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hand, populations become stable when the future is secure, the infant mortality rate is low, social choices for women are expanding, and parents are not worried about who will support them in their old age.

How to effect the radical changes required to restore the proper ecological balance and preserve the biocultural integrity and diversity of the global ‘‘household,’’ but ‘‘without the most fantastic ‘bust’ of all time’’ (Ehrlich 1968, p. 169), is the formidable challenge and the urgent task facing humankind. This will involve a redirection of the vast, creative human energies away from a self-defeat- ing and ecodestructive expansionist and wasteful orientation, and their rechanneling into life-giving and life-promoting forms of human action and human social organization.

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LAKSHMI K. BHARADWAJ

in the assumption that humans are fundamentally egoistic and selfish, thereby requiring either a strong state to regulate them or, in a less pessimistic account, an institution like the market to guide their affairs toward an optimal result.

For sociologists, neither position became the dominant way of thinking about human nature; instead, the plasticity of human experience was emphasized. Durkheim (1973) wrote the most important defense of a pluralistic approach to the subject, one that remains unsurpassed to this day in its clarity of presentation. Human nature is dualistic, he argued, speaking to the needs of both body and soul, the sacred and the profane, the emotional and the cognitive, and other such dualities. We are, in short, what we make ourselves. This version of a flexible approach to human nature would come to characterize contemporary theorists such as Parsons, who spoke of ‘‘much discussed ‘plasticity’ of the human organism, its capacity to learn any one of a large number of alternative patterns of behavior instead of being bound by its generic constitution to a very limited range of alternatives’’ (1951, p. 32).

In current sociological debates, the plasticity of human nature is emphasized by the general term social construction. If one argues that we ought to speak of gender roles rather than sex roles—the former is recognized to be the product of how people arrange their cultural rules, whereas the latter is understood to be fixed biologically—one is making a case for plasticity (Epstein 1988). Indeed, given the importance of feminism in contemporary theory, which tends to argue that ‘‘nothing about the body, including women’s reproductive organs, determines univocally how social divisions will be shaped’’ (Scott 1988, p. 2), the strength of a plasticity approach to human nature is probably stronger than ever before.

HUMAN NATURE

Debates over the nature of human nature have characterized social theory since it emerged in the Renaissance. As Thomas Sowell has argued, these debates generally take two forms: the optimistic and the pessimistic (Sowell 1987). The former position, associated with Rousseau and anarchists such as William Goodwin, holds that humans are essentially good but are turned bad by the institutions of their society. The latter position is rooted

Current research in many areas of sociology is premised on a social construction approach. Work stimulated by ethnomethodology is one clear case. In contrast to a Chomskian understanding of language as originating in rules hard-wired in the brain, the tradition of conversation analysis examines how human beings in real conversation twist and shape their utterances to account for context and nuance (Schegloff and Sacks 1979; Scheff 1986). Moreover, since the language we use is a

reflection of the way we think, it is possible to argue that the mind itself is socially constructed, that the a priori nature of the way we think is relatively minimal (Coulter 1979). Accounts of sociological practice based on the assumption of plasticity do not end there. It has been argued that homosexuality is not driven by biological destiny but is a socially constructed phenomenon (Greenberg 1988). Morality, as well, can be understood as socially constructed (Wolfe 1989). Underlying a wide variety of approaches to sociology—from symbolic interactionism to social problems—is an underlying premise that human nature is not driven by any one thing.

The only dissent from a general consensus about human nature’s plasticity is rational choice theory. At least among economists who believe that economic methodologies can be used to study social institutions such as the family, there is a belief that ‘‘human behavior is not compartmentalized, sometimes based on maximizing, sometimes not, sometimes motivated by stable preferences, sometimes by volatile ones, sometimes resulting in an optimal accumulation, sometimes not’’ (Becker 1976, p. 14). Yet there are many versions of rational choice theory; at least one of them, that associated with Jon Elster, is committed to methodological individualism but is also willing to concede the existence of a ‘‘multiple self’’ (Elster 1986). It is far more common in contemporary sociology to speak of egoism and altruism as existing in some kind of unstable combination rather than giving the priority totally to one or the other (Etzioni 1988).

