmly on agricultural productivity. Also, technological advancement—not only techniques and crafts but, perhaps more significantly, the development of managerial skills— is functionally linked to the processes of civilization; indeed, the advent of civilization can be viewed as a revolutionary change in the relative importance in society of the moral order and the technical order (Redfield 1953, chapter 3). Nevertheless, the diagnostic criteria that serve to differentiate civilization from the stage of barbarism are social, moral, and intellectual. Techniques such as metallurgy, the improvement of transportation through the use of the wheel and the sail, the harnessing of animal power, and the increase of agricultural productivity by means of land reclamation, soil conservation, and hydraulic control are frequently associated with the growth of civilization. Despite the undeniable functional significance of these techniques, they cannot be accepted as diagnostic criteria. Many of these features are missing from the technological inventory of some pristine civilizations and are known by noncivilized peoples, although their spread among the latter can be viewed historically as the result, in most cases, of diffusion from ancient civilization. In the social sphere, all civilizations are characterized by systems of economic relations based on social division of labor, horizontal (specialization and segmentation) as well as vertical (stratification); control of the means of production
(including human labor) by ruling classes which assume the centralization and redistribution of surpluses, contributed by the primary producers as tithe or tax, and the allocation of a labor force for public works; networks of exchange, controlled by a professional merchant class or by the state, that supersede the direct exchange of goods and services; and a political structure dominated by a segment of society that centralizes executive and administrative functions. The power of the ruling classes is backed by compulsion; the state, integrated on the bases of social class and residence— instead of tribal organization, based on descent and kinship—constitutes the nucleus of the civilized polity. The rise of civilization is accompanied by radical transformations of the ethical systems that are correlated with the thorough reshaping of the social fabric mentioned above. As relations among men change, so do man's views of the universe. The moral order becomes institutionalized: a hierarchical class of priests, temples (houses of the gods), state-managed cults, and a sociomorphic conception of the supernatural world (with deities arranged in some hierarchical order which reflects the increasing complexity of the earthly social system) are the hallmarks of early civilization. Also, whatever the external form the gods may assume, they are anthropomorphically conceived in their moral qualities—they are human, and often too human, in their whims, feelings, and passions. Conversely, man becomes a creature of the gods, and society is understood as a manifestation of the cosmic harmony; thus, the new social order comes to be viewed as the product of divine sanction. Civilization effects a true "remaking of man" (Redfield 1953, p. 29). Ethical life acquires new dimensions with the rise of moral orders more inclusive than the traditional moral order of the local communities or tribal groups; ideas elaborated by an elite of literati shape the moral order. The revolutionary changes in the structure of society stimulate moral creativeness; with the growth of civilization, ideas rise as forces in history. In the realm of the intellect, civilization is marked by the development of speculative thought, the expansion of time consciousness (retrospective and prospective), the elaboration of exact and predictive sciences (arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy), the adoption of conventional symbols for recording and transmitting information (writing and numerical notation), and the fixing of standards of time and space, and eventually also of weight.
URBAN REVOLUTION: The Concept of Civilization Organically, these achievements reflect the creative activities of two new social groups of full-time specialists liberated from manual toil by the redistribution of the surpluses accumulated in temple or royal granary, or supported by the rent of corporate lands. Some of the discoveries and inventions are undoubtedly the product of the experiences of administrators and builders concerned with practical matters. However, the codification and elaboration of this knowledge and the mental exploration of abstract subjects are the work of learned men enjoying creative leisure, free to dedicate their time to reflective thought and relatively unconcerned with immediate application of the principles involved. The accurate determination of the apparent movements of the moon and the stars, especially the exact measurement of the year in tropical regions, serves the immediate purpose of improving the regulation of the cycle of agricultural operations; its practical application is in the social sphere. But watching the sky also opens men's minds to the mysteries of the cosmos; thus, speculative-minded practitioners of the craft may indulge in the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, far beyond the immediate requirements of computing periods—as attested by the ancient Maya extravagant elaboration of the philosophy of time. Also, the study of the gyrations of the celestial bodies impinges on the moral sphere, insofar as they come to be viewed as regulators of man's fate. Foretelling, no less than reckoning, satisfies expectations nurtured by civilization. The development of arithmetic is clearly related to the expansion of administration and commerce, on the one hand, and to the calendar, on the other; the rise of geometry can be linked to land measurement, which acquires paramount importance in the frame of the new economic system, and to engineering (as for hydraulic works) and monumental architecture. As for the development of writing, some system of recording becomes a requirement for the administration of increasingly complex polities and the management of large estates and trade; however, the efficient use of sets of knotted strings for census and tax reckoning in ancient Peru attests that the system used to meet these requisites does not have to be a script. But writing, in contrast with purely mnemonic devices, has revolutionary potential: it can be developed to satisfy other emerging needs. Thus, it can be applied to the formulation of complex astronomical and mathematical information; to the compilation of laws, cosmologic lore, or dynastic lists (and eventually the substance
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of history); to the registration of transactions, contracts, and deeds; and even to the recording of magical incantations, a feature by no means inconsequential in early civilizations. Writing is a functionally significant criterion of civilization. Finally, the attainment of civilization produces an expansion in aesthetic consciousness. A high art (the art of the high culture) characterized by conceptualized and sophisticated styles becomes differentiated, superseding the old forms of communal art and relegating them to a subordinate level. This phenomenon clearly reflects the increasing complexity of civilized society and the development of subcultures. The intricate relationships between high art, the traditional folk art, and the derivative peasant art of the rural communities in a civilized society are not yet clearly understood. The concepts "monumentality," "naturalism," and "hieratism," generally used to characterize the specific qualities of the high art of pristine civilizations, are not precise enough and do not suffice to define it. What is significant is that the new styles are the product of the creative activities of specially trained, professional-minded artists-craftsmen who labor to meet the demands of an elite of