Introduction to the Science of Sociology Part 47

(28) Cohen, Rose. _Out of the Shadow._ New York, 1918.

TOPICS FOR WRITTEN THEMES

1. The Land as the Basis for Social Contacts.

2. Density of Population, Social Contacts and Social Organization.

3. Mobility and Social Types, as the Gypsy, the Nomad, the Hobo, the Pioneer, the Commercial Traveler, the Missionary, the Globe-Trotter, the Wandering Jew.

4. Stability and Social Types, as the Farmer, the Home-Owner, the Business Man.

5. Sensory Experience and Human Behavior. Nostalgia (Homesickness).

6. Race Prejudice and Primary Contacts.

7. Taboo and Social Contact.

8. Social Contacts in a Primary Group, as the Family, the Play Group, the Neighborhood, the Village.

9. Social Control in Primary Groups.

10. The Subst.i.tution of Secondary for Primary Contacts as the Cause of Social Problems, as Poverty, Crime, Prost.i.tution, etc.

11. Control of Problems through Secondary Contacts, as Charity Organization Society, Social Service Registration Bureau, Police Department, Morals Court, Publicity through the Press, etc.

12. The Industrial Revolution and the Great Society.

13. Attempts to Revive Primary Groups in the City, as the Social Center, the Settlement, the Social Unit Experiment, etc.

14. Attempts to Restore Primary Contacts between Employer and Employee.

15. The Anonymity of the Newspaper.

16. Standardization and Impersonality of the Great Society.

17. The Sociology of the Stranger; a Study of the Revivalist, the Expert, the Genius, the Trader.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. What do you understand by the term contact?

2. What are the ways in which geographic conditions influence social contacts?

3. What are the differences in contact with the land between primitive and modern peoples?

4. In what ways do increasing social contacts affect contacts with the soil? Give