Arguments about human nature, in turn, are related to the philosophical anthropology that shaped so much social theory. It has been a consistent theme of the sociological enterprise to argue that humans are different from other species. From the emphasis on homo faber in Marx and Engels, through Weber’s notions about the advantages of culture, to Mead’s account of why dogs and other animals are incapable of exchanging significant symbols, humans have been understood to possess unique characteristics that determine the organization of their society. Twentieth-centu- ry theorists such as Arnold Gehlen or Helmuth Plessner carried forward this tradition and are increasingly translated and read (for an overview, see Honneth and Joas 1988). Even Niklas Luhmann,

whose work is heavily influenced by biology and cybernetics, can still claim that ‘‘the decisive advantage of human interaction over animal interaction stems from this elemental achievement of language’’ (1982, p. 72).

The most important shift in philosophical anthropology in recent years is a shift from an essentially materialist understanding of human capacities to an essentially mental one. Powers of interpretation and narrative, it has been argued, constitute the essential features of the human self (Taylor 1989). Just as an argument about the plasticity of human nature enables sociology to avoid reduction into psychological categories, an emphasis on the interpretive powers of humans prevents a reduction of sociology to sociobiology and other basically algorithmic ways of thinking about evolution.

As with the issue of plasticity, not all sociologists agree either that there are specific human characteristics or that, if there are, they ought to be understood as primarily mental and interpretive. Sociobiologists argue not only that humans are driven by their genetic structure more than they would like to believe but also that other animals also possess cultural skills. There is therefore no fundamental difference between human and nonhuman species, they are merely points along a continuum (Lumsden and Wilson 1981). Both sociologists and anthropologists, consequently, have argued for the use of sociobiological approaches in the social sciences (Lopreato 1984; Rindos 1986; Wozniak 1984), although there are also critics who question such an enterprise (Blute 1987).

In the 1990s, sociobiology, now often called evolutionary psychology, was something of a growth industry. Edward O. Wilson, who did so much to originate the field, sees the possibility of a unified approach to knowledge, one in which the laws of human interaction could eventually be deduced from the physical and the biological sciences (Wilson 1998). In the meantime, others influenced by evolutionary psychology have argued that cultural products such as language and mind can be understood through the laws of evolution (Blackmore 1999; Lynch 1996). Even such specific cultural products as novels and works of art are formed by processes of cultural selection, it has been argued (Taylor 1996). While still something of a minority point of view, trends such as these are premised on

the idea that the natural sciences, especially biology, offer a better model for understanding human societies than the sociological tradition as dervived from Durkheim, Weber, and Mead.

Another challenge to the anthropocentric view that social scientists have taken toward humans has arisen with cognitive science and artificial intelligence. Whereas classical sociological theory compared humans to other animal species, we can now compare them to machines. Computers, after all, process information just as human brains do, use language to communicate, and reason, and can, especially in new approaches to artificial intelligence called connectionist, learn from their mistakes. There are, consequently, some efforts to apply artificial intelligence to sociology just as there are efforts to use the insights of sociobiology (Gilbert and Heath 1986), although here, again, there are strong critical voices (Wolfe 1991; Woolger 1985). In the more recent work of Niklas Luhmann, as well as in the writings of some other theorists, emphasis is placed on information science, systems theory, even thermodynamics—all of which are approaches based on a denial that human systems require special ways of understanding that are different from other systems (Bailey 1990; Beniger 1986; Luhmann 1989).