art patrons imbued with the new spirit. With the growth of hierarchic culture as civilization develops, the high art's symbolism and language of form become prescribed and systematized by the same class that henceforth manages the moral order: the possessors of sacred and secular power embodied in the institutions of the temple and the palace. History of the concept For L. H. Morgan, whose pioneering work on the subject of cultural evolution, Ancient Society, was first published in 1877, the mark of having achieved civilization was a phonetic alphabet or, as "an equivalent," hieroglyphic writing, and the keeping of records concerning history, law, scientific knowledge, and religion. Manifestly, this criterion emphasizes moral and intellectual progress; hence, it is important to note that Morgan's thoughts on the subject encompassed a wider range. In fact, his forte was the study of social organization and, quite naturally, his most important perceptions on cultural evolution concern social systems. He stressed the significance, in the process of civilization, of the shift from the community integrated on principles of descent and affinity to the political society organized on the bases of function and residence. Also, he was well aware that all the other criteria used for the classification of evolutionary stages ought to be corre-
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lated with changes in the productive forces available to society for the satisfaction of its basic needs or, in his own words, "the successive arts of subsistence"; he did not feel, however, that this task could be accomplished at that time because there were few investigations of ancient modes of production. Morgan noted the relation of plow agriculture and irrigated horticulture to the integration of large political entities; however, his views on the significance of irrigation were restricted by ignorance of the role of water control in the political systems of the oldest civilizations. [See the biography of MORGAN, LEWIS HENRY.] Karl Marx read Ancient Society in 1880-1881 and made copious notes in preparation for what might have developed into a thoroughgoing commentary on Morgan's novel ideas. Failing health, however, prevented him from doing further work on it. Soon after the death of Marx in 1883, the task was completed by Friedrich En gels. In The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, first published in 1884, Engels brilliantly glossed Ancient Society in terms of the materialistic conception of history. He refined the general scheme of social evolution by defining the transition from one stage to the next with reference to the changes in economic conditions, and he sharpened the concept of civilization as a social phenomenon. Engels' dynamic model stressed the role played by the consolidation and intensification of the division of labor, the growth of a system of commodity exchange controlled by a differentiated group of merchants, the development of private landownership, the concentration and centralization of wealth (i.e., social surpluses), and the cleavage of society into classes following the dissolution of "gentile" (i.e., based on kinship) organization. With the rise of civilization, the "gentile" constitution was replaced by polities structured through the grouping of members on a territorial basis and ruled by officials possessing public power and the right of taxation. Indeed, the appearance of social classes and the state constitutes the core of Engels' view of the process of civilization. He was equally explicit about the opposition created between town and country but saw this merely as an economic phenomenon related to the whole social division of labor; he did not refer at all to the cultural aspect of the differentiation of urban and peasant societies, which has become a central theme in modern anthropological thought. Some of Engels' criteria, such as metallic money used as an instrument for the domination of the nonproducers over the producers, and the prevalent productive system of slave labor, are no longer
tenable as criteria for the beginning of civilization; it is now well established that these characteristics do not apply to the earliest civilizations. The theoretical formulations of Morgan, Engels, and their contemporary E. B. Tylor were deduced mainly from comparative studies of historic societies and ethnographic reports on living noncivilized peoples; Tylor, however, competently surveyed archeological information to marshal facts in support of the historical validity of their system. The modern reappraisal of the theory of social evolution in the light of inductively established sequences of cultural development was initiated by V. Gordon Childe (1936; 1942), who devoted much effort to analyzing the processes of change on the basis of the data made available by the advancement of the knowledge of prehistoric archeology [see the biography of CHILDE]. The focus of Childe's definition of the concept of civilization is the city, seen as the archetype of the new social order; consequently, he coined the term "urban revolution" to characterize the achievement of civilization. The terms "civilization" and "urban revolution" are frequently taken as equivalent. Childe's explicit statement was that the urban revolution was the culmination of a process of progressive change in economic structure and social organization; the city was the "resultant and symbol" of this revolution (1950, p. 3). This statement implies the recognition of an initial substage of preurban civilization; however, Childe failed to make clear that the terms "civilization" and "urban revolution" are not identical. Childe's concept of the urban revolution stimulated Robert Redfield to reorient his own thoughts on the relationships between rural and urban culture from a historical standpoint. Redfield's ideas on the subject had developed as the result of his experience in modern Yucatan, which led him to rank communities in order of decreasing complexity—city, town, village, and bush hamlet. Originally he analyzed the relationship in merely functional terms, but by the early 1950s he had become aware of the evolutionary implications of his own formulations: the transformation of the folk community into civilized society and the explanation of peasantry as a product of the process of civilization. [See Redfield 1953; 1956; see also PEASANTRY.] Redfield's most significant contributions to the definition of civilization are (1) the conception of the institutionalization of the moral order as a characteristic of civilized societies, in contrast with the traditional ethical systems of the homogeneous local communities; (2) the formulation of the dichotomy of "great tradition-little tradition" in
USHER, ABBOTT P. terms of dynamic interdependence; and (3) the description of the peasant society and culture as the rural dimension of the civilization of which it is part. His thoughts on the nature of civilization were focused on the moral and intellectual dimensions of human experience. His analysis of the process of change from folk culture to civilization and his views on the relation between the urban and rural subcultures in civilized societies rest on the interplay of the "great tradition" and the "little tradition." The "great tradition" is formed by the knowledge, doctrines, philosophy, and aesthetic canons of the elite—the term is approximately synonymous with "high culture" or "hierarchic culture." The "great tradition" is shaped by reflective ideas and speculative thought, and it is consciously cultivated, systematized, and transmitted. The "little tradition" is constituted by the lore, beliefs, folk wisdom, and artistic expressions of the common people—it is the "low" or "lay" culture. The "little tradition" is molded by custom and is refractory to innovation; it is naively taken for granted, neither submitted to premeditated modifications nor handed down in a deliberate way. In the beginning, the high culture of original civilizations