Encyclopedia of SociologyVol._4

The adoption of young girls for domestic service is socially accepted, and the government does little to discourage the practice

Table 2, continued

Some slavery and slavery-like practices in India, Benin, Mauritania, Morocco, and Pakistan are supported by local customs and traditions that have long histories (Table 2). Mauritania and India have attempted to eliminate these practices, whereas other states are more reluctant or unable to act decisively. Debt bondage is widespread in the rural areas of India, but involuntary servitude has been adapted to the economic opportunities provided

by the operation of global markets. Just as European demand for sugar and coffee drove the Atlantic slave trade in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, employers of servile labor in poor countries find opportunities to supply consumer demands for cheap goods in economically advanced countries. For example, India, Pakistan, and Nepal employed as many as one million servile child workers in the hand-knotted carpet industry

Carpet, fish, glass and brick industries; agriculture; construction industry; prostitution

Agriculture; military service

Agriculture; domestic service; concubines; trafficking in slaves; military service

Prostitution, especially in response to tourists’ demand; agriculture

Domestic servants

Agriculture; domestic service; concubines; soldiers

Forced labor is specifically prohibited by law

Civil war has eliminated any effective governmental system for the protection of human rights

Law prohibits forced or compulsory labor, but civil war has eliminated effective protection of human rights in many areas

Constitution prohibits forced labor but does not protect children

No law addresses forced or compulsory labor by adults or children

Prohibited by law

Bonded labor is widespread; landlords held 4,500 bonded laborers in one region; poor parents traditionally sell children to rich landlords as permanent bond servants in exchange for money or land; significant numbers of women and children are forced to work as prostitutes.

Widespread vulnerability to forced labor in the service of warlords; in contrast to previous years, there were no reports of the use of forced labor by multinational fruit export firms

Widespread use of slavery and forced labor by government troops and their allies; government forces and insurgents forcibly conscript children; international religious organizations paid $50 each to purchase the freedom of slaves captured by raiding parties (Finnigan 1999)

Forced prostitution is often protected by government officials who profit from it; child prostitutes number 20,000 to 40,000.

International trafficking in children, especially girls, for use as indentured servants or slaves; the government attempts to suppress the practice.

Government forces were too weak to defend rights of citizens; an insurgent militia group abducted 3000 Ugandan children and forced them to become soldiers or sexual slaves

Table 2, continued

in 1994 (United States Department of Labor 1995). The United States imported $329 million worth of hand-knotted carpets in 1996, a large proportion of which were produced in those countries (United States Department of Labor 1997). Children in India have been kidnapped and transported from their villages to face years of forced labor in the

carpet industry. Forced child labor is characterized by long hours, threats of violence, dangerous conditions, little or no pay, and poor or nonexistent health care (United States Department of Labor 1994, 1998; Anti-Slavery International 1999b). Other commercial products produced by bonded and forced child workers for export are brassware,

silk cloth and silk garments, and stone and glass products (United States Department of Labor 1997).

Thailand, Nepal, Indonesia, and Cambodia are examples of weak states or states crippled by corruption that facilitate the persistence of forced labor and forced sexual prostitution. The flourishing Asian sex trade involves the transport of women and children across borders to work in brothels for foreign and domestic customers. Victims are lured by false promises of decent employment, kidnapped or sold by family members, or reduced to debt bondage by poverty. In Thailand, debt bondage sometimes continues from generation to generation as a result of very low wages, high interest charges, and fraudulent debts that cannot be repaid (U.S. Department of Labor 1994, 1996, 1998). Because of the spread of AIDS, brothel customers increasingly prefer very young girls who are supposedly disease-free. Consequently, brothel owners purchase or kidnap young girls from the surrounding countries to supply the demand. Girls from Burma, Cambodia, China, Laos, and Vietnam can be found in the brothels of Thailand (United States Department of Labor 1995).

The Asian sex trade is huge. UNICEF estimates that 100,000 child prostitutes are employed in Thailand alone, but the number could be more than 200,000 (U.S. Department of Labor 1995). Patterns vary from country to country, but the brothels typically are patronized by local customers and to a lesser extent by foreigners, including tourists, businessmen, and military personnel from the United States and Europe. Travel agencies arrange sex tours that include accommodations and a choice of escorts (United States Department of Labor 1995, 1996). As is the case with many handmade and manufactured products, the Asian sex trade and the exploitation of servile workers are intimately connected to the global economy.