In spite of efforts to develop sociological theory on the basis of algorithmic self-reproducing systems, it is unlikely that assumptions about the unique, interpretative, meaning-producing capacities of humans will be seriously challenged. It is the capacity to recognize the contexts in which messages are transmitted and thereby to interpret those messages that make human mental capacities distinct from any organism, whether natural or artificial, that is preprogrammed to follow explicit instructions. One reason humans are able to recognize contexts is precisely the plasticity of their mental capacities. The plastic theory of human nature, in short, overlaps with an emphasis on philosophical anthropology to produce an understanding of human behavior that does not so much follow already-existing rules so much as it alters and bends rules as it goes along.

Both understandings of human nature and accounts of specifically human capacities will be relevant to future efforts in sociological theory to reconcile micro and macro approaches. Although there has been a good deal of effort to establish a

micro–macro link (Alexander et al. 1987), the more interesting question may turn out not to be not whether it can be done but whether (and how) it ought to be done. Systems theory and the information sciences provide a relatively easy way to make a link between parts and wholes: Each part is understood to have as little autonomy as possible, so that the system as a whole can function autonomously with respect to other systems. The micro, like a bit of information in a computer program, would be structured to be as dumb as possible so that the macro system itself can be intelligent. Nonhuman enterprises—computers on the one hand and the structure of DNA in other animal species on the other—show that there is a major bridge between the macro and the micro. But the cost of constructing that bridge is the denial of the autonomy of the parts, a high cost for humans to pay.

But the conception of human beings as preprogrammed rule followers is not the only way to conceptualize micro sociological processes. The traditions of ethnomethodology and symbolic interactionism, which are more compatible with notions emphasizing the plasticity of human nature, imagine the human parts of any social system as engaged in a constant process of renegotiating the rules that govern the system. When the micro is understood as plastic, the macro can be understood as capable of existing even in imperfect, entropy-producing states of disorder. Indeed, for human systems, as opposed to those of machines and other species, disorder is the norm, integration the exception. If there is going to be a micro– macro link in sociology, it may well come about not by denying human plasticity and uniqueness, but rather by accounting for the particular and special property humans possess of having no fixed nature but rather a repertoire of social practices that in turn make human society different form any other kind of system.

(SEE ALSO: Evolution: Biological, Social, Cultural; Intelligence; Sex Differences)

REFERENCES

Alexander, Jeffrey C., Bernhard Giesen, Richard Munch, and Neil J. Smelser 1987 The Macro–Micro Link. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Bailey, Kenneth D. 1990 Social Entropy Theory. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Becker, Gary 1976 The Economic Approach to Human Behavior. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Beniger, James R. 1986 The Control Revolution: Technological and Economic Origins of the Information Society. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Blackmore, Susan 1999 The Meme Machine. Oxford:

Oxford University Press.

Blute, Marion 1987 ‘‘Biologists on Sociocultural Evolution: A Critical Analysis.’’ Sociological Theory 5:185–193.

Coulter, Jeff 1979 The Social Construction of Mind. Lon-

don: Macmillan.

Durkheim, Emile 1973 ‘‘The Dualism of Human Nature and Its Social Conditions.’’ In Robert N. Bellah, ed.,

Emile Durkheim on Morality and Society: Selected Writings. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Elster, Jon, ed. 1986 The Multiple Self. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.

Epstein, Cynthia 1988 Deceptive Distinctions: Sex, Gender, and the Social Order. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.

Etzioni, Amitai 1988 The Moral Dimension. New York:

Free Press.

Gilbert, C. Nigel, and Christian Heath, eds. 1986 Social Action and Artificial Intelligence: Surrey Conferences on Sociological Theory and Method 3. Aldershot, U.K.: Gower.

Greenberg, David 1988 The Construction of Homosexuality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Honneth, Axel, and Hans Joas 1988 Social Action and Human Nature. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.

Scheff, Thomas J. 1986 ‘‘Micro-Linguistics and Social Structure: A Theory of Social Action.’’ Sociological Theory 4:71–83.

Schegloff, Emmanuel, and Harvey Sacks 1979 ‘‘Opening Up Closings.’’ In Ray Turner, ed., Ethnomethodology: Selected Readings. Baltimore: Penguin.