necessarily sprouted from the indigenous folkways. But in the course of time, once the "great tradition" and the "little tradition" become differentiated, the relationship is never one-sided; perennially they keep shaping each other. In any civilization the two traditions are interdependent—they "can be thought of as two currents of thought and action, distinguishable, yet ever flowing into and out of each other" [Redfield 1956, p. 72; see also WORLD VIEW and the biography of REDFIELD]. Processes of civilization. Childe's and Redfield's formulations emphasize the dynamic role of cities in the process of civilization; accordingly, the term "urban revolution" is used to refer to the concomitant transformation of the social and cultural structure. Further research is needed on this subject. The importance of urbanization in the development of civilization must be analyzed comparatively, in the light of the inductively established evolutionary sequences. In ancient Sumer, in the Indus Valley, and in the Hwang Ho basin the phenomenon of urban congregation may be as old as civilization. But in ancient Egypt, in Mexico, and in Peru the appearance of all the other characteristics of civilization seems to have preceded the growth of urban centers. In historical perspective, the dawn of civilization does not necessarily coincide with the urban revolution. PEDRO ARMILLAS
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
CHILDE, V. GORDON (1936) 1965 Man Makes Himself. 4th ed. London: Watts. CHILDE, V. GORDON (1942) 1960 What Happened in History. Rev. ed. Baltimore: Penguin. -> A paperback edition was published in 1964. CHILDE, V. GORDON 1950 The Urban Revolution. Town Planning Review 21:3-17. CHILDE, V. GORDON 1951 Social Evolution. New York: Schumann; London: Watts. -> Based on a series of lectures delivered at the University of Birmingham in 1947/1948. ENGELS, FRIEDRICH (1884) 1942 The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. New York: International Publishers. -> First published in German. MORGAN, LEWIS HENRY (1877) 1964 Ancient Society. Edited by Leslie A. White. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap. H> First published as Ancient Society: Or Researches in the Lines of Human Progress From Savagery Through Barbarism to Civilization. REDFIELD, ROBERT 1953 The Primitive World and Its Transformations. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press. REDFIELD, ROBERT 1956 Peasant Society and Culture: An Anthropological Approach to Civilization. Univ. of Chicago Press. -» A paperback edition, bound together with The Little Community, was published in 1961 by Cambridge University Press. TYLOR, EDWARD B. (1881) 1907 Anthropology: An Introduction to the Study of Man and Civilization. New York: Appleton. -> An abridged paperback edition was published in 1960 by the University of Michigan Press.
URBANIZATION See CITY; POPULATION, article on POPULATION DISTRIBUTION; RURAL SOCIETY.
USHER, ABBOTT P.
Over a period of more than half a century, Abbott Payson Usher (1883-1965) made contributions to scientific inquiry in the field of economic history that covered a wide range of subject matter. His work dealt mainly with European subjects, but his research was so well designed that his particular projects yielded insights with direct significance for the whole body of social thought and science. Perhaps because a certain awkwardness in literary expression tends to mask the exciting qualities of his thought, his work is less well known beyond the confines of economic history than it deserves to be. Within his own field, however, the high quality of his published work—its range, its depth, and, above all, its unfailing sense of proportion— won him international recognition as one of the world's foremost economic historians. The Festschrift, Architects and Craftsmen in History, was an intercontinental tribute to him: it was edited at Boston, published at Tubingen by the List Society, and composed of essays written by economic
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historians from several European countries as well as the United States. Usher was born in Lynn, Massachusetts. He took all his academic degrees at Harvard and lived within commuting distance of the Harvard libraries almost continuously from 1920 on. After receiving his bachelor's degree in 1904 and master's degree in 1905, he spent a year in France, studying and gathering data for his work on early grain markets. He completed his doctorate in 1910 and accepted an appointment at Cornell University, where he taught for ten years. He moved to Boston University in 1920 and in 1922 was appointed to the faculty at Harvard, where he taught economics until his retirement in 1949. Although in its continuity of environment Usher's career was perhaps characteristic of an age that is passing, his work itself is essentially modern. "Interdisciplinary" is one of the bywords of contemporary research, and Usher never hesitated to cross boundaries; his work on invention is grounded in the literature of psychology, and his wide reading in legal history in connection with his banking studies convinced him that the "link between credit and lawful money is ... a creation of civil law; it is not a spontaneous outcome of economic relations" (1943, p. 12). Again, the current tendency in writing economic history is to emphasize theoretical and statistical approaches to the subject, and in this respect, too, Usher's work is fully modern. In The History of the Grain Trade in France, 1400-1710, published in 1913, his interest lies in the formation and operation of markets, a dominant concept in economic theory; his Early History of Deposit Banking in Mediterranean Europe, published 30 years later, is firmly anchored in money and banking theory, and in the latter work his treatment of banking in Barcelona is organized according to the main divisions of that theory—interbank relations, banks and the public, and debt management. Theory of inventions. Usher's thought gained its widest currency following the publication of A History of Mechanical Inventions in 1929. The inventing process is represented as a succession of phases. The process starts with recognition of the need for a new production technique, proceeds through a period of partial solutions to the problem, leads to an imaginative synthesis and extension of these partial solutions by someone whose mind is thoroughly conditioned to the problem, and ends with a period of "critical revision" during which the solution is embodied in increasingly elegant and efficient machinery. [See INNOVATION.] This view of inventive activity is, thus, in part a blend of
two extreme theories about invention, the "great man" theory, which in its popular form Usher considered to be romantic nonsense, and the deterministic theory that necessity is the mother of invention. But Usher's eclectic approach goes well beyond these oversimplified theories and provides an analytical description of the process of invention whose usefulness as a means of organizing a wide range of historical material on the subject is evidenced throughout the rest of the book. Usher's "theory" has no predictive power, and he made no such claim for it. It is surely a contradiction in terms to speak of predicting novelty; thus, insofar as inventions are denned in terms of novelty it becomes impossible to devise a theoretical "model" of the inventing process. The body of Usher's work on invention includes discussions of scientific thought and achievement in antiquity and during the Middle Ages, an appraisal of da Vinci's work, and chapters on the history of machinery in various industries, including printing and textile manufacturing. Major emphasis, however, is accorded to the development of fine tools and precision machinery, on the one hand, and to the harnessing of ever larger amounts of inanimate power, on the other. The work as a whole is an unusual and highly successful amalgam of engineering knowledge and historical method. Studies in economic history Because