In contrast to Britain’s use of the navy to suppress the Atlantic slave trade in the nineteenth century, current international efforts to suppress slavery and involuntary servitude are weak. One enforcement tactic is to expose governments that do not suppress servile labor practices to the condemnation of world opinion. For example, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights investigates patterns of human rights violations within countries, including slavery and servitude, and disseminates its reports widely. The Interna-

tional Labor Organization, a special agency of the United Nations, formulates international labor standards and monitors the compliance efforts of governments (United Nations 1991). A wide variety of nongovernmental organizations are involved in the publicity campaigns against human bondage. Perhaps the most famous is Anti-Slavery International, which promotes the eradication of slavery and slavery-like practices by supporting the victims of those practices and through the collection and dissemination of information on specific cases. The negative publicity created by the public exposure of servile labor practices can diminish servile labor practices, but governments often do not cooperate because negative publicity alone is a feeble enforcement tool.

Economic pressure may be more effective than the investigative reporting and publicity efforts of the United Nations and other governmental and nongovernmental organizations. For example, the annual reports of the U.S. Department of State on Human Rights Practices are provided to the U.S. Congress to assist it in formulating foreign aid policies (Table 2 is based on the 1999 report). Countries are encouraged to suppress slavery and unfree labor practices to continue receiving aid from the United States and international organizations. Pressure from consumer organizations is effective in some cases. For example, a number of product-labeling programs were created to reassure buyers that products imported into affluent countries were not made by children. A nongovernmental organization in India initiated the RUGMARK program in 1994, which encourages carpet manufactures to stop using child labor by providing a labeling service that certifies that products are not made by children (United States Department of Labor 1997). By mid-1997, RUGMARK inspections had found over 1,000 illegal child workers in the carpet industry. Other labeling programs cover leather footwear, soccer balls, and the tea industry (United States Department of Labor 1997).

The historical decline in the land–labor ratio did not produce the abolition of slavery and involuntary servitude. The simple version of the Nieboer– Domar hypothesis is inadequate. From the middle of the nineteenth century until the present, political factors have played a decisive role in breaking the link between the availability of land and unfree labor. Rather than defending slavery when land

was plentiful, Britain used its political power to abolish slavery and suppress the slave trade even though it was not in its economic interest to do so.

By the late twentieth century, most nations had officially prohibited slavery and slavery-like practices, but both persist. As the modified Niebor– Domar hypothesis predicts, some employers will use physical coercion to drive down the cost of labor when opportunities arise. Weak or corrupt state institutions cannot or will not defend the rights of those who are most vulnerable to coercion. Civil wars destroy the ability of states to maintain order and subject citizens to the depredations of warring militias. In some areas of the world, cultural support for servile labor and grinding poverty combine to make it difficult to eliminate some forms of slavery and forced labor. In all cases, the typical victims of these practices are the weakest and most vulnerable groups: women, children, migrant workers, low-status class or caste groups, and racial, ethnic, and religious minorities (Table 2).

All nations regulate the passage of individuals across their borders and assign superior rights and privileges to citizens compared to noncitizens. In advanced capitalist democracies with ostensibly free labor markets, the state-enforced distinction between citizen and noncitizen is a key mechanism in maintaining dual labor markets that disproportionately relegate noncitizens to the lowest-paying jobs (e.g., Thomas 1985; Miles 1987; Cohen 1987). Typically, noncitizen ‘‘guest workers’’ are less likely to enjoy state protection and more vulnerable to discrimination. Because the demand for cheap labor often can be satisfied by choosing among citizens and noncitizens who have no other labor market alternatives, democratic states can regulate noncitizens’ access to domestic labor markets rather than forcibly import unfree workers from foreign lands.

However, many states are not liberal democracies. Thousands were confined for political reasons in forced labor camps during the Stalin era in the Soviet Union. Nazi Germany forced Jews and other minorities into slavery where they were to be ‘‘worked to death’’ (Sawyer 1986). Blacks were disfranchised and rigidly segregated in the southern United States for much of the twentieth century, making them vulnerable to coercive labor practices. The Republic of South Africa’s now

abolished policy of apartheid denied citizenship status to indigenous blacks and exposed them to forced labor practices. Since 1988, the military government of Burma has engaged in systematic human rights abuses, including the imposition of forced labor on large segments of the population for military purposes and for the construction and development of infrastructure (Bureau of International Labor Affairs 1998).