Scott, Joan Wallach 1988 Gender and the Politics of History. New York: Columbia University Press.

Sowell, Thomas 1987 A Conflict of Visions. New York:

William Morrow.

Taylor, Charles 1989 Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Taylor, Gary 1996 Cultural Selection: Why Some Achievements Survive the Test of Time—and Others Don’t. New York: Basic Books.

Wilson, Edward O. 1998 Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. New York: Knopf.

Wolfe, Alan 1989 Whose Keeper?: Social Science and Moral Obligation. Berkeley: University of California Press.

——— 1991 ‘‘Mind, Self, Society, and Computer: Artificial Intelligence and the Sociology of Mind.’’ American Journal of Sociology 96:1073–1096.

Woolger, Steve 1985 ‘‘Why Not a Sociology of Machines?: The Case of Sociology and Artificial Intelligence.’’ Sociology 19:557–572.

Wozniak, Paul R. 1984 ‘‘Making Sociobiological Sense out of Sociology.’’ Sociological Quarterly 25:191–204.

ALAN WOLFE

Lopreato, Joseph 1984 Human Nature and Biocultural Evolution. Boston: Allen and Unwin.

Luhmann, Niklas 1982 The Differentiation of Society, trans. Stephen Holmes and Charles Larmore. New York: Columbia University Press.

——— 1989 Ecological Communication, trans. John Bednarz. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Lumsden, Charles J., and Edward O. Wilson 1981 Genes, Mind, and Culture: The Coevolutionary Process. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Lynch, Aaron 1996 Thought Contagion: How Beliefs Spread Throughout Society. New York: Basic Books.

Parsons, Talcott 1951 The Social System. New York:

Free Press.

Rindos, David 1986 ‘‘The Evolution of the Capacity for Culture: Sociobiology, Structuralism, and Cultural Selectiveness.’’ Current Anthropology 27:315–332.

HUMAN RIGHTS, CHILDREN’S RIGHTS, AND DEMOCRACY

Sociology has existed in universities and as a research and scholarly profession for more than a century, but it has serious problems in justifying its existence in terms of demonstrating that the knowledge it produces is useful. In its early stages of development, sociology was often coupled with social work or with other fields such as anthropology, political science, and economics. However, as universities grew, the social and behavioral science fields became differentiated, and in the post– World War II period sociology not only grew but flourished and developed a major identity in the universities. However, more important, within the field applied interests were often disparaged. In

large part, fields such as social work, family studies, industrial relations, systems analysis, administration, criminology, penology, and others became independent major entities as sociologists denigrated the notion of being involved in applied research and practice. In fact, in the last decades of the twentieth century sociologists appear more often to be seen as possible peripheral members in social research rather than the organizers of major social research, which is frequently motivated by practical, applied considerations.

Still, it is occasionally noted that sociology has been useful, but it is frequently and necessarily a quite modest statement. For example, it is often pointed out that sociology led much of the development and diffusion of statistical and other analytic procedures in the social sciences. Sociology also led the way in developing procedures for systematic data collection, which it has not only shared with other academic disciplines but which has become a part of common daily life, such as polling, investigative reporting, and so on. And the interest in social problems, consistent but peripheral for sociology over the years, has led to some involvement in race and ethnic relations, women’s rights, and human rights more generally. Incidentally, while sociology has failed to move in the direction of applied science, psychology has virtually exploded in that direction, leading to concern over the years that that discipline might detach its academic and research interests from the applied professional and clinical aspects. Indeed, the field of psychology has moved into areas of application neglected by sociology, such as family relations, group counseling and therapy, and environmental and ecological studies; other sister disciplines, such as anthropology, economics, and political science have made a similar move in order to increase the scope of development of applied interests.