A History of Mechanical Inventions became Usher's most widely known work, his other studies have often been interpreted in terms of his theory of invention, and the development of wholesale grain markets and negotiable bills of exchange, the main themes of his other monographs, have been considered social analogues of mechanical inventions. This interpretation of Usher's work certainly has some validity and is supported, by implication at least, by his own long discussion of "emergent novelty" in history that appeared in 1954 in the revised edition of A History of Mechanical Inventions. But an author is not necessarily the best interpreter of his own work, and to view Usher's total output through the aperture of his theory of invention gives entirely too restricted an impression both of his philosophical status and of his research findings. It would have been unlike Usher (W. N. Parker Architects and Craftsmen 1956, pp. 157—166) to study history from only one point of view. According to Usher, the Marxists, the "ideal-type sociologists" like Max Weber, and historians like Gustav Schmoller, Karl Biicher, and Werner Sombart, who saw historical development as a series of stages, were all insufficiently aware
USHER, ABBOTT P. of the complexity of historical processes. He was also opposed to Clapham's narrative-descriptive approach to history. Economic history, Usher believed, should consist of carefully executed studies of special topics, which would produce both limited causal relationships directly related to the topic and suggestions for wider-ranging historical themes. Markets. The title of Usher's first book, The History of the Grain Trade in France, is slightly misleading, for the study is more than a history in the narrow sense. It is, rather, a historical approach to certain questions concerning the social value of markets. The development of wholesale grain markets is seen as a solution to a major problem of long standing in early modern France, namely, the provision of a reliable food supply for large urban populations. Usher's interest in the operation of markets was probably stimulated by the widespread discussion that took place in the United States during the early part of this century about the alleged malfunctioning of markets in which monopoly elements are apparent, and by academic discussions about the function of organized speculation in commodity markets. Two of his early articles (1915; 1916) dealt specifically with the problem of speculation in both early and modern grain markets. His treatment of the subject is at once lively and theoretically sound. Underlying the argument are two basic propositions: first, that to own is to speculate, and, second, that the more perfect the market, the less the risk of ownership and thus the smaller the component of involuntary speculation in ownership. Accordingly, a comparison of early and modern arrangements shows that while speculation in modern produce markets is more highly specialized and thus more visible, transactions in the very imperfect markets of early modern Europe necessarily involved a much larger speculative element. Moreover, the paucity of commercial intelligence that characterized early markets led speculators to adopt highly predatory tactics based on deception of the consuming public, despite severe laws against engrossing and forestalling. Thus the paradox noted in his 1915 article: "Increased freedom to speculate has in fact narrowed the range of speculation" (p. 371). [See SPECULATION, HEDGING, AND ARBITRAGE.] Usher gave the controversy of his own day about public control of markets a nice twist by changing the setting to France in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and by arguing that an efficient distribution of grain, especially in years of dearth, had necessitated the abandonment of detailed administrative regulation of supply and the develop-
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ment of organized wholesale markets. The History of the Grain Trade in France is a fascinating study of the slow and halting development of an understanding of, and confidence in, a market mechanism. It took a surprising amount of time to arrive at the market solution—to realize that "higgling and bargaining" between individual buyers and sellers is not a sufficient condition for the formation of organized markets. What is necessary is the creation of markets by deliberate decisions and the operation of these markets according to explicit rules. Thus, it was through a series of enlightened regulations that the central authorities created the first wholesale grain markets in France in certain towns near Paris early in the eighteenth century. Banking. In the preface to his first work Usher referred to the history of the grain trade as being only a chapter in the larger history of commerce and commented that "changes in the mechanism of the general trade of Europe can best be appreciated in terms of the growth of financial machinery for the handling of commercial credit" (1913, p. viii). To understand this growth was his second research task, and he stuck to it through many unavoidable delays for thirty years, until The Early History of Deposit Banking in Mediterranean Europe appeared in 1943. Again his subject was a topical one in both theoretical and historical circles, especially during the 1920s, when theorists had to deal with the new Federal Reserve System and historians were trying to make sense of the controversy about the relationship, if any, between religion and capitalism. Characteristically, Usher seized on certain fundamental issues in the theoretical controversy and studied them empirically. One of his main purposes was "to provide decisive evidence of ... credit creation in ... early banks of deposit" (1943, p. x); having done so, he permitted himself an uncharacteristically sharp sentence: "Just as French diplomats 'discovered' the Pyrenees in the diplomatic crisis of the eighteenth century, so banking theorists 'discovered' deposits in the mid-nineteenth century" (ibid., p. 192). Probably because Usher thought in terms of theoretical questions he always had a happy knack of dissolving time and space and confronting his readers with daring comparisons—as in his juxtaposition of medieval and modern speculation. To drive home his point about credit creation he made rough calculations from his own data and from published data for the United States to show that in Barcelona in the fifteenth century the credit liabilities of the banks were "not less than 3.5 times the reserve. Such reserve ratios and the coefficients of expansion they imply are not widely different
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from ratios to be found in sections of the United States in the early nineteenth century" (ibid., pp. 181-182). Throughout the volume, indeed, he showed that often what are assumed to be highly sophisticated inventions of modern credit and banking systems have, in fact, existed, in different institutional forms, in Western economies since at least the fourteenth century. It must be emphasized that Usher was not primarily interested in displaying early examples of contemporary practices; his primary interest was to show that the history of banking is a history of gradual improvement in efficiency rather than a history of dramatic inventions of deposits, paper money, and central banks. Thus, he argued that the greatest single improvement in monetary efficiency during the past six or seven centuries was the development of full negotiability for credit instruments, a development that culminated in England during the seventeenth century, but one to which many generations of merchants, lawyers, and bankers, in many regions, had contributed. Reflecting on this long history, Usher wrote: "The more we learn of the early history of commercial paper, the more evident it becomes that the evolution of ... seemingly simple concepts involved a singularly long and complex process" (ibid., p. 109). It is the story of the seemingly simple