Institutions and the Person

Festschrift in Honor of Everett C.Hughes

Howard Saul Becker, Blanche Geer, David Riesman, Robert S. Weiss

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Topic: Social Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351512251
• Subtopic: Social Science Research & Methodology
• Index: Social Sciences

Everett C. Hughes had a great impact on the field of sociology as a whole and on an entire generation of sociologists. Some of Hughes' former students and colleagues honor him in this book. The essays address the main themes in his work over the years, and illustrate as well Hughes' impact on the contributors, many of whom are themselves senior figures in the field. The book as a whole provides a distinguished and representative sampling of a major stream of contemporary sociological thought. Each of the five main divisions in the book covers one aspect of Hughes' work. The first deals with the study of occupations and professions-a field in which Hughes was a leader. The second section deals with race relations and other situations in which peoples of differing cultures meet. Beginning with his own work in French Canada many years ago, Hughes interests spread, and the breadth of this interest is seen in chapters on India, Peru, and race relations in the United States. Problems of organizations-how they are put together and how they work-are contained in a third section. A fourth section reflects Hughes' interest in the impact of institutional experience on the people who participate in social institutions, and includes chapters on occupational socialization, status passage, and the use of drugs. A final section develops still another of Hughes' interests-social science method. Presenting some of the most important topics of contemporary theory and research, this book remains profitable reading for every member of the discipline

PART ONE

The World of Work

DAVID N. SOLOMON

1 Sociological Perspectives
on Occupations

In my own teaching and thinking about occupations 1 have found it necessary from time to time to ask myself what we have been doing, what we are doing, and what needs to be done in the immediate future in this area of sociological interest. This paper is the result of my ruminations. It consists of four parts: first, I have taken the liberty of reminiscing briefly about my own contacts with Everett Cher-rington Hughes; second, I have attempted to delineate the scope and approach of the sociological perspective on occupations by considering definitions of a few common terms: work, occupation, and career; third, 1 have set forth a paradigm which I think summarizes as well as can be done the essential features of Hughes’ perspective on occupations; and, finally, I have made a few remarks to indicate the tasks I think need to be done in order to integrate the field somewhat and to continue to advance in the directions indicated by the work of Hughes and his students.

Having chosen to consider sociological perspectives on occupations, I have had to ask myself what my own perspective is, and in doing so I have been led back over my own career and the parts of it which have been so significantly influenced by the career of Everett C. Hughes.

Perhaps I can be forgiven a little reminiscence since I started with ECH as an undergraduate and have done two of my three degrees with him. In the autumn of 1935 I registered for Sociology I, being a second year student in the Faculty of Arts and Science at McGill University. The course was taught in two sections, one of about forty students by Everett Hughes, the other a somewhat larger section, by Carl Addington Dawson, who had in 1922 founded the department at McGill, and was for most of his career the dean of Canadian sociology. I cannot recall whether I was by chance assigned to Everett’s section or whether it happened to be at a convenient time—I think it met from 12:00 noon to 1:00 P. M. on Tuesdays and Thursdays, with a conference hour at another time. What I do remember very clearly is that I was immediately tremendously interested and involved in the course. Along with a friend who is now a successful pathologist I frequently stood talking with Everett after the lectures in the dim hall of the old Arts Building. The things that interested us seemed also to interest Everett, and the lecture frequently continued as an informal discussion until almost two o’clock. I had many late lunches, and it was a tremendous experience for an undergraduate in his first course in sociology. Everett and Helen also introduced me to the small coterie of sociology students, all of whom were senior to me, and some of whom had assisted with French Canada in Transition, the field work for which was in full swing at the time. This was my first exposure to the sociological perspective, and I was “hooked” almost immediately. I had no reference group which regarded such an addiction as deviant, so my career as a sociologist was launched.

If one wanted to look at this in terms of the notion of career contingencies, one of the many concepts added to the sociological perspective by Everett Hughes, this was clearly the fateful contingency in my own career. Looking back on it, I think it worked in two ways. I was introduced to sociology as a body of colleagues, at that time a very small band indeed, who were together engaged in a common effort. There was a very strong feeling among McGill sociology honor students of being involved and committed; considering we were very few in number, quite a who worked with Everett were made to feel that they were participants in a common intellectual enterprise.

