Man and His Work: Conflict and Change. by George RitzerReview by: Edgar W. MillsSocial Forces, Vol. 53, No. 1 (Sep., 1974), pp. 134-135Published by: Oxford University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2576855 .

Accessed: 14/06/2014 12:02

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

Oxford University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Social Forces.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 62.122.79.21 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 12:02:56 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

134 / SOCIAL FORCES / vol. 53:1, sept. 1974

THE ILLUSION OF EQUALITY: THE EFFECT OF

EDUCATION ON OPPORTUNITY, INEQUALITY,

AND SOCIAL CONFLICT. By Murray Milner, Jr. San Francisco: Jossey-Boss, 1972. 172 pp. $8.50.

Reviewer: WILLIAM H. SEWELL, University of Wisconsin

The thesis of this book is that the expansion of education in the United States has not increased equality of opportunity and that preoccupation with equality of opportunity is the source of many current social problems and conflicts in American society. The author does not deny that there has been great expansion of educational opportunity and that this has resulted in raising the general level of education of the adult population but thinks that this has resulted in status inflation (e.g., since bachelor's degrees are so common now their holders have no more status than did high school graduates a generation before). He further believes that status inflation has led inevitably to weariness and frustration on the part of its victims and has been a major factor in the urban riots and campus unrest of the past decade. No new evi- dence of any kind is offered to support any of these claims but effective use of existing data on social class and educational aspirations and achieve- ments is made to support the assertion that exist- ing programs for reducing educational inequality leave much to be desired. No empirical evidence is presented to show that status inflation exists as a social-psychological phenomenon or that it is the source of many current social problems. The book is essentially a polemic, not a detached study of the evidence. It comes up with the not surpris- ing conclusion that if we wish to reduce economic inequality in the United States we had better do it through taxation and other economic programs that will directly increase the income of the poor and decrease the income of the rich, rather than by means of such indirect and inefficient methods as increased opportunities for the poor to attend institutions of higher education.

MAN AND HIS WORK: CONFLICT AND CHANGE.

By George Ritzer. New York: Appleton- Century-Crofts, 1972. 362 pp. $12.95.

Reviewer: EDGAR W. MILLS, St. John's Univer- sity

The difference between the study of work and the sociology of occupations could scarcely be better illustrated than by comparing the Ritzer text to currently used texts in occupations such as Hall, Krause, Caplow, etc. These others give central place to the relationship between occupa-

tional structures and other institutions of society, to the characteristics of the workforce and its changes over time, and to social stratification and mobility in occupations. Ritzer explicitly excludes all of these topics, stating that his purpose is "to review the ethnographic studies of occupations and. . . to examine carefully the internal processes in occupational life."

It seems to me he has thus defined his book as a supplementary volume; at least I would find it difficult to rely upon it as a primary text to provide either the structure or the substantive meat of a course in sociology of occupations. Both teachers and students come equipped with the very microanalytic biases Ritzer tends to reinforce, and while his book offers good research summaries about specific occupations at all levels, it fails to push the student toward a more balanced under- standing of the macrostructures and processes by which those occupations are interrelated with each other and the rest of society.

Chapter 1 introduces the conceptual framework of the book: five occupational levels, to be exam- ined with special attention to processes of conflict and social change in each, noting also the pat- terning of careers and the current status of blacks and women in each occupational level. In it the author traces his own dependence on Hughes and the Chicago school, offers useful lists of types of occupational conflict and of relevant social change, and shows immediately that this is essentially a summarizing rather than a conceptualizing book.

Chapters 2 through 6 deal in order with the professions, with managers, officials and propri- etors, with middle-level occupations, with low- status occupations, and with "deviant occupations and occupational deviance." Although each chap- ter is well written and rich in detail, the chapter on professions is, as usual, the most thorough.

The final chapter presents 73 "testable proposi- tions about occupational life" which do provide a useful reduction of the mass of data. The chapter closes with twelve pages summarizing four theo- retical perspectives (functional, conflict, exchange, and symbolic interactionist theory), a superficial tour de force which struck me as "too little, too late" to be useful. Each chapter concludes with a section on females and blacks (incidentally assum- ing that blacks are male).

Although Ritzer has given us an acceptable supplementary text, the book seems internally in- consistent in various ways. Although Ritzer singles out women, as if greatly concerned with their occupational problems, he grossly maintains generic usage of male nouns and pronouns as if unaware of the powerful reinforcer effects of such usage upon occupational stereotypes of women. ("Whites and their Work" would not have been a good book title either.) He eschews any discussion of occupa- tional stratification, yet structures his book by status levels which he never defines. Identifying himself as a conflict theorist, he writes and thinks like a functionalist, treats conflict almost entirely

This content downloaded from 62.122.79.21 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 12:02:56 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Book Reviews / 135

as a dependent variable to be explained, and offers little theory except as illustrative. Perhaps my own biases are running away with this review, but Ritzer's stated viewpoint seems to run counter to his underlying habits and convictions, leaving the reader confused about the meaning of Man and his Work.

PREVENTIVE HEALTH CARE FOR ADULTS. By Rodney M. Coe and Henry P. Brehm. New Haven: College & University Press, 1972. 159 pp. $6.00.

U.S. HEALTH CARE: WHAT'S WRONG AND WHAT'S

RIGHT. By Stephen P. Strickland. New York; Universe Books, 1972. 127 pp. Cloth, $6.50; paper, $2.45.

Reviewer: MARK LEFTON, Case Western Re- serve University

While there might be some disagreement as to the precise nature of the "crisis" which many view as characterizing the nation's health care delivery systems, there are few who would disagree regard- ing the scope and complexity of those systems and just how we ought to go about understanding them, let alone modifying them. This is not to say that we know little about medical and health matters-this is rather to suggest that we are some- times quick to regard as fact that which remains presumptive and to seek alternatives before the returns 'are in and assessed adequately. For ex- ample, a view which charges that the traditional fee-for-service is outmoded and no longer serves as a viable method of payment for services received and ought to be replaced by prepayment plans totally, simply ignores the efficacy of such prac- tices under certain conditions and situations. In short, newness does not always beget betterment. However, this is not to say that changes do not occur nor that changes ought not to take place- indeed, a good deal of the difficulty confronting the medical establishment in its effort to soul search and meet the challenges of today is due to several profound changes which have characterized the post-World War II era and which we are just beginning to fathom. In a very real sense the books under review point to and elaborate two rather significant changes which have taken place in the medical arena over the last two decades and which, although noticed by many, have not yet had their official day in court nor, hence, their con- sequences for rational reaction fully realized as yet.

The first of these, by Rodney Coe and Henry Brehm, reports a study of medical practice and is essentially concerned with describing and analyz- ing preventive health care services provided by practitioners to adult patients. The findings are

based on interviews with a random sample of 1,591 general practitioners and internists and have to do with (1) actual services provided; (2) why the services were given; (3) physicians' definitions of and orientation to preventive medicine. The study is interesting and highly innovative in that it focuses on an aspect of medical care which we know little about but which is bound to increase in significance in the years ahead-namely, the concept of health maintenance as a newly defined objective of medical management. Coe and Brehm argue, for example, that health maintenance must rely on assumptions and behavioral requirements that are clearly different from those traditionally espoused and expected-that is, among other things, "both doctors and patients tend to view their interaction in terms of the acute diseases and, consequently, the potential for disappointment and dissatisfactions is greatly increased" when chronic illness is at issue. In short, management and con- trol become salient goals instead of cure, and the implications for patient and physician expectations regarding treatment, periodic assessments and the gathering of base line data, and adjustments to the cycles of a given chronic disease are indicated as extremely important areas for further investigation. The book clearly and succinctly describes the results based on the interviews noted. These have to do essentially with showing variations in pre- ventive health care services provided by physicians and in the rationale for providing them; the rela- tion between such services and orientation toward preventive medicine and attitudes toward aging adults; and the extent to which the age of the physician and his specialty influence both orienta- tions toward the provision of preventive health care services. While such data suffer from the usual dilemmas of survey research, the authors have taken perceptive measure of their results and have perfornied a most useful service in high- lighting a very important medical and sociopsy- chological problem.

The second book under review, U.S. Health Care, lacks the conceptual impact of the Coe and Brehm monograph. Strickland's book is largely a descriptive account of the attitudes of a large-scale cross-sectional sample of the U.S. population drawn and interviewed by the Gallup Organization. Similarly, a stratified national sample of 1,000 physicians was interviewed regarding a number of issues deemed relevant to the so-called medical care "crisis." This rather slim volume reports the findings of the interview efforts and these have to do largely with comparing and contrasting the public and the physician with respect to (1) iden- tifying the critical problems of health care de- livery; (2) relative confidence in the system as it exists and as it has been experienced; (3) differen- tial perceptions of the role the federal govern- ment should play in solving medical problems. There are few surprises-most view the system as having severe problems and there is a general

This content downloaded from 62.122.79.21 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 12:02:56 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions