Encyclopedia of SociologyVol._1

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advanced industrial society, technical forms of control are no longer guided by consensually derived societal values. Democratic decision making is diminished under circumstances in which technical experts manipulate an objectified world, in which citizens are displaced from political decision making, and in which ‘‘reason’’—identified exclusively with the ‘‘value free’’ prediction of isolated ‘‘facts’’—is disqualified from reflection about the ends of social life.

More recently, Habermas (1987) has restated this theory sociologically to describe an uneven process of institutional development governed by opposing principles of ‘‘system’’ and ‘‘lifeworld.’’ In this formulation, the cultural lifeworld—the source of cultural meanings, social solidarity, and personal identity—is increasingly subject to ‘‘colonization’’ by the objectivistic ‘‘steering mechanisms’’ of the marketplace (money) and bureaucracy (power). On the levels of culture, society, and personality, such colonization tends to produce political crises resulting from the loss of meaning, increase of anomie, and loss of motivation. At the same time, however, objectivistic steering mechanisms remain indispensable because large-scale social systems cannot be guided by the face-to-face interactions that characterize the lifeworld. Thus, the state becomes a battleground for struggles involving the balance between the structuring principles of systems and lifeworlds. Habermas contends that it is in response to such crises that the forces of conservatism and the ‘‘new social movements’’ such as feminism and ecology are embattled and that it is here that the struggle for human liberation at present is being contested most directly. As formulated by Habermas, a critical theory of society aims at clarifying such struggles in order to contribute to the progressive democratization of modern society.

CURRENT DEBATES: CRITICAL THEORY

AND POSTSTRUCTURALISM

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the heightened influence of poststructuralism sparked intense debate between critical theorists and poststructuralists. Theorists staked out positions that tended to collapse distinct theories into oppositional categories

(critical theory or poststructuralism) yet they agreed on several points. Both critical and poststructural theorists critiqued the transcendental claims of

Enlightenment thought (e.g., that truth transcends the particular and exists ‘‘out there’’ in its universality), understood knowledge and consciousness to be shaped by culture and history, and attacked disciplinary boundaries by calling for supra-disci- plinary approaches to knowledge construction.

Polarization, nonetheless, worked to emphasize differences, underplay points of agreement, and restrict awareness of how these approaches might complement one another (Best and Kellner 1991; Fraser 1997).

Because critical theory aspires to understand semiautonomous social systems (e.g., capital, science and technology, the state, and the family) as interconnected in an overarching matrix of domination (Best and Kellner 1991, p. 220), poststructuralists charge that it is a ‘‘grand theory’’ still mired in Enlightenment traditions that seek to understand society as a totality. In viewing the path to emancipation as the recovery of reason through a critical analysis of instrumentalism, scientism, and late capitalism, critical theory is seen as promoting a centralized view of power as emitting from a macro-system of domination. That is, by promoting a view of social subjects as overdetermined by class, critical theory is said to reduce subjectivity to social relations of domination that hover in an orbit of capitalist imperatives. By theorizing that subjectivity is formed through social interaction (e.g., intersubjectivity), Habermas departs from Horkheimer and Adorno’s view of the social subject as ego centered—as a self-reflex- ive critical subject (Best and Kellner 1991). Nonetheless, poststructuralists contend that Habermas, like his predecessors, essentializes knowledge. In other words, the capacity to recover reason either through critical reflexivity (Horkheimer, Adorno, and Marcuse) or through a form of communicative action that appeals to a normative order (Habermas) promotes a false understanding of subjectivity as ‘‘quasi-transcendental.’’

In rebuttal, critical theorists argue that poststructuralist views of power as decentralized and diffuse uncouple power from systems of domination (Best and Kellner 1991). Poststructuralists view social subjectivity as a cultural construction that is formed in, and through, multiple and diffuse webs of language and power. Critics charge that such a diffuse understanding of power promotes a vision of society as a ‘‘view from everywhere’’ (Bordo 1993). Social identities are seen as

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indeterminate and social differences as differences of equivalency (Flax 1990). This perspective results in analyses that focus on identity to the exclusion of systemic forms of domination. Thus, for example, while feminists who adhere to critical theory tend to analyze gender as a system of patriarchal domination, poststructuralist feminists, by contrast, tend to focus on the cultural production of gendered subjects, that is, on representation and identity. Habermas ([1980] 1997) and others argue that the avoidance of analyses of systems in favor of more fragmentary micro-analyses of discrete institutions, discourses, or practices is an antimodern movement that obscures the emancipatory potential of modernity (Best and Kellner 1991).

Although this debate is still stirring, some scholars are moving away from oppositional positions in favor of more complex readings of both traditions in order to synthesize or forge alliances between approaches (Best and Kellner 1991; Kellner 1995; Fraser 1997). Thus poststructuralism may serve as a corrective to the totalizing tendencies in critical theory while the latter prevents the neglect of social systems and calls attention to the relationship between multiple systems of domination and social subjectivities. In other words, critical theory points to the need to understand systemic forms of domination while poststructuralism warns against the reduction of social subjectivity to macro-overarching systems of domination. Thus drawing on both traditions, Nancy Fraser (1997, p. 219) suggests that a more accurate picture of social complexity ‘‘might conceive subjectivity as endowed with critical capacities and as culturally constructed’’ while viewing ‘‘critique as simultaneously situated and amenable to self-reflection.’’

Theoretical and empirical applications of such a ‘‘both/and approach’’ abound. For instance, in recognizing that all knowledge is partial, black feminist theorists such as Patricia Hill Collins (1990) articulate both critical theoretical tenets and poststructuralist sensibilities by conceptualizing identity as socially constructed, historically specific, and culturally located while stressing systemic forms of domination without reducing identities to single systems of oppression (also see Agger 1998). Postcolonial theories likewise draw on both traditions in order to understand the fluid relationships among culture, systems of domination, social subjectivity, the process of ‘‘othering,’’ and

identity formation (see Williams and Chrisman

1993). Douglas Kellner’s (1997) empirical work on media culture likewise employs a multiperspectival approach that combines insights from cultural studies and poststructuralism with critical theory in order to understand mass media as a source of both domination and resistance, and as a way to account for the formation and communicative positionality of social subjects constituted through multiple systems of race, class, and gender. Habermas’s (1996) current theorizing on procedural democracy reflects a move toward the poststructuralism of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s (1985) theory of radical democracy that stresses the potential collaboration of diverse agents in progressive social movements that aim at defending and expanding citizen participation in public life.

(SEE ALSO: Marxist Sociology)

REFERENCES

Adorno, Theodor 1973 Negative Dialectics. New York:

Seabury Press.

———, E. Frenkel-Brunswick, D. Levinson, and R. N. Sanford 1950 The Authoritarian Personality. New York: Harper.

Agger, Ben 1998 Critical Social Theory: An Introduction. Boulder. Colo.: Westview Press.

Antonio, Robert J. 1981 ‘‘Immanent Critique as the Core of Critical Theory.’’ British Journal of Sociology

32:330–345.

Aronowitz, Stanley 1973 False Promises. New York: Mc-

Graw-Hill.

Balbus, Isaac 1977 ‘‘Commodity Form and Legal Form: An Essay on ‘Relative Autonomy’.’’ Law and Society Review 11:571–588.

Benjamin, Jessica 1978 ‘‘Authority and the Family Revisited: Or, A World without Fathers?’’ New German Critique 13 (Winter):35–57.

Best, Steven, and Douglas Kellner 1991 Postmodern Theory: Critical Interrogations. New York: The Guilford Press.

Bordo, Susan 1993 Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Braverman, Harry 1974 Labor and Monopoly Capital. New York: Monthly Review Press.

Buck-Morss, Susan 1995 The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.

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Flax, Jane 1990 Thinking Fragments: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and Postmodernism in the Contemporary West. Los Angeles: University of California Press.

Fraser, Nancy 1997 Justice Interruptus: Critical Reflections on the ‘‘Postsocialist’’ Condition. New York: Routledge.

——— 1989 Unruly Practices: Power, Discourse, and Gender in Contemporary Social Theory. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Fromm, Erich 1941 Escape from Freedom. New York: Avon.

Giroux, Henry A. 1988 Schooling and the Struggle for Public Life. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Habermas, Jurgen 1996 Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.

———1989 The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.