The other fateful feature was the way the experience shaped one’s outlook. Sociology at the time was struggling to free itself from the influence of social philosophy and possibly certain types of journalism, and to establish itself in the academic community vis-a-vis history, economics, political science, and psychology. In Everett’s teaching, nothing of value from these other disciplines was thrown away, and indeed we read much more in these other fields than in sociology, if only for the simple reason that, compared with the vast literature of the present, hardly anything had been written in sociology. There were, I think, two basic elements to what I internalized at that time. I have given considerable consideration to which I ought to put first. As I remember it, the first principle was that there ought to be data. The first essential of the sociologist was his obligation to observe as closely and intimately as possible the behavior of the persons he was concerned with, and this meant somehow or other participating in their lives, whether as an observer or an interviewer, so that they could reveal the aspects of interaction which were significant to them. Second, or perhaps at the same level of primacy, was the conception of man as a social being, interacting with his fellows within the structure of a framework of social understanding and mutual expectations. While these ideas seem hardly novel now, at the time—in the middle and late thirties—it was quite something to absorb and become absorbed with them in the contemporary undergraduate academic climate.

In everything I have ever worked on, the sociological perspective as presented to me by ECH has been very much to the fore. With the exception of a study of outpatients in which I am presently engaged, all my research interests and a good deal of my teaching have been concerned with people at work: the roles of functionaries in a Young Men’s Hebrew Association; the career contingencies of doctors in Chicago; the training of infantry recruits in the Canadian army; the roles and self-conceptions of Ph.D. chemists in the Montreal chemical industry; and a course in the sociology of occupations which I have taught for the past ten years.

In order to write this paper I have asked myself how I could set down, as much for my own benefit as to share with others, in some reasonably clear and concise form, of what the sociological perspective on occupations consists. Like the rest of Everett Hughes’ students, I think I have pretty well absorbed his perspectives, although unfortunately not his ability to make them work.

The Scope and Nature of the Sociology of Occupations

The sociology of occupations is a substantive field of sociology, to be characterized not primarily in terms of a set of unique concepts or principles, but more by its interest in a particular set of phenomena: occupations, or more broadly, people at work. While the questions asked and the concepts and principles used are to some degree unique, and give the field its own particular flavor, the sociology of occupations consists mainly of the application of the sociological approach to a particular sector or area of behavior, “the realm of work and occupational life.”¹ The scope or range of the field can be indicated by a brief discussion of the meaning of the terms work and occupation.

Work

Work is most conveniently regarded as the generic term for activity leading to the production of goods and/or services, that is, for economic activity in any kind of society, regardless of how the social system of the economy is organized. In pre-market, pre-industrial societies, work roles may, for example, be part of the familial system. In the market economies of industrialized societies, however, where “economic activity is functionally removed from other institutional arrangements,”² work roles are part of the occupational system, which constitutes an important element of the social system of the economy. This social aspect of production can be looked at as a system as well as in terms of “two basic units of social structure—occupational roles and organizations.”³ Depending upon which of these interests is emphasized, there are three main divisions to the field of the sociology of work.

Work and society consists of the macro-sociology of the economy as a social system, including studies of the dynamics of labor markets, labor force analyses, manpower problems, occupational trends, the values surrounding work, the meaning of work, and other system problems. Industrial sociology has been concerned primarily with the study of various aspects of work organizations: (a) industrial relations, that is, the conflict between labor and man-gement seen as collectivities; (b) human relations in industry, to a considerable degree the same conflict seen at the micro-level, and overlapping with (c) the study of complex organizations, many of which are industrial, although others produce health, religious, educational, or other such services. Finally, the sociology of occupations as a field of interest has developed around the study of occupational roles.

Occupation

The notion of occupation is broadly connotative, understood by everyone, but without precise denotative content. Defined in abstract terms, occupation can be thought of as a major “institutional complex” of the economy, which “refers to the institutionalization of human services.” Occupation in this sense is the structure of institutionalized norms which state the conditions under which human services can be involved in the system of production of goods and services.⁴

This is not, however, how we ordinarily think of occupations, or more specifically of an occupation. Frequently, we seem to think of an occupation as a set of skills, or a set of persons who possess similar skills. This emphasizes the technical aspect, which is only one part of the interest of the sociology of occupations. If, however, people have similar skills, it seems a fair assumption that they perform similar roles. Occupation is, after all, a label for a class or category of persons, which, to be of sociological interest, must be characterized in some other way as well. Once an occupational label identifies a category of persons it is implied that they behave or can legitimately be expected to behave in the same or similar ways in given situations, that they have similar roles to perform.⁵ The occupational label and the behavioral expectations are equivalent to the notions of occupational status and role. An occupation can thus be thought of as a role.

Conventional occupational labels are hardly ever identical with roles not only because the continuing differentiation of roles into new specialties leaves the nomenclature behind, but also because occupations which provide careers consist of sequences of roles appropriate to the various stages of a career. The label frequently includes a variety of roles; a career always consists of a sequence of roles.

To view the sociology of occupations as limited to consideration of occupational roles perhaps is too confining, since many other concepts—indeed the whole conceptual apparatus of sociology—are relevant. Nevertheless, it may be as well to start out as if we considered the study of occupations as mainly the study of roles and a few related concepts. The primary sociological interest in an occupation is, after all, as a role. Whatever other interests we pursue, or whatever other concepts we introduce are incidental to, or arise from, the fact that the phenomenon we are concerned with in studying an occupation is in essence a role.⁶ Moreover, such roles can be clearly identified by a single criterion: They are roles people are paid to perform.⁷

The Hughes Perspective on Occupations

The outstanding feature of Hughes’ approach to the study of occupational roles is his insightfulness. He possesses the sociological imagination in a very high degree, and his creativeness is expressed most frequently by comparing diverse types of work. In Men and Their Work,⁸ for example, physicians, lawyers, ministers, janitors, real estate men, teachers, prostitutes, librarians, nurses, sociologists, factory workers, musicians, personnel men, promoters, quacks, salesmen, scientists are all mentioned. The qualities of the Hughes approach are such that it is perhaps presumptuous and certainly difficult to summarize.

Hughes is, by his own declaration, “preoccupied” with the “goal of learning about the nature of society itself from the study of occupations.”⁹ The more immediate purpose of study, however, is always to describe and understand the behavior of the persons who are involved in whatever kind of work comes to his attention. Understanding is achieved by focusing attention on critical aspects of the work situation which are selected for description and discussion. Three basic elements are involved in these discussions: the nature of the work itself, the problems or tensions generated in the work situation, and the resulting social order. These elements are related. The nature of the work generates problems or creates tensions for the persons involved. The problems must be overcome, and the tensions must be dealt with. The response is an ordering of the social situation of the work which enables, facilitates, permits, or sometimes impedes, the conduct of the work.

The Nature of Work

The study of work is the study of an aspect of society, since like other human activities work by nature involves interaction. The basic preoccupation of Hughes’ approach is with the “social drama of work,” that is to say, with processes of interaction among participants, be they fellow workers or others. The outstanding feature of work in this perspective is that it requires, permits, encourages, or discourages interaction. Work is never done except in some situation of interaction.

The features of work which are relevent are therefore those which have some bearing on the concomitant system of interaction. There is always a technological aspect. An occupation can be looked at as a bundle of skills, and what is happening to the skills is clearly relevant for the work situation. The work may be dangerous, physically dirty or disgusting, socially dirty or disreputable, or in some sense fateful, whether for those who perform the work or for those who benefit or wish to benefit, from the product or services. But these and other aspects of the character of work are relevant only insofar as they have recognizable social consequences, that is to say, if they have meaningful consequences for the interaction. The center of attention is on the features of work which critically influence interaction. One might say of Hughes that he always knows where the interaction is, and that is where he goes and sends his students.

Problems

I use the word problems for want of a better term. The nature of the work itself, and/or the features of the social situation in which it is usually or traditionally carried out, presents people who are involved in the work (workers and others) with problems they seek to overcome or with tensions they seek to reduce or at least control. Some aspects of work...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Everett C. Hughes—An Appreciation
• PART I. The World of Work
• 1 Sociological Perspectives on Occupations
• 2 Reorganization and Accommodation: A Case in Industry
• 3 The Impurity of Professional Authority
• 4 Human Relations versus Management
• 5 The Union-Organizing Campaign as a Problem of Social Distance: Three Crucial Dimensions of Affiliation-Disaffiliation
• PART II. Racial and Cultural Contacts
• 6 “We Distinguish-They Discriminate”: Observations on Race Relations
• 7 French-Canadian Engineers
• 8 The Silent Sufferers: The Lecturer’s Role in Student Unrest in India
• 9 The Enemies of the People
• 10 The Impurity of Professional Authority
• PART III. Organizations
• 11 Internal Differentiation and the Establishment of Organizations
• 12 Crisis in an Institutional Network: Community Health Care
• 13 Innovation in Higher Education: Notes on Student and Faculty Encounters in Three New Colleges
• 14 The Informal Organization of the Army: A Sociological Memoir
• 15 The Phoenix and the Ashes
• PART IV. Institutions and the person
• 16 Occupational Commitment and the Teaching Profession
• 17 Professional Socialization as Subjective Experience: The Process of Doctrinal Conversion among Student Nurses
• 18 Shared Ordeal and Induction to Work
• 19 Some Neglected Properties of Status Passage
• 20 History, Culture, and Subjective Experience: An Exploration of the Social Bases of Drug-Induced Experiences
• PART V. Problems of Method
• 21 The Neglected Situation
• 22 The Participant-Observer as a Human Being: Observations on the Personal Aspects of Field Work
• 23 Asking Questions Cross-Culturally: Some Problems of Linguistic Comparability
• 24 Issues in Holistic Research
• 25 Stuff and Nonsense about Social Surveys and Observation
• A Bibliography of the Work of Everett C. Hughes