e to meet the problem of
sickness; an investigation of the police force; a study of attitudes
toward war; a survey of the contacts of racial groups; an investigation
for the purpose of improving the technique of workers in a social
agency; a study of the experiments in self-government among prisoners in
penal institutions.
32. Is the description of great cities as "social laboratories" metaphor
or fact?
33. What do you understand by the statement: Sociology will become an
experimental science as soon as it can state its problems in such a way
that the results in one instance show what can be done in another?
34. What would be the effect upon political life if sociology were able
to predict with some precision the effects of political action, for
example, the effect of prohibition?
35. Would you favor turning over the government to control of experts as
soon as sociology became a positive science? Explain.
36. How far may the politician who makes a profession of controlling
elections be regarded as a practicing sociologist?
37. What is the distinction between sociology as an art and as a
science?
38. Distinguish between research and investigation as the terms are used
in the text.
39. What illustrations in American society occur to you of the (a)
autocratic and (b) democratic methods of social change?
40. "All social problems turn out finally to be problems of group life."
Are there any exceptions?
41. Select twelve groups at random and enter under the heads in the
classification of social groups. What groups are difficult to classify?
42. Study the organization and structure of one of the foregoing groups
in terms of (a) statistical facts about it; (b) its institutional
aspect; (c) its heritages; and (d) its collective opinion.
43. "All progress implies a certain amount of disorganization." Explain.
44. What do you understand to be the differences between the various
social processes: (a) historical, (b) cultural, (c) economic,
(d) political?
45. What is the significance of the relative diameters of the areas of
the cultural, political, and economic processes?
46. "The person is an individual who has status." Does an animal have
status?
47. "In a given group the status of every member is determined by his
relation to every other member of that group." Give an illustration.
48. Why are the problems of the person, problems of the group as well?
49. What does the organization of the
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