———1987 The Theory of Communicative Action II: Lifeworld and System—A Critique of Functionalist Reason. Boston: Beacon Press.

———1986 ‘‘Three Normative Models of Democracy.’’ In Seyla Benhabib, ed., Democracy and Difference. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

———(1980) 1997 ‘‘Modernity: An Unfinished Project.’’ In d’ Entregrave;ves, Maurizio Passerin and Seyla Benhabib, eds., Habermas and the Unfinished Project of Modernity. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.

———1979 Communication and the Evolution of Society. Boston: Beacon Press.

———1971 Knowledge and Human Interests. Boston: Beacon Press.

———1970 Toward a Rational Society. Boston: Beacon Press.

Kellner, Douglas 1995 Media Culture: Cultural Studies, Identity, and Politics Between the Modern and the Postmodern. New York: Routledge.

———1984–85 ‘‘Critical Theory and the Culture Industries: A Reassessment.’’ Telos 62:196–209.

———1990a ‘‘Critical Theory and the Crisis of Social Theory.’’ Sociological Perspectives 33:11–33.

———1990b Television and the Crisis of Democracy. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press.

Kelly, Joan 1979 ‘‘The Doubled Vision of Feminist Theory.’’ Feminist Studies 5:216–227.

Laclau, Ernesto, and Chantal Mouffe 1985 Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. London: Verso.

Lasch, Christopher 1977 Haven in a Heartless World. New York: Basic Books.

Lukacs, Georg (1923) 1971 History and Class Consciousness. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.

Marcuse, Herbert 1964 One-Dimensional Man. Boston:

Beacon Press.

———1955 Eros and Civilization. Boston: Beacon Press.

———1941 Reason and Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press.

Sennett, Richard, and Jonathan Cobb 1973 The Hidden Injuries of Class. New York: Vintage Books.

Williams, Patrick, and Laura Chrisman 1993 Colonial Discourse and Post Colonial Theory: A Reader. New York: Columbia University Press.

DWIGHT B. BILLINGS

PATRICIA JENNINGS

Haug, W. F. 1986 Critique of Commodity Aesthetics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Held, David 1980 Introduction to Critical Theory. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Hill Collins, Patricia 1990 Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. New York: Routledge.

Horkheimer, Max 1972 Critical Theory: Selected Essays. New York: Herder and Herder.

———, and Theodor Adorno (1947) 1972 Dialectic of Enlightenment. New York: Seabury Press.

Jay, Martin 1984 Marxism and Totality. Berkeley: University of California Press.

——— 1973 The Dialectical Imagination. Boston: Little, Brown.

CROSS-CULTURAL ANALYSIS

Cross-cultural research has a long history in sociology (Armer and Grimshaw 1973; Kohn 1989; Miller-Loessi 1995). It most generally involves social research across societies or ethnic and subcultural groups within a society. Because a discussion of macro-level comparative historical research appears in another chapter of this encyclopedia, the focus here is primarily on cross-cultural analysis of social psychological processes. These include communicative and interactive processes within social institutions and more generally the relation between the individual and society and its institutions.

Although all sociological research is seen as comparative in nature, comparisons across

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subcultural or cultural groups have distinct advantages for generating and testing sociological theory. Specifically, cross-cultural research can help ‘‘distinguish between those regularities in social behavior that are system specific and those that are universal’’ (Grimshaw 1973, p. 5). In this way, sociologists can distinguish between generalizations that are true of all cultural groups and those that apply for one group at one point in time. The lack of cross-cultural research has often led to the inappropriate universal application of sociological concepts that imply an intermediate (one cultural group at one point in time) level (Bendix 1963).

In addition to documenting universal and sys- tem-specific patterns in social behavior, cross-cul- tural analysis can provide researchers with experimental treatments (independent variables) unavailable in their own culture. Thus, specific propositions can be investigated experimentally that would be impossible to establish in a laboratory in the researcher’s own country (Strodtbeck 1964). Finally, cross-cultural analysis is beneficial for theory building in at least two respects. First, the documentation of differences in processes across cultures is often the first step in the refinement of existing theory and the generation of novel theoretical models. Second, cross-cultural analysis can lead to the discovery of unknown facts (behavioral patterns or interactive processes) that suggest new research problems that are the basis for theory refinement and construction.