The international condemnation of slavery and involuntary servitude represents a great victory for those who support and defend human rights. The use of forced and other forms of servile labor has not been eliminated, but it has been widely branded as criminal activity. As a consequence, those who would employ servile labor must risk prosecution or search for opportunities in countries with weak or corrupt political institutions that cannot or will not suppress slavery and involuntary servitude. Although the struggle to eradicate servile labor practices has not been won, nations and international human rights organizations appear to be more concerned about the loss of life and other human rights violations that accompany civil wars and international conflicts. For example, NATO recently intervened to stop the murder and forced displacement of thousands of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. A similar intervention into the affairs of anther nation to eliminate slavery or involuntary servitude is unlikely.

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DAVID R. JAMES

SARA HEILIGER

SMALL GROUPS

In sociology, the concept ‘‘group’’ implies more than simply an aggregate of individuals. Additional elements involved are (1) structure—inter- action patterned in terms of statuses and roles, (2) history—some frequency and regularity of interaction over time, (3) interdependence—some degree of members’ mutual reliance on each other for needed or valued material and nonmaterial resources, and (4) common identity—grounded in shared meanings, values, experiences, and goals. Frequently there is a group product, not necessar-

ily of a material nature, which is the outcome or consequence of collective effort and interaction.

These elements are dimensional in that groups possess and manifest them to a greater or lesser degree. At one extreme, family groups typically have well-established and enduring structures, share extensive histories, encompass a wide range of activities, exert a broad scope of influence, and provide the basis of individual identity. At the other extreme, ad hoc work groups (and groups studied in laboratory experiments) may be assembled to perform specific tasks of very limited duration with little or no relevance for or influence on the members outside a clearly defined situation and range of activity. McGrath (1984) developed a comprehensive typology of groups in terms of origin, scope of activity, task, duration, and interaction.

Groups are regarded as small if meaningful and direct face-to-face interaction can take place among all members. The number of members usually is thought of as ranging from two to twenty, with three to seven common in many laboratory studies of groups.

PRIMARY AND SECONDARY GROUPS

Cooley (1909) identified a fundamental type of small group that is characterized by intimate association and cooperation, which he regarded as the basic building block of society. Cooley called groups of this sort ‘‘primary groups’’ and held them to be forms of association found everywhere. Primary groups work on the individual to form and develop the social nature of the person. ‘‘This nature consists of certain primary social sentiments and attitudes, such as consciousness of one’s self in relation to others, love of approbation, resentment of censure, emulation, and a sense of social right and wrong formed by the standards of a group’’ (1909, p. 32).

Membership and participation in primary groups are valued and rewarding for their own sake. The groups typically are long-lasting. Members interact as ‘‘whole persons’’ rather than merely in terms of specialized, partial roles. Primary groups are basic sources of socioemotional support and gratification, and participation in them is considered essential for a person’s psychological and emotional well-being. Some (the family, the neigh-

borhood peer group) are also primary in the sense that they are settings for early childhood socialization and personality development.

In contrast are groups formed and maintained to accomplish a task, to which people belong for extrinsic purposes (because they are paid or to achieve an external goal). These ‘‘secondary groups’’ are characterized by limited, instrumental relationships. They may be relatively short-term, and their range of activity is restricted. Affective ties and other ‘‘irrational’’ personal influences are intended to be minimized or eliminated.

It has been widely observed, however, that primary relationships develop pervasively within secondary groups and organizations. In a synthesis of observations and research findings, Homans (1950) attempted to identify universal variables of group behavior. He sought to develop a general theoretical scheme that would permit an understanding of groups as diverse as an industrial work unit, a street-corner gang, and a Polynesian family. Homans approached the small group as a system in which activity, interaction, and sentiment are interrelated. He concluded that interaction among group members increases their liking for one another and that they tend to express their friendship in an increasing range of activities and to interact more frequently. Affective elements emerge in virtually all ongoing groups and may enhance or interfere with the purposes for which a group was established. Soldiers are motivated to fight and workers are motivated to increase or restrict work output by loyalty to their friends and the norms of the immediate group.