THE RELEVANCE OF SOCIOLOGY

It is not unreasonable to raise the question: If sociology is presumed to be adding to the knowledge of the world, how can it be useful? This question has been raised throughout the history of the discipline, but that does not mean it has gotten serious attention. As a recent positive example, note the work of Turner (1998) and the subsequent comments on the topic. Another recent

consideration of ‘‘The Value of Sociology’’ that provides perspective is the article by Snow (1999), but to some extent much of the discussion about the value of sociology is abstract, albeit broader than some earlier particularistic orientations, which took the view that if sociology was not valuable, it would not be in the college or university curriculum. Two sentences from the abstract of Turner’s article (p.243) provide an orientation to answering the question: ‘‘It is argued that sociological theory and its applications to real world problems should constitute the core of the discipline . . . . Sociology should redefine and reorient its practice to create an engineering discipline where abstract theoretical principles are boiled down to rules of thumb and used to build or tear down social structures’’ (p. 243). This is a more direct statement of the idea that sociology should be useful.

Part of the reason for the hesitancy of sociologists to become interested in applied research is the way the field was defined—as ‘‘the science of society.’’ Scientists study and analyze their subject matter, but they do not determine what is right and proper for society. The task of determining laws, custom, and mores is not seen by them as being their task, and indeed there is commonly great concern that the values of social scientists should not influence their research and scholarly work. Thus, applied research in sociology has often been defined as examining what is going on in a social situation, in order to determine the underlying social forces at work. If a social policy is involved, the aim of the research may be to see if it is working; with the introduction of a new social policy, research is most typically aimed at seeing whether stated objectives can be confirmed. Much of the interest in applied research in the social sciences became associated with the concept of ‘‘evaluation research,’’ particularly in the post– World War II period, with stimulus from sociologists such as Donald Young and Leonard S. Cottrell, Jr., at Russell Sage Foundation. However, stimulus for evaluation research occurred in other ways as well, such as through laboratories and research centers in educational psychology, social psychology, and other behavioral and social sciences, with research often being supported by such government agencies as the National Institute of Mental Health. These thrusts led to two important developments for the social and behavioral sciences.

The first was the growth of methodological sophistication, often identified with the classic codifying work on quasi-experimental research design by Campbell and Stanley (1963) and Cook and Campbell (1979). The second was the notion that evaluation research could be of two types: conventional research, in which the disinterested researcher merely seeks to describe what happens when policy changes are introduced, and ‘‘formative’’ research, wherein the social scientist is not only involved in the evaluation of the consequences of policy changes but is a consultant in the process of identifying the changes needed to accomplish the goals of proposed policy, often with sequential evaluations and changes when the desired results do not materialize with the initial changes.

Throughout this history of social science involvement in applied research, evaluations have often produced negative (i.e., no change) findings, and in some cases even retrogression or reversal on the intended change direction and/or unintended consequences. But, independently of all these results, it can be asked whether the presumed knowledge of sociology and the social sciences is being used effectively, and the answer has been that this does not appear to be the case, at least in the context of one type of criticism. This critique has been advanced many times in different ways, and in the context of this article it will be phrased as not satisfying options of ‘‘proactive sociology’’ (see Borgatta 1991, 1994, 1996). In particular, do sociologists evaluate the social and behavioral structures that exist in society and put them in a comparative perspective? Do sociologists examine the values that exist and describe them objectively, presumably correctly interpreting what they are? Do sociologists examine stated values and see how well social structures that exist implement the identified values? Before proceeding to further consideration of these questions, consider one relevant case.

DEMOCRACY AND INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS

While no form of government can effectively be defined as maximizing the provision of human rights and children’s rights, there is a strong basis for arguing that democratic forms are more likely to do so in the long run than other governmental forms. There are a fair number of nations that at this juncture appear to be reasonably well oriented

to protecting human and children’s rights, but attention to a little bit of history should keep one from becoming complaisant about the prospect. For example, in the United States slavery existed until the end of the Civil War, less than a century and a half ago. Until the amendments that followed the Civil War, if one read the Constitution of the United States one might have thought women were entitled to the same rights as men, but they were not. The assumption that women were not entitled to the same rights as men was so ingrained in the culture that it was not even necessary that it be made explicit. It was a world in which men governed; women did not even get the right to vote until half a century after the end of the Civil War. And the history of the expansion of the United States and its relationship with Mexico and with the American Indians may give pause to those who think that simply having a government that is labeled a democracy is one in which ‘‘social justice’’ writ small and large is to be expected.