INTERPRETIVE AND INFERENTIAL

PROBLEMS

Cross-cultural researchers face a number of challenging interpretive and inferential problems that are related to the methodological strategies they employ (Bollen, Entwisle, and Alderson 1993). For example, Charles Ragin (1989) argues that most cross-cultural research at the macro level involves either intensive studies of one or a small group of representative or theoretically decisive cases or the extensive analysis of a large number of cases. Not surprisingly, extensive studies tend to emphasize statistical regularities while intensive studies search for generalizations that are interpreted within a cultural or historical context. This same pattern also appears in most micro-level cross-cultural research, and it is clearly related to both theoretical orientation and methodological preferences.

Some scholars take the position that cultural regularities must always be interpreted in cultural and historical context, while others argue that what appear to be cross-cultural differences may really be explained by lawful regularities at a more general level of analysis. Those in the first group most often employ primarily qualitative research strategies (intensive ethnographic and historical analysis of a few cases), while those in the second usually rely on quantitative techniques (multivariate or other forms of statistical analysis of large data sets).

METHODOLOGICAL TECHNIQUES AND

AVAILABLE DATA SOURCES

The wide variety of techniques employed in crosscultural analysis reflect the training and disciplinary interests of their practitioners. We discuss the methods of anthropologists, psychologists, and sociologists in turn. Anthropologists generally rely on different types of ethnographic tools for data collection, analysis, and reporting. Ethnographic research has the dual task of cultural description and cultural interpretation. The first involves uncovering the ‘‘native’s point of view’’ or the criteria the people under study use ‘‘to discriminate among things and how they respond to them and assign them meaning, including everything in their physical, behavioral, and social environments’’ (Goodenough 1980, pp. 31–32); while the second involves ‘‘stating, as explicitly as we can manage, what the knowledge thus attained demonstrates about the society in which it is found and, beyond that, about social life as such’’ (Geertz 1973, p. 27).

Three types of ethnographic approaches and methodological tools are generally employed in cross-cultural research. The first involves longterm participant observation and the thick description of the culture under study in line with Clifford Geertz’s (1973) interpretive perspective of culture. From this perspective, culture is seen as

‘‘layered multiple networks of meaning carried by words, acts, conceptions and other symbolic forms’’ (Marcus and Fisher 1986, p. 29). Thus the metaphor of culture in the interpretive approach is that of a text to be discovered, described, and interpreted. The second involves methods of ethnoscience including elicitation tasks and interviews with key informants that yield data amenable to logical and statistical analysis to generate the ‘‘organizing principles underlying behavior’’ (Tyler 1969; also see

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Werner and Schoepfle 1987). Ethnoscience views these organizing principles as the ‘‘grammar of the culture’’ that is part of the mental competence of members. The final type of ethnographic research is more positivistic and comparative in orientation. In this approach cross-cultural analysis is specifically defined as the use of ‘‘data collected by anthropologists concerning the customs and characteristics of various peoples throughout the world to test hypotheses concerning human behavior’’

(Whiting 1968, p. 693).

All three types of ethnographic research generate data preserved in research monographs or data archives such as the Human Relations Area Files, the Ethnographic Atlas, and the ever-expand- ing World Cultures data set that has been constructed around George Murdock and Douglas

White’s (1968) Standard Cross Cultural Sample. A number of scholars (Barry 1980; Lagacé 1977; Murdock 1967; Whiting 1968; Levinson and Malone 1980) have provided detailed discussions of the contents, coding schemes, and methodological strengths and weaknesses of these archives as well as data analysis strategies and overviews of the variety of studies utilizing such data.

Most cross-cultural research in psychology involves the use of quasi-experimental methods. These include classical experimentation, clinical tests and projective techniques, systematic observation, and unobtrusive methods (see Berry, Poortinga, and

Pandey, 1996; Triandis and Berry 1980). However, a number of psychologists have recently turned to observational and ethnographic methods in what has been termed ‘‘cultural psychology’’ (Shweder 1990). Much of the recent research in this area focuses on culture and human development and spans disciplinary boundaries and involves a wide variety of interpretive research methods (Greenfield and Suzuki 1998; Shweder et al. 1998).