BASES AND DEVELOPMENT OF SMALL

GROUP RESEARCH

Sociological interest in small groups has several bases, including (1) the perception of small groups as fundemental, universal social units on which all larger organizational structures depend, (2) a concern with the description and understanding of particular small groups both for their own importance and as a source of observations from which hypotheses and general theories can be developed, and (3) the usefulness of the laboratory group as a research context in which to study the characteristics of the group as the unit of interest and as a setting for the investigation of social influence on individual cognition and behavior.

Foundations for small group research may be seen in nineteenth-century sociological thought, such as Emile Durkheim’s analyses of the development of social structures, specialization and task differentiation, and the bases of social cohesion and Georg Simmel’s work on the importance of group size and coalition formation. Early in the twentieth century Charles H. Cooley and George Herbert Mead stressed the social construction of the self through interaction within immediate group settings.

In the 1930s and 1940s, Jacob L. Moreno developed a systematic approach to the understanding and charting of group structure and Muzafer Sherif conducted key studies of group influence and conformity. William Foote Whyte’s field study of a street-corner gang demonstrated the existence and importance of group norms and structure in an urban milieu generally thought to lack social organization. Of major importance was Kurt Lewin’s work, which provided direction and inspiration for the postwar generation of social psychologists. Lewin combined principles of Gestalt psychology and concepts from the physical sciences to develop field theory in social psychology as a basis for the study of group dynamics. Interested in both theoretical and applied aspects of group interaction, in 1945 he established the first organization devoted to research on group dynamics. The widely utilized sensitivity-training group method originated serendipitously in sessions Lewin organized in 1946.

The period from the end of World War II to the early 1960s produced burgeoning activity in small group research (Hare et al. 1965). The pervasiveness of Lewin’s ideas was evident in the growth of group dynamics as an area of research and theoretical development. Cartwright and Zander’s important compilation, Group Dynamics (1968), first published in 1953, presented a theoretical overview and numerous influential studies of cohesiveness, group pressures and standards, individual motives and group goals, leadership and group performance, and the structural properties of groups.

Substantial work with a different orientation reflected concerns with functional needs that groups must meet in order to survive and with the relationship of those functions to dimensions of interpersonal behavior and personality traits. At

the same time, influences from anthropology, economics, and behavioral psychology were being melded in a view of social interaction as an exchange of resources, a perspective applied to the analysis of interdependence, cooperation and competition, and interpersonal relationship (Homans 1950, 1974; Thibaut and Kelley 1959). During those years small group research shared the methodological advances that were occurring throughout the social sciences, developing an increasing sophistication in research design, measurement, and analysis. The excitement, optimism, and productivity of the field led some to define social psychology as the study of small groups.

Small group research since the 1960s has not been as prominent, prolific, or influential as it was during the immediate postwar years, when social psychology was virtually dominated by the small groups ‘‘movement’’ (Borgatta 1981). The production of studies is steady, if moderate compared to the enthusiasm of the peak period, and some significant attempts have been made to organize and integrate the diverse body of work and theory that has accumulated (Hare 1982; McGrath 1984; Foschi and Lawler 1994). There is renewed interest in conceptualizing groups as entities with distinctive properties that cannot be understood in terms of reductionist individual psychology (Turner 1987). Many aspects and procedures of group process and dynamics are commonly utilized in applied settings, while practical concerns with group productivity, efficiency, and success are widespread (Hare et al. 1992; Forsyth 1999).

APPROACHES TO SMALL GROUP

RESEARCH

Small group studies are characterized by a wide variety of research techniques and theoretical and practical concerns. Research methods vary in regard to the types of groups and circumstances studied—whether ‘‘natural’’ or contrived for research purposes—and in the intrusiveness of research procedures. Some investigators are concerned with properties of the group itself as the unit of interest, while others use the small group setting as context for explorating individual behavior. Although laboratory studies have predominated, the research techniques employed include direct observation of groups in natural as well as controlled settings; the use of structured observa-

tional systems to code communication or other aspects of behavior; the use of checklists, questionnaires, or interviews to elicit ratings, choices, opinions, or attitudes from group members; and field experimentation.