wholesale grain market all over again. Locational problems. Usher had a sustained interest in the economics of natural resources and industrial location, subjects which are closely related to his interest in technology. While his findings were not embodied in any comprehensive synthesis, they stimulated several of his students to do a considerable amount of research on locational problems. At times Usher sounded like a geopolitician. Concerning the development of the vast iron ore deposits in Lorraine and around Lake Superior he wrote in 1920 that the "industrial prestige of England has been destroyed by the rise of Germany and the United States. The dislocations in the metal industries have occasioned real disturbances of the general political and economic equilibrium"; he then administered a gentle jolt with the observation that there "is no reason to suppose that other generations may not witness dislocations fully as startling" (1920, pp. 266-268). Throughout his work Usher emphasized the pervasive influence on human affairs of the big, impersonal facts of resource endowments, population change, technology, and geography; his knowledge of the deductive, impersonal technique of economic theory did much to give form and significance to his research. What must be accorded major empha-
sis in the last analysis, however, is his historical scholarship, which at all times is marked by the collation of a very wide range of evidence and by a use of historical materials that is at once skeptical and imaginative. It is a measure of his power as a historian that he used economic theory to illuminate his understanding of society rather than allowing it to dominate, and thus he was able to resist any temptation to use economic theory as a royal road to knowledge. Usher's work has contributed much to our understanding of several of the seemingly simple problems of social science. J. H. DALES [See also BANKING; HISTORY, article on ECONOMIC HISTORY; MARKETS AND INDUSTRIES; TECHNOLOGY.] WORKS BY USHER The History of the Grain Trade in France, 14001710. Harvard Economic Studies, Vol. 9. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. 1915 The Technique of Mediaeval and Modern Produce Markets. Journal of Political Economy 23:365-388. 1916 The Influence of Speculative Marketing Upon Prices. American Economic Review 6:49-60. 1920 An Introduction to the Industrial History of England. Boston: Houghton Miffiin. (1929) 1954 A History of Mechanical Inventions. Rev. ed. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. -» A paperback edition was published in 1959 by Beacon. 1943 The Early History of Deposit Banking in Mediterranean Europe. Vol. 1: The Structure and Functions of the Early Credit System: Banking in Catalonia, 1240-1723. Harvard Economic Studies, Vol. 75. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. -» Only one volume was published. 1960 The Industrialization of Modern Britain. Technology and Culture 1:109-127. 1913
SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY
Architects and Craftsmen in History: Festschrift fur Abbott Payson Usher. Veroffentlichungen des List Gesellschaft, Vol. 2. 1956 Tubingen (Germany): Mohr.
USURY See ECONOMIC THOUGHT, article on ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL THOUGHT; INTEREST.
UTILITARIANISM i. THE PHILOSOPHY ii. SOCIOLOGICAL THOUGHT
/. O. Urmson Talcott Parsons
THE PHILOSOPHY
"Utilitarianism" is a term that has no precise or even unequivocal meaning. It is used both as a name for any ethical theory that seeks to determine the Tightness and wrongness of actions by reference
UTILITARIANISM: The Philosophy to the goodness and badness of their consequences and as a name for the whole body of philosophical and political doctrines that was accepted by Bentham and the philosophical radicals of the nineteenth century. The word "utilitarianism" was invented casually by Bentham and reinvented by J. S. Mill to apply specifically to their own doctrines, but a wider use is now very common. Thus, it is common to refer to Hume, who lived well before Bentham, and G. E. Moore, who had no political interests and rejected the doctrine that pleasure is the sole good, as utilitarians. The basic philosophical position that the merit of actions must be determined by reference to their consequences may be taken as having either of two incompatible aims. It may be interpreted as a manifesto for moral reform, advocating a better and more enlightened method for settling moral issues to replace less satisfactory ways of moral thinking; or it may be interpreted as an analytic doctrine whose aim is to make explicit those canons of sound moral thinking which are always implicitly followed in any sound moral reflection. In this second interpretation, it stands in relation to the practice of moral thinkers in general as a philosophical exposition of scientific method stands to the practice of scientists in general, whereas the first interpretation would be more like the advocacy of a new and "improved" scientific method. Although advocates of utilitarianism have not always been as clear as one could wish about how they should be interpreted, it is better to interpret the most philosophical among them, including Hume, J. S. Mill, and Moore, in the latter, analytical way. Thus, Mill says that, to all moralists who deem it necessary to argue at all, utilitarian arguments are indispensable, and he proceeds to criticize Kant, not for failing to be a utilitarian but for failing to realize that he was one. There are two basic questions that a philosophical utilitarian has to answer. First, he must tell us exactly how we are to determine the Tightness and wrongness of actions in terms of their good and bad consequences; second, he must give us a principle for determining what are good and bad consequences. To put it more simply, he has to tell us both how to determine the right in terms of the good and how to determine the good. The various answers that may be given to these two questions are relatively independent of each other, so that we may consider each question in relative isolation. Determination of the right Act utilitarianism. The best-known answer to the question of how to determine the Tightness of
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actions by reference to the value of their consequences is that an action is right if, and only if, the value of its total consequences is at least as great as the value of the total consequences of any alternative course of action; an action will be the (only) right one to perform if its total consequences are more valuable than those of any possible alternative course of action. In this view the correct decision about how to act on a particular occasion is ultimately governed by the facts of the particular situation: it will be wrong to kill on one occasion if the killing will have inferior consequences and right to kill on another occasion if the killing will have the best possible consequences. This, the best-known answer, is commonly dubbed "act utilitarianism" or "extreme utilitarianism" by philosophers. It is popularly thought to be the utilitarian answer. But, although they occasionally gave it as an answer, it was certainly not the answer of Hume, Bentham, Austin, and J. S. Mill, and however formulated and however supplemented, it is subject to the gravest difficulties. A sustained attack on it would be out of place here, but a few of these difficulties may be very briefly mentioned. First, the concept of the total consequences of an action is of little value; there is no satisfactory way of delimiting the consequences of any given action. Second, even if the concept can be used, there is clearly no possibility of ever knowing the value of the total consequences of all the possible courses of action on a particular occasion. To meet these two objections, it is sometimes said that appeal should be made to the total foreseeable consequences only; but this modification makes it impossible to recognize the proper distinction between correct moral decisions and honest errors of moral judgment arising from ignorance of fact. We may surely be justified, but mistaken, in acting on the basis of foreseeable consequences only. Third, this famous answer gives us no means of distinguishing moral from other practical issues: it is hard to see how, in this view, I would not be making a moral mistake if I took a party of friends to a less interesting entertainment than I might have chosen for them. Fourth, this answer is quite at variance with ordinary moral thinking: if I give as a reason for acting in a certain way that I have promised to do so, it is absurd either to insist that I am being irrelevant or that I am giving a reason for thinking that acting in that way will have the best consequences. This last objection leads us to an alternative answer to the question of how the Tightness of actions is to be determined with reference to consequences. The point of the objection was that