Sociologists have made good use of intensive interviewing (Bertaux 1990) and ethnography (Corsaro 1988, 1994; Corsaro and Heise 1992) in cross-cultural analysis. However, they more frequently rely on the survey method in cross-cultural research and have contributed to the development of a number of archives of survey data (Kohn 1987; Lane 1990). The growth of such international surveys in recent years has been impressive. The

World Fertility Survey (WFS) is an early example.

In one of the first efforts of its kind, women in forty-two developing countries were interviewed between 1974 and 1982 about their fertility behavior, marital and work history, and other aspects of their background. The WFS spawned hundreds of comparative studies that have contributed greatly to the understanding of human fertility (see, for example, Bohgaarts and Watkins 1996; Kirk and

Pillet 1998). The Demographic and Health Survey

(DHS) largely took up where the WFS left off. In this ongoing project, begun in 1984, nationally representative samples of women aged 15–49 in forty-seven countries have been surveyed regarding lifetime reproduction, fertility preferences, family planning practices, and the health of their children. For some countries, detailed data are available for husbands also and, for a few countries, in-depth interview data are also available.

Less specialized is the international counterpart to the U.S. General Social Survey (GSS); the

International Social Survey Program (ISSP). The ISSP got its start in 1984 as researchers in the United States, Germany, Britain, and Australia agreed to field common topical modules in the course of conducting their regular national surveys. Beginning 1985 with a survey of attitudes toward government in the four founding countries, the ISSP has expanded to include surveys on topics as diverse as social networks and social support and attitudes regarding family, religion, work, the environment, gender relations, and national identity. Some specific modules have been replicated and, overall, a large proportion of the items from earlier surveys are carried over to new modules, giving the ISSP both a cross-cultural and longitudinal dimension. At present, thirty-one nations are participating in the ISSP. A number of non-member nations have also replicated specific modules. An interesting offshoot of the ISSP is the International Survey of Economic Attitudes (ISEA). Building on an ISSP module concerning beliefs regarding social inequality, the ISEA collects a wide array of information on attitudes regarding income inequality, social class, and economic policy. The first round was carried out between 1991– 1993 in three countries. A second round was carried out in five countries over the 1994–1997 period, and a third round is currently under way. Some of the important reports based on data from these surveys include Jones and Broyfield (1997), Kelley and Evans (1995), and Western (1994).

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Also of general interest are the surveys undertaken under the auspices of the World Values

Survey Group and Eurobarometer. The World Values Survey (WVS) (originally termed the ‘‘European Values Survey’’) began in 1981 as social scientists in nine Western European countries administered a common survey of social, political, moral, and religious values in their respective countries. Between 1981 and 1984, this survey was replicated in fourteen additional countries, including a number of non-European countries. In

1990–1993, a second wave of the World Values

Survey was conducted in a broader group of fortythree nations and a third wave was undertaken in 1995–1996. In terms of content, the WVS is broadly organized around values and norms regarding work, family, the meaning and purpose of life, and topical social issues. Specifically, respondents are queried on everything from their views on good and evil to their general state of health, from their associational memberships to their opinions of the value of scientific discoveries (see Inglehart 1997; MacIntosh 1998). The Eurobarometer surveys began in 1974 as an extension of an earlier series of European Community surveys. Designed primarily to gauge public attitudes toward the Common Market and other EU institutions, the Eurobarometer surveys, carried out every Fall and Spring, have expanded to include a variety of special topics of interest to sociologists, ranging from attitudes regarding AIDS to beliefs about the role of women (see Pettigrew 1998; Quillian 1995).

Finally, there are two more specialized projects that are deserving of note for their scale and scope. Of interest to students of crime and deviance is the International Crime (Victim) Survey

(IC(V)S). Begun in 1989 and carried out again in 1992 and 1996, the IC(V)S gathers reports of crime, in addition to surveying attitudes regarding the police and the criminal justice system, fear of crime, and crime prevention (see Alvazzi del Frate and Patrignani 1995; Zvekic 1996). At present, over fifty countries have participated in the IC(V)S. Scholars interested in cross-cultural dimensions of poverty and development have benefitted from the Living Standards Measurement Study (LSMS). In this World Bank-directed program of research, surveys have been conducted in over two dozen developing countries since 1980 with the aim of gauging the welfare of households, understanding household behavior, and assessing the impact of

government policy on standards of living. The central instrument is a household questionnaire that details patterns of consumption. Other modules, collecting information regarding the local community, pricing, and schools and health facilities, have also been administered in a number of cases (see Grosh and Glewwe 1998; Stecklov 1997).