In a democracy the de facto rules do not necessarily provide equal protection under the law for all persons, and the majority or even a smaller segment of society may define the rules. In more recent times, there have been examples of restrictive abuse in the United States, as in the passing of the constitutional amendment that established ‘‘prohibition’’ of alcohol. Aside from attempting to restrict the choice behavior of citizens, the amendment created the era of gangsters and racketeers. Although that constitutional amendment was repealed, there remain numerous laws prohibiting access to certain substances among the most obvious of which are the laws restricting ‘‘drugs.’’ More than the outlawing of alcohol during prohibition, the drug laws have created the circumstances leading to the incarceration of the overwhelming majority of the roughly 1.5 million people in the U.S. prison system today. But more generally, in a democracy, all kinds of laws may be passed that restrict individual rights. Germany’s progression from a democratic government to Hitler’s dictatorship, although an extreme case, should never be forgotten. Similarly, the cases in which liberal or ‘‘socialist’’ regimes have been overthrown with the help of the great American Democracy, only to be followed by totalitarian regimes, may be seen as disturbing.

To continue with the example of the United States, the McCarthy period in the 1950s is an

example of rampant political witch hunts. But consider even the more recent partisan political situation, also termed a witch hunt by some, involving a person as powerful as the president of the United States. A Republican majority in the House of Representatives voted to impeach the president, sending two articles of impeachment to the Senate, which was to ‘‘try’’ the president to determine his guilt or innocence, with a guilty finding by two-thirds of the Senate requiring removal from office. Here we will not discuss the constitutional issues involved, or the moral and legal failings of the president in the matter, but only pay analytical attention to the strange articles of impeachment to show how subtly the power of a majority can create a situation that counters ‘‘fairness’’ and fails to protect even the rights of a president (see Congressional Record, December 19,1998).

Two articles of impeachment were passed in the House of Representatives by an essentially partisan vote of the Republican majority; here attention will be given only to the question of what is minimally necessary to arrive at a guilty verdict by twothirds, or 67, of the 100 senators. Article I states in part: ‘‘Contrary to that oath, William Jefferson Clinton willfully provided perjurious, false and misleading testimony to the grand jury concerning one or more of the following . . . .’’ Then four alleged ‘‘testimonies’’ were noted. Now, any sociologist or statistician should be able to analyze the charge and ask the question, ‘‘What would the minimum guilt attribution be to create a majority of 67 senators voting guilty?’’ Simple, since only one alleged testimony is required to judge the president guilty, if 16 senators voted guilty on the first testimony and 17 different (nonoverlapping) senators voted guilty on each of the three other testimonies, the majority of 67 would be created to judge the president guilty of Article I. Thus, the extraordinary situation exists that theoretically the president could be judged guilty by no more than 17 senators on any of the four testimonies, but he could be judged guilty by 67 senators because of the way the question was formulated! What a strange way for a democracy to operate. Of course, the situation is even more ridiculous with regard to Article II, which is also defined in the ‘‘one or more’’ fashion, but involves seven ‘‘acts,’’ leading to the situation that theoretically the minimum number of senators needed (nonoverlapping) is 9 for three ‘‘acts’’

and 10 for each of the other four to get a cumulative majority of 67 senators voting guilty. Thus, it can be seen how the Republican congressmen were able to structure a vote in any way they wished, since they constituted the majority in the House of Representatives. It has been said many times that an effective democracy requires constant attention to how power is used and how the rights of all individuals, even of the president, are protected.