Laboratory studies have marked advantages in terms of the control and manipulation of variables in the precision of observation and measurement. The procedures employed normally permit replication of observation under controlled conditions. The experimental method is regarded as superior to others for rigorously testing causal hypotheses. Fundamental technical issues are whether relevant variables can be brought into laboratory situations and whether a meaningful range of variation can be achieved.

Criticisms of laboratory research center on the artificiality of the setting and the short-term nature of most studies. Representativeness of subject groups and thus the generalization of the findings also are questioned. Concerns for protecting the rights and well-being of human subjects have led to procedural safeguards that now inhibit or prevent practices that were typical of some wellknown earlier studies.

The technical advantages of laboratory procedures, the desire to emulate the natural sciences in developing theory based on experimental evidence, and the compatibility of laboratory methods with the academic environment within which most researchers work all have contributed to the proliferation of laboratory studies that constitute much of small group research.

Direct observation of group behavior under basically uncontrolled (‘‘natural’’) conditions may be coupled with the investigator’s more or less active participation in the affairs of the group. Such research can employ structured systems for coding behavior and interaction patterns that are used by uninvolved ‘‘objective’’ observers, as when a children’s play group is studied by adults. A more informal ethnographic approach was employed by Goffman (1964) in collecting the information that illustrated his characterization of human interaction as an elaborate sequence of symbolic presentations of self and groups as collaborating teams of performers.

Participant observation is a procedure in which the researcher acts as part of a (usually natural)

group to understand a situation from within, as members of the group define and experience it. Group members may know that the observer is an outsider who is there for his or her own purposes or may be led or allowed to believe that the observer is simply another ‘‘genuine’’ group member. In either case the observer’s status influences and constrains both the kinds and amount of information available and the opportunities for recording information. The observer also has some influence on the situations and processes being studied, thus producing outcomes different from those which would have occurred in his or her absence. The use of multiple observers increases opportunities for observation while also increasing the effect of the research on the group’s behavior (Festinger et al. 1964). For these reasons, reliability and validity are particularly problematic issues in using this technique.

Participant observation is regarded as useful primarily for descriptive and exploratory research and for generating or illustrating, as opposed to testing, theory. It is favored by those who want to understand the meanings of situations and actions generated and maintained by groups in their natural, everyday environments.

An important naturalistic study was conducted in the late 1930s by Whyte (1955), who studied a street-corner gang as a participant observer over a period of three and a half years. (The appendix to his monograph provides an informative discussion of practical and ethical issues in participant observation.) Whyte gained access to the gang through his association with its leader, and his view is from the top of the social structure. He described the recurrent patterns of relationships among members, group values and codes of behavior, the existence of implicit exchange relationships, territorial behavior, and the nature and functions of gang leadership. His observations of the ways in which members’ social rankings in the group affected their performance in athletic competition suggested a program of experimental studies of diffuse status characteristics: an exploration of the manner in which ‘‘logically’’ irrelevant social rank affects the amount of influence an individual has on others in activities ranging from pedestrian behavior to the making of perceptual judgments.

Sociometry, a seminal form of network analysis developed by Moreno (1953), is a technique for

eliciting and representing the patterns and structure of choices and liking among group members. While the most common procedure is for researchers to ask group members who they like, dislike, would prefer to work with, or would like to ‘‘be like,’’ ratings also can be based on direct observations of members’ behavior. The information can be represented as a sociogram showing individuals as circles and choices as arrows between the circles: The diagram depicts group structure in terms of affective relations. Indices of liking or disliking can be computed for each member, and ratings can be organized in a matrix format. The density and patterning of choices may be taken as indicators of group cohesiveness. In practical applications, sociometric data are used to restructure groups on the basis of members’ mutual choices.

Interaction Process Research. A prominent research concern has been the description and analysis of group interaction processes, focusing primarily on communication. The approaches employed have ranged from purely formal examination of the amount of communication sent and received by each member of the group to extremely detailed analyses of linguistic and paralinguisitic material, including posture, gestures, and inflection.