CHALLENGES AND PROBLEMS IN CROSS-

CULTURAL RESEARCH

There are numerous methodological problems in cross-cultural research including: acquiring the needed linguistic and cultural skills and research funds; gaining access to field sites and data archives; defining and selecting comparable units; ensuring the representativeness of selected cases; and determining conceptual equivalence and measurement reliability and validity. These first two sets of problems are obvious, but not easily resolved. Cross-cultural analysis is costly in terms of time and money, and it usually demands at least a minimal level (and often much more) of education in the history, language, and culture of groups of people foreign to the researcher. The difficulties of gaining access to, and cooperation from, individuals and groups in cross-cultural research ‘‘are always experienced but rarely acknowledged by comparative researchers’’ (Armer 1973, pp. 58– 59). Specific discussions of, and development of strategies for, gaining access are crucial because research can not begin without such access. Additionally, casual, insensitive, or ethnocentric presentation of self and research goals to foreign gatekeepers (officials, scholars, and those individuals directly studied) not only negatively affects the original study, but can also cause serious problems for others who plan future cross-cultural research (Form 1973; Portes 1973). Given the cultural isolation of many social scientists in the United States, it is not surprising that these practical problems have contributed to the lack of crosscultural research in American sociology. However, the internationalization of the social sciences and the globalization of social and environmental issues are contributing to the gradual elimination of many of these practical problems (Sztompka 1988).

For the cross-cultural analysis of social psychological processes the unit of analysis is most often interactive events or individuals that are sampled

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from whole cultures or subunits such as communities or institutions (e.g., family, school, or workplace). The appropriateness of individuals as the basic unit of analysis has been a hotly debated issue in sociology. The problem is even more acute in cross-cultural analysis, especially in cultures ‘‘that lack the individualistic, participatory characteristics of Western societies’’ (Armer 1983, p. 62). In addition to the special difficulties of representative, theoretical, or random sampling of cases

(Elder 1973; Van Meter 1990), cross-cultural researchers must also deal with ‘‘Galton’s problem.’’

According to the British statistician, Sir Francis Galton, ‘‘valid comparison requires mutually independent and isolated cases, and therefore cultural diffusion, cultural contact, culture clash or outright conquest—with their consequent borrowing, imitation, migrations etc.—invalidates the results of comparative studies’’ (Sztompka 1988, p. 213). Although several researchers have presented strategies for dealing with Galton’s problem for correlational studies of data archives (see Naroll, Michik, and Naroll 1980), the problem of cultural diffusion is often overlooked in many quantitative and qualitative cross-cultural studies.

Undoubtedly, ensuring conceptual equivalence and achieving valid measures are the most challenging methodological problems of cross-cultural research. Central to these problems is the wide variation in language and meaning systems across cultural groups. Anthropologists have attempted to address the problem of conceptual equivalence with the distinction between ‘‘emic’’ and ‘‘etic.’’ Emics refer to local (single culture) meaning, function and structure, while etics are culture-free (or at least operate in more than one culture) aspects of the world (Pike 1966). A major problem in cross-cultural analysis is the use of emic concepts of one culture to explain characteristics of another culture. In fact, many cross-cultural studies involve the use of ‘‘imposed etics,’’ that is Euro-Ameri- can emics that are ‘‘imposed blindly and even ethnocentrically on a set of phenomena which occur in other cultural systems’’ (Berry 1980, p. 12). A number of procedures have been developed to ensure emic-etic distinctions and to estimate the validity of such measures (Brislin 1980; Naroll, Michik, and Naroll 1980).

Addressing conceptual relevance in cross-cul- tural research does not, of course, ensure valid measures. All forms of data collection and analysis

are dependent on implicit theories of language and communication (Cicourel 1964). As social scientists have come to learn more about communicative systems within and across cultures, there has been a growing awareness that problems related to language in cross-cultural analysis are not easily resolved. There is also a recognition that these problems go beyond the accurate translation of measurement instruments (Brislin 1970; Grimshaw 1973), to the incorporation of findings from studies on communicative competence across cultural groups into cross-cultural research (Briggs 1986; Gumperz 1982).