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in sound moral thinking we do in fact appeal to principles other than that of producing the best total consequences. We also appeal to principles of promise keeping and truthtelling, the kind of principles that are found in the Ten Commandments. The act utilitarian must either reject appeal to all such principles as improper, which is grossly implausible, or more commonly and more plausibly, give them a rule-of-thumb status. Thus, if promise keeping has in past experience nearly always had better results than promise breaking, we may sum up this experience in the generalization "Promise breaking is wrong." It will be wise to keep promises in obscure situations in the light of. this generalization, but it will have no more authority than the bridge player's adage, "Second player plays low"; an appeal to the actual consequences will always override the adage, which has no independent authority. The alternative answer discussed next attempts to do more justice to the role of such moral principles. Rule utilitarianism. Another answer to the question of how to determine the Tightness of actions by reference to the goodness of their consequences is called rule utilitarianism. J. S. Mill in his Utilitarianism (1861) accepted what he took to be the received opinion that the morality of an individual action is not a question of direct perception but of the application of a law to an individual case. The laws Mill had in mind are the ordinary moral principles of truthfulness, honesty, and the like. Such laws Mill called "secondary principles." However, Mill held that moralists do not commonly give us a satisfactory supreme principle for determining which secondary principles it is proper to accept. Mill therefore produced the utilitarian supreme principle that a secondary principle should be accepted and obeyed if, and only if, the consequences of our accepting that principle will be better than those of our either having no principle at all or having some alternative principle. A secondary principle—"Always do X in circumstances Y"—will be justified if our experience shows that, in an overwhelming majority of cases, actions of the kind X have the best consequences in circumstances Y; that is, if the action X in circumstances Y tends to promote the best consequences. Calm reflection on our secondary principles is always desirable, but so long as such a secondary principle is accepted, it should be followed in all cases of action to which it is applicable, without further reference to consequences. But two qualifications must be made. First, it may so happen that two secondary principles conflict on a particular occasion (e.g., the duty of truthtelling and the duty
of respecting confidences), in which case we must fall back on the supreme principle and appeal directly to consequences. Second, while in general to "see a utility in the breach of a rule, greater than . . . in its observance . . . [is] to furnish us with excuses for evil-doing and means of cheating our own conscience" (Mill [1861] 1957, p. 32), secondary principles are the crude handiwork of fallible men subject to "peculiarities of circumstances." Occasions may arise when, with an eye to consequences, we must break a moral principle—perhaps to avoid causing great and unmerited hardship. However, the general principle remains: "We must remember that only in these cases of conflict between secondary principles is it requisite that first principles should be appealed to. There is no case of moral obligation in which some secondary principle is not involved . . ." (ibid., p. 33). Hume was also a "rule utilitarian"; thus he recognized that the repayment of a debt by a poor man with a sick family to a wealthy miser was in itself repugnant but held it justified by the necessary rules of the artificial virtue of justice. Austin, in his lectures on the province of jurisprudence, which Mill had heard, was quite explicit: The probable specific consequences of doing that single act, of forbearing from that single act, or of omitting that single act, are not the objects of the inquiry. The question to be solved is this: —If acts of the class were generally done, or generally forborne or omitted, what would be the probable effect on the general happiness or good? . . . In the tenth, or the hundredth case, the act might be useful: in the nine, or the ninety and nine, the act would be pernicious. If the act were permitted or tolerated in the rare and anomalous case, the motives to forbear in the others would be weakened or destroyed. (Austin [1832-1863] 1954, pp. 38, 41) The need for Bentham to be a rule utilitarian is surely obvious. His main interest was to bring an enlightened legislation into line with morality. His laws were to be defended as very special cases of moral secondary principles. Once it is grasped that in speaking of the "tendencies of actions," Bentham is, like the other utilitarians, speaking of kinds of actions (for particular actions either do or do not have certain consequences, only kinds of actions can tend to have them), then a reading of his work shows him clearly to be a rule utilitarian. To claim that rule utilitarianism as thus presented is free from difficulties would be very optimistic. Without further qualifications it surely gives at least an overly rigid and simple account of moral thinking. But it does at least avoid some of the obvious objections discussed above to which act utilitarianism is liable, and much recent moral phi-
UTILITARIANISM: The Philosophy losophy makes (or criticizes) the attempt to present some viable version of it. The nature of the good We must now turn to the second major question to which utilitarianism is committed to giving an answer: What is the nature of the good, the production of which makes right actions right? On this topic utilitarian exegesis has commonly been both confused and confusing. Bentham's own view (1789) is, no doubt, superficially plain and clear: the only good is pleasure, the only bad is pain. Anything that gives a quantitatively greater balance of pleasure over pain is better than anything giving a lesser balance—the quantity of pleasure being equal, pushpin is as good as poetry. He devised an elaborate calculus for the measurement of pleasure and pain. Thus, he argued, if we mean by "happiness" pleasure and the absence of pain, the good which determines the Tightness of actions will be the greatest happiness of the greatest number. This famous formula was, it appears, coined by Francis Hutcheson and used by Joseph Priestley in his Essay on the First Principles of Government (1768), where Bentham found it. But this formula is much less clear than it seems. If we could somehow measure units of happiness, it is not clear whether on this principle it is better for ten men each to to have a favorable balance of ten units and one an unfavorable balance of one hundred units or for all eleven to have an even balance of pleasure and pain, as Bentham himself came to see. But there is a still more basic difficulty in Bentham's position. At the beginning of his Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789) he tells us that mankind is under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think. This is for Bentham the ultimate self-evident truth. It is very hard not to interpret it as the doctrine of psychological hedonism, stating that as a matter of psychological fact men always have the aim of maximizing the balance of their own pleasure over pain. However, this doctrine, so far from being a basis for the ethical doctrine of utilitarianism, is incompatible with any ethical doctrine whatsoever. It would be idle to tell men that they ought to aim at the greatest general happiness or at anything else, even their own happiness, if as a matter of psychological fact, they will inevitably aim at their own greatest happiness. Moreover, the doctrine of psychological hedonism, though perennially attractive, is surely false: not only do men seem at times to be obviously altruistic—at least, as Hume dispassionately observes, when altruism does not
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thwart self-interest—but even when, for example, a stamp collector gains great pleasure from getting a rare stamp, it seems more plausible to regard his pleasure as a result of his getting what he wanted (the stamp) than to treat his collection of the stamp as a mere idiosyncratic means to his true end, which is pleasure. If he had not wanted the stamp so badly, he would not have been so pleased at obtaining it. Thus, Bentham's doctrine of the good has an unsatisfactory basis, though as we shall see, one that was important to his more practical activities. J. S. Mill paid lip service to the Benthamite position by claiming happiness to be the sole good and defining it as pleasure and the absence of pain. However, it is little more than lip service. First, he allowed that pleasures may differ in quality as well as in quantity, but as critics have constantly observed, this means that something other than pleasantness determines goodness. Second, he makes preference by a wise and experienced judge the criterion of superior pleasantness, but this makes vacuous the claim that we prefer things because of their greater pleasantness. Ultimately, it is hard to see that Mill said more than that happiness is the life most worth living in the judgment of the wise and that we should have as our aim the provision of such a life for as many people as possible, which is as unrevealing as it is unexceptionable. Two other utilitarian, but non-Benthamite, answers to the question of the nature of the good deserve mention. First there is the view, held, for example, by G. E. Moore (1903), that there is no single answer to the question. In this view there are many different things, pleasure among them, that are good in themselves and which we have a duty to promote. Moore mentions, among others, love, beauty, and knowledge. Anything that is, say, both pleasant and beautiful would be superior to what was only pleasant, or only beautiful, to the same degree. Though this position is linked in Moore with a doctrine of intuition of nonnatural characteristics and the attempt to give a list of "goods" seems artificial, the view that there are many quite different things which are good independently of each other is in accord with common ways of thinking, even if repugnant to the philosopher's desire for neat and simple answers to questions. Second, there is the view, sometimes called negative utilitarianism, of which Karl Popper is a noted exponent. According to negative utilitarianism, it is a mistake to suppose that in order to answer the question of what consequences are relevant to the Tightness of actions it is necessary to determine what consequences of actions in general can be
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counted good. It maintains that there may well be many good consequences of actions which are quite irrelevant to their morality, for morality is concerned, negatively, only with the elimination of avoidable suffering. Moral norms, secondary principles, are justified by the fact that social life would be impossible, or at least to some degree intolerable, unless those norms were observed. Social life would be impossible if there were a habit of violence, so there is a generally recognized universal duty to abstain from violence; it would be intolerable if we were continually misled by our fellows, so there is a recognized universal duty of truthfulness and promise keeping. Yet, though the production of beautiful works of art and the increase of human knowledge are great goods, neither is a recognized duty, even of those who are capable of them (even if the latter is a contractual duty of university professors). To go out of our way to help our neighbors is admirable, but it is a work of supererogation —there is no recognized universal duty to do so. There is much to be said for this viewpoint. Moreover, whatever Mill may have said in Utilitarianism, it is tacitly accepted by him in his On Liberty (1859), where he denies the existence of any warrant for norms, whether legal or moral, save that of the prevention of harm to others. Political implications Utilitarianism has so far been presented as a highly abstract philosophical doctrine, as an attempt to give a very general account of the nature of moral thinking. Some attempt has been made to sketch some of the principal answers given by various utilitarians to two of the basic questions with which they are confronted. This purely philosophical element is, indeed, of central importance in utilitarianism, and it has always been regarded by utilitarians themselves as such, but it remains to be explained how, particularly in nineteenth-century England, such an abstract doctrine could have been the basis for a practical program of political, legal, and moral reform. It has been claimed in this article that the utilitarians regarded themselves not as proposing a new morality but as analyzing the nature of sound moral thinking in a way similar to the analysis of scientific method. However, the analyst of scientific method need not claim that there is no erroneous thinking, no superstition, on matters scientific. Certainly the utilitarians did not wish to claim that all our norms—the secondary principles of morality, our political institutions, our penal codes—were in fact based on utilitarian considerations. One has only to glance at Mill's On Liberty to realize that he thought many of them to be founded on supersti-
tion, class interest, bigotry, and unthinking custom. Thus, there were two practical tasks for Mill as a utilitarian: he had to fight the attitude of bigotry and superstition by writing such polemical works as On Liberty and The Subjection of Women, and he had to provide knowledge of the consequences of social action by economic and sociological investigation to enable sound norms to be found by those with the desire to find them. Finally, there was the need for direct, practical action whereby the better norms discovered by enlightened utilitarians, with the aid of Bentham's investigations of penal institutions and Ricardo's discoveries in economics, might be brought into practical operation. Bentham's proposals on penal reform merit some special examination, both in their own right and because they underline certain general points already made. For Bentham the purpose and justification of penal laws were no different from those of the secondary principles of morality—they required justification by the general happiness principle. Penal laws differed from moral principles only in their provenance—being the commands of an Austinian sovereign—and in having a political sanction instead of, or in addition to, the physical, moral, and legal sanctions that other norms might have. Punishment, being the infliction of pain, is in itself a bad thing. Therefore, legislators will be justified in passing a penal law only if the general happiness it causes greatly outweighs the evil of punishment for its nonobservance. Now since the act made illegal would be done only if the doing of it would maximize the agent's happiness, in the absence of a penal sanction, the task of the legislator in framing the penal sanction must be to impose the minimum sanction that will outweigh the advantage of performing the act; hence the importance of an accurate hedonic calculus. There are two especially interesting features of this view. First, it is an excellent illustration of the direct application of the utilitarian principle to practical problems of legislation and penology; second, it shows well the importance of the doctrine of psychological hedonism in Bentham's thought, for the penal sanction is clearly thought of by Bentham as a mechanism for directing self-regarding action into socially useful channels, rather as a government might try to control investment by manipulating the interest rate; criminal law is a device for making the socially useful profitable to the individual agent. At this point our survey of utilitarian thought must end. It seems that no utilitarian account of moral thought has yet succeeded in doing justice to all the complexities of our moral thought, and