The widely used system for Interaction Process Analysis (IPA) developed by Bales (1950, 1970) involves a set of twelve categories for coding units (acts) of communication. The categories reflect Bales’s conclusion that all groups confront two domains of concerns: instrumental concerns related to the task the group must accomplish and expressive concerns associated with the socioemotional needs and interrelationships of the group members. Both sets of concerns operate continuously and must be dealt with if a group is to succeed and survive, and there is a virtually constant conflict between them. The set of categories is used by observers to code types of active and passive task-related acts and positive and negative socioemotional acts, as they are generated by group members in the course of interaction.

Numerous studies using the IPA system have sought to document the patterns or ‘‘phase movements’’ of instrumental and expressive communication as groups try to establish the equilibrium necessary to operate. Interaction process scores

have been related to personality characteristics and to peer assessments and self-assessments (Borgatta 1962). Attention also has been paid to the roles of particular group members in exercising task leadership or socioemotional leadership.

The division of group leadership into instrumental and expressive functions proved compatible with accepted notions of ‘‘typical’’ male and female personal attributes and with a conceptualization of the family (at least in the Western world) as a small group with the father as task leader and the mother as socioemotional specialist. However, recent research comparing ‘‘natural’’ families with ad hoc laboratory groups indicates that the instrumental versus expressive specialization found in the laboratory seldom holds for groups in natural settings. There is greater diversity of behavior and less gender-linked stereotypical conduct in longerlasting groups that cover a greater scope of activities (McGrath 1984).

The IPA system has been criticized on both theoretical and operational grounds, and numerous revisions and alternatives have been proposed. Bales and his colleagues developed an elaborated observational system, SYMLOG (Bales and Cohen 1979), that models personal space in three dimensions: dominant-submissive, friendly-unfriendly, and instrumentally controlled–emotionally expressive. Group interaction is observed and members’ behaviors are coded on each dimension by outside observers or by the group members themselves. On the basis of combinations of multiple observations, each individual is located within the threedimensional space and the positions of all group members are charted. The resulting diagram and indices based on the scores indicate the degree to which members are perceived as acting in a similar fashion. Interest in the SYMLOG technique is substantial, and it is utilized in many studies of group structure and performance.

GROUP COHESIVENESS

The understanding of what holds a social unit together, a central issue in sociology, also has been central in small group analysis. Cohesion—the sum of the forces that bind members to the group— was viewed by Lewin and other Gestaltists as a property or characteristic of the group itself, a sort of force field analogous to a magnetic or gravitational field. However, the assessment of cohesion

usually depends on observations of the attitudes and behaviors of the individual group members: their self-reported attraction to the group, their feeling of being accepted by the group, similarity in expressions of sentiment, how regularly they attend group meetings, how prompt or tardy they are, or how responsible they are in performing actions that benefit the group. Members also may asked to describe the unity of the group (Evans and Jarvis 1986; Bollen and Hoyle 1990). Although Steiner (1972) suggested that ‘‘A true test of a group’s cohesion would entail observation of its members’ reaction to disruptive influences,’’ he rejected this procedure on technical and ethical grounds (1972, p. 161).

The bases of cohesion include (1) rewards available within and through the group, (2) the congruence between individual goals and group goals, (3) the attraction and/or liking of members for each other, (4) the importance of the group as a source or ground of the individual’s identity and self-perception and his or her internalization of group culture and values, and (5) in psychoanalytic group theory, the members’ identification with and attraction to the group leader and ‘‘the alignment between particular individual superego formation and its corresponding punitive group structure’’ (Kellerman 1981, p. 11).

Although high cohesiveness often is taken as indicating a ‘‘healthy’’ group, its effect is to heighten members’ susceptibility to influences in the group. Thus, group productivity, for example, may be increased or decreased depending on the nature of the predominant influences. A positive association between group cohesion and performance was found by Evans and Dion (1991) in a review of previous studies, but the relationship was modest.

Major importance in the study of cohesiveness has been placed on interpersonal attraction and interdependence, emphasizing the exchange of emotional and affective resources. Work by Tajfel (1981) and Turner (1987) supports, alternatively, an emphasis on social identity and self-categoriza- tion. A concept of cohesion based on interpersonal liking that is not mediated by shared group membership and depersonalized attraction to the group is held to be inadequate. Group membership and the resultant self-categorization occur prior to interaction and the emergence of interdependence, cooperation, influence, and cohesion.