THE FUTURE OF CROSS-CULTURAL

ANALYSIS

There is a solid basis for optimism regarding the future of cross-cultural analysis. Over the last twenty years there has been remarkable growth in international organizations and cooperation among international scholars in the social sciences. These developments have not only resulted in an increase in cross-cultural research, but also have led to necessary debates about the theoretical and methodological state of cross-cultural analysis (Øyen 1990; Kohn 1989).

Cooperation among international scholars in cross-cultural analysis has also contributed to the breaking down of disciplinary boundaries. In the area of childhood socialization and the sociology of childhood, for example, there have been a number of cross-cultural contributions to what can be termed ‘‘development in sociocultural context’’ by anthropologists (Heath 1983), psychologists (Rogoff 1990), sociologists (Corsaro 1997), and linguists (Ochs 1988). Developing interest in children and childhood in sociology has resulted in the establishment of a new research committee

(‘‘Sociology of Childhood’’) in the International

Sociological Association (ISA) and a new journal titled Childhood: A Global Journal of Child Research, as well as the publication of several international reports and edited volumes (see Qvortrup, Bardy,

Sgritta, and Wintersberger 1994). Less interdisciplinary, perhaps, but no less impressive, has been the degree of international cooperation that has developed around a number of other research committees of the ISA. The ISA Research Committee on Stratification, for instance, has had a

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long history of such collaboration. This has involved the development of a common agenda

(official and unofficial) and the pursuit of a common program of research by scholars around the globe (Ganzeboom, Treiman, and Ultee 1991). In addition to these developments, the growth of international data sets and their ready availability due to the new technologies such as the Internet are also grounds for optimism regarding crosscultural research.

Despite growing international and multi-disci- pline cooperation and recognition of the importance of comparative research, it is still fair to say that cross-cultural analysis remains at the periphery of American sociology and social psychology. Although there has been some reversal of the growing trend toward narrow specialization over the last ten years, such specialization is still apparent in the nature of publications and the training of graduate students in these disciplines. There is a clear need to instill a healthy skepticism regarding the cultural relativity of a great deal of theory and method in social psychology in future scholars.

Only then will future sociologists and social psychologists come to appreciate fully the potential of cross-cultural analysis.

REFERENCES

Alvazzi del Frate, Anna and Angela Patrignani 1995 ‘‘Women’s Victimisation in Developing Countries.’’

Issues and Reports (UNIRI) 5:1–16.

Armer, Michael 1973 ‘‘Methodological Problems and Possibilities in Comparative Research.’’ In M. Armer and A. Grimshaw, eds., Comparative Social Research: Methodological Problems and Strategies. New York: Wiley.

———, and Allen Grimshaw, (eds.) 1973 Comparative Social Research: Methodological Problems and Strategies. New York: Wiley.

Barry, Herbert 1980 ‘‘Description and Uses of the Human Relations Area Files.’’ In H. Triandis and J. Berry, eds., Handbook of Cross Cultural Methodology, Volume 2 Methodology. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Bendix, 1963 ‘‘Concepts and Generalizations in Comparative Sociological Studies.’’ American Sociological Review 28:532–539.

Berry, J. W. 1980 ‘‘Introduction to Methodology.’’ In H. Triandis and J. Berry, eds., Handbook of Cross Cultural Methodology. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

———, Y. H. Poortinga, and J. Pandey, (eds.) 1996

Handbook of Cross-Cultural Psychology: Theory and Method, 2nd edition. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Bertaux, Daniel 1990 ‘‘Oral History Approaches to an International Social Movement.’’ In E. Øyen, ed.,

Comparative Methodology: Theory and Practice in International Social Research. Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage.

Bollen, Kenneth A., Barbara Entwisle, and Arthur S. Alderson 1993 ‘‘Macrocomparative Research Methods.’’ Annual Review of Sociolology 19:321–351.

Bongaarts, John, and Susan Cotts Watkins 1996 ‘‘Social Interactions and Contemporary Fertility Transitions.’’

Population and Development Review 22:639–682.

Briggs, Charles 1986 Learning How to Ask. New York: Cambridge.

Brislin, Richard 1970 ‘‘Back-Translation for Cross-Cul- tural Research.’’ Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology

1:185–216.

——— 1980 ‘‘Translation and Content Analysis of Oral and Written Materials.’’ In H. Triandis and J. Berry, eds., Handbook of Cross Cultural Methodology. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Cicourel, Aaron 1964 Method and Measurement in Sociology. New York: Free Press.

Corsaro, William 1988 ‘‘Routines in the Peer Culture of American and Italian Nursery School Children.’’

Sociology of Education 61:1–14.

——— 1994 ‘‘Discussion, Debate, and Friendship: Peer Discourse in Nursery Schools in the U.S. and Italy.’’

Sociology of Education 67:1–26.

———, and David Heise 1990 ‘‘Event Structure Models From Ethnographic Data.’’ Sociological Methodology 20:1–57.

Elder, Joseph 1973 ‘‘Problems of Cross-Cultural Methodology: Instrumentation and Interviewing in India.’’ In M. Armer and A. Grimshaw, eds., Comparative Social Research: Methodological Problems and Strategies. New York: Wiley.

Form, William 1973 ‘‘Field Problems in Comparative Research: The Politics of Distrust.’’ In M. Armer and A. Grimshaw, eds., Comparative Social Research: Methodological Problems and Strategies. New York: Wiley.

Ganzeboom, Harry B. G., Donald J. Treiman, and Wout C. Ultee 1991 ‘‘Comparative Intergenerational Stratification Research: Three Generations and Beyond.’’

Annual Review of Sociology 17:277–302.

Geertz, Clifford 1973 The Interpretation of Cultures. New

York: Basic Books.

Goodenough, Ward 1980 ‘‘Ethnographic Field Techniques.’’ In H. Triandis and J. Berry, eds., Handbook of Cross Cultural Methodology. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

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ARTHUR S. ALDERSON

WILLIAM A. CORSARO

CROWDS AND RIOTS

Crowds are a ubiquitous feature of everyday life. People have long assembled collectively to observe, to celebrate, and to protest various happenings in their everyday lives, be they natural events, such as a solar eclipse, or the result of human contrivance, such as the introduction of machinery into the production process. The historical

record is replete with examples of crowds functioning as important textual markers, helping to shape and define a particular event, as well as strategic precipitants and carriers of the events themselves. The storming of the Bastille and the sit-ins and marches associated with the civil rights movement are examples of crowds functioning as both important markers and carriers of some larger historical happening. Not all crowds function so significantly, of course. Most are mere sideshows to the flow of history. Nonetheless, the collective assemblages or gatherings called crowds are ongoing features of the social world and, as a consequence, have long been the object of theorizing and inquiry, ranging from the psychologistic renderings of Gustav LeBon (1895) and Sigmund Freud (1921) to the more sociological accounts of Neil Smelser (1963) and Ralph Turner and Lewis Killian (1987) to the highly systematic and empirically grounded observations of Clark McPhail and his associates (1983, 1991).

Crowds have traditionally been analyzed as a variant of the broader category of social phenomena called collective behavior. Broadly conceived, collective behavior refers to group problem solving behavior that encompasses crowds, mass phenomena, issue-specific publics, and social movements. More narrowly, collective behavior refers to ‘‘two or more persons engaged in one or more behaviors (e.g., orientation, locomotion, gesticulation, tactile manipulation, and/or vocalization) that can be judged common or convergent on one or more dimensions (e.g., direction, velocity tempo, and/or substantive content)’’(McPhail and

Wohlstein 1983, pp. 580–581). Implicit in both conceptions is a continuum on which collective behavior can vary in terms of the extent to which its participants are in close proximity or diffused in time and space. Instances of collective behavior in which individuals are in close physical proximity, such that they can monitor one another by being visible to, or within earshot of, one another, are constitutive of crowds. Examples include protest demonstrations, victory celebrations, riots, and the dispersal processes associated with flight from burning buildings. In contrast are forms of collective behavior that occur among individuals who are not physically proximate but who still share a common focus of attention and engage in some parallel or common behaviors without developing the debate characteristic of the public or the

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