UTILITARIANISM: Sociological Thought yet the general utilitarian position continues to exert a strong attraction. In time a sufficiently subtle version of utilitarianism may succeed in giving a general elucidation of moral thinking. Perhaps there are both utilitarian and nonutilitarian elements in conventional ways of moral thinking and it is possible that a pure utilitarianism must be, at least in part, a moral program rather than a philosophical elucidation. J. O. URMSON [See also DECISION MAKING, article on PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECTS; LIBERALISM; PENOLOGY, article on THE FIELD; SOCIAL CONTROL, article on THE CONCEPT; and the biographies of AUSTIN; BENTHAM; DURKHEIM; HALEVY; HOBBES; HUME; MILL. Other relevant material may be found under POLITICAL THEORY.] BIBLIOGRAPHY
AUSTIN, JOHN (1832-1863) 1954 The Province of Jurisprudence Determined and The Uses of the Study of Jurisprudence. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson; New York: Noonday Press. -> Two books bound together. BENTHAM, JEREMY (1789) 1948 An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation. New ed. New York: Hafner. HALEVY, ELIE (1901-1904) 1952 The Growth of Philosophic Radicalism. New ed. London: Faber. -» First published in French. HUME, DAVID (1739-1740) 1958 A Treatise of Human Nature. Edited by L. A. Selby-Bigge. Oxford: Clarendon. -> Reprinted from the original edition; contains an analytical index. HUTCHESON, FRANCIS (1725) 1753 An Inquiry Into the Origins of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue: In Two Treatises. 5th ed., corrected. London. -» The first work by the first influential English utilitarian. LYONS, DAVID 1965 Forms and Limits of Utilitarianism Oxford Univ. Press. MILL, JOHN STUART (1859) 1963 On Liberty. Indianapolis, Ind.: Bobbs-Merrill. MILL, JOHN STUART (1861)1957 Utilitarianism. Indianapolis, Ind.: Bobbs-Merrill. MOORE, G. E. (1903) 1954 Principia ethica. Cambridge Univ. Press. -> A paperback edition was published in 1959. PRIESTLEY, JOSEPH (1768) 1771 Essay on the First Principles of Government, and on the Nature of Political, Civil, and Religious Liberty. 2d ed., enl. London. STEPHEN, LESLIE (1900)1950 The English Utilitarians. Series of Reprints of Scarce Works on Political Economy, Nos. 9-11. 3 vols. London School of Economics and Political Science; Gloucester, Mass.: Smith. -» A detailed study of Bentham and the two Mills. TOULMIN, STEPHEN E. (1950) 1960 An Examination of the Place of Reason in Ethics. Cambridge Univ. Press. -» An important statement of negative utilitarianism. II SOCIOLOGICAL THOUGHT
The movement of thought generally known as utilitarianism, which had its center in England from the seventeenth until well into the twentieth century, provided one of the most important frames
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of reference in the shaping of social science theory, including sociological theory. The foundations of utilitarianism were laid above all by Hobbes and Locke, with their very different emphases; its culminating phase involved the sequence of eminent writers that extends from Adam Smith, through Bentham, Austin, Malthus, and Ricardo, to John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer. It was a frame of reference based on the action of the individual, but was extended, in ways that led directly to the conception of "social system," to include the interaction of an indefinite plurality of individuals. The individual of the utilitarians, unlike his counterpart in the Cartesian scheme, was an actor, not a knower. That he had goals (which Hobbes called "passions" and the economists called "wants") was a basic assumption. In the main utilitarian tradition, however, little attention was paid to the interconnections between the different wants actuating the same individual or to the origins of these wants. To be sure, the associationist psychologists, building largely on Locke's epistemology, developed a rudimentary theory in this area which has remained continuously influential, especially in the modern behaviorist movement. But since behaviorism has not strongly emphasized the organization of an individual's wants into a personality system, it has not had the same degree of impact on sociological theory as has psychoanalysis, for instance, or the type of social psychology deriving from Cooley and Mead, or even that deriving from Durkheim and his school. The major utilitarian premises The primary focus of utilitarianism was on the process of action designed to satisfy given wants of individuals—that is, on goal-attainment, or wantsatisfaction, whichever way it was put. The process was understood to be one of choosing means that would effectively gain the end. Since this conception was inherently "teleological," in the sense that the behavior was conceived as purposive, it required some normative reference beyond the mere desirability of being satisfied. This was the origin of the famous concept of rationality in the restricted sense of choosing those means and concrete behaviors that are "best adapted" to attainment of the end. Eventually it became clear that the relations among multiple ends had to be considered in a double sense: as the various ends of the same individual actor, and as the ends of different participants in an interactive system. The most obvious way of introducing the consideration of multiple ends was through some conception of cost. Accordingly, to the conception of rational adaptation of means to ends was added the conception of scarcity, or the
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fact that the same means can be appropriate to the attainment of more than one end and that their utilization for one end may entail sacrificing their potential for attaining alternative ends (this eventually came to be understood as the economic conception of cost). However, the process of goalattainment can be impeded by other obstacles, in addition to the sacrifice of alternative uses of means. For instance, there may be factors in the situation that cannot be overcome or consequences of the line of action that are noxious to the actor. These considerations constitute the essential conceptual setting of the famous utilitarian doctrine of hedonism—a doctrine which found its classic expression in the works of Bentham. Here, pleasure is regarded essentially as the gratifying consequence of successful rational action and pain as the subjective cost of encountering noxious consequences, some of which would not have been "chosen" if means and ends had been rationally considered. Hedonism at the utilitarian level of its development was surely not a scientific psychological theory so much as a specialized language, to be used for formulating the balance between advantage and disadvantage in the attempt at rational satisfaction of wants. Nevertheless, t