Democracy is a common topic of study, and topics relevant to issues of human rights are implicit in many presentations, as, for example, those in a special issue of International Sociology (‘‘Democratic Culture,’’ 1999).

HUMAN RIGHTS AND CHILDREN’S

RIGHTS

With regard to human rights and children’s rights, attention must be given to providing, as much as possible, for the protection for all persons, and presumably this can happen most dependably in a democracy. However, some things need to be emphasized. Special rights can be legislated for particular individuals or groups, and because they are often accepted as reasonable, this may lead to some abuses and strange situations. For example, it has been repeatedly stated that with regard to human rights, the attribution of status on an inherited basis does not correspond to a concept of equal opportunity and equal treatment. If this is the case, then how do equal opportunity and equal treatment operate with regard to other aspects of inheritance? If a parent is rich, owning $70 billion of assets, the child could inherit roughly $30 billion in the United States under current law. If the parent is poor, the child may not inherit anything. Further, in being raised in the rich family, the child may have extraordinary forms of support and access to resources that the poor child does not have. The capitalist system may provide the possibility of upward mobility in a democracy, but considering the advantages of the wealthy, the playing fields for the rich and the poor are not equal. Thus, even if the state mandates a strong support system for all children, human rights and children’s rights are still subject to a relative notion of the importance of inherited status. Question: How much attention do sociologists give to this kind of analysis and identification of the values involved? The sociologist, of course,

should be able to note that the general system even in a democracy can provide a very strong support of inherited status. The acceptance of inherited status is still rampant in much of the world, beginning with any nation in which there is a notion of royalty, which of course includes Great Britain and some other developed nations that are classed as democracies.

This article began by noting that sociologists and other social scientists should become more concerned with the possibility of proactive involvement in social change. As regards the above example, a major concern of the sociologist would be not only to consider and analyze the consequences of existing social policy, but also to realistically represent the value system that presumably underlies the social policy. As has been implicit thus far, social policy often does not correspond to the values that are espoused. There is reason for concern in being involved in this proactive orientation, since often values are not consistently aligned and may conflict. Most dramatically, a traditional view of the family may conflict with the notion that children are due equal opportunity and access to resources in society, the provision of which necessarily becomes a community or state function. The tradition of parental ‘‘ownership’’ of children simply may conflict with providing children with equal access to the resources that exist in the society. Thus, the analysis of values becomes a critical area for sociological research. Beyond this, if there is a thrust for moving toward ‘‘universal’’ values regarding human and children’s rights, then in the proactive orientation sociologists and other social scientists who are ostensibly knowledgeable about how social structures operate should be able to model and propose social structures in order to implement these values.

HUMAN RIGHTS

Human rights, or the rights and privileges that every person should expect and receive in a just or ‘‘good’’ society, have been a concern of philosophers through the ages, and commonly this interest has been reassociated with such concepts as ‘‘social justice.’’ Although this philosophical topic has also been addressed in religious and political codes and documents, the first really broad and broadly supported international statement on the topic is

to be found in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1949), which was approved by the U.N. General Assembly on 10 December 1948. Sociologists might give this document critical attention. Are the rights that are noted consistent with each other; if not, what are the inconsistencies and how might they be resolved? Thus, the study of implicit values becomes a vital area for sociologists. Questions that become obvious include questions about the priorities of the values. The Universal Declaration begins with a preamble that states: ‘‘Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world . . .’’ It goes on to elaborate on these rights and then states: ‘‘The General Assembly proclaims this Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction.’’ There followed thirty articles that can be summarized as follows:

1.‘‘All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights . . .’’

2.All are entitled ‘‘. . . without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status . . .’’

3.‘‘Everyone has the right to life, liberty and the security of person.’’

4.‘‘No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.’’

5.‘‘No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.’’

6.‘‘Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.’’

7.‘‘All are equal before the law and . . .

equal protection before the law . . . .’’