The Last Half-Century: Societal Change and Politics in America

by Morris Janowitz

Overview

The Last Half-Century represents the culmination of a lifetime of scholarship by Morris Janowitz. In this comprehensive and systematic analysis of the major trends in American society during the past fifty years, he probes the weakening of popular party affiliations and the increased inability of elected representatives to rule. Centering his work on the crucial concept of social control, Janowitz orders and assesses a vast amount of empirical research to clarify the failure of basic social institutions to resolve our chronic conflicts.

For Janowitz, social control denotes a society's capacity to regulate itself within a moral framework that transcends simple self-interest. He poses urgent questions: Why has social control been so drastically weakened in our advanced industrial society? And what strategies can we use to strengthen it again?

The expanation rests in part on the changes in social structure which make it more and more complicated for citizens to calculate their political self-interest. At the same time, complex economic and defense problems also strain an already overburdened legislative system, making effective, responsive political rule increasingly difficult.

Janowitz concludes by assessing the response of the social sciences to the pressing problem of social control and asserts that new forms of citizen participation in the government must be found.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780226393063
Publisher:	University of Chicago Press
Publication date:	06/01/1979
Pages:	598
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Morris Janowitz is the Lawrence A. Kimpton Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Sociology and the College at the University of Chicago. His most recent books include The Reconstruction of Patriotism: Education for Civic Consciousness, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

Table of Contents

List of Tables
Preface
I. Frame of Reference
1. Sociological Objectives
2. The Idea of Social Control
3. The Logic of Systemic Analysis
II. Master Trends, 1920-1976
4. Political Participation: Emergence of Weak Regimes
5. Social Stratification: Occupation and Welfare
6. Military Participation and Total War
III. The System of Social Organization
7. Bureaucratic Institutions: The Hierarchical Dimension
8. Residential Community: The Geographical Dimension
9. Societal Socialization: Mass Persuasion
10. Societal Socialization: Legitimate Coercion
IV. Rationality, Institution Building, and Social Control
11. The Management of Interpersonal Relations
12. Experiments in Community Participation
13. Political Elites and Social Control
14. Epilogue
Author Index
Analytic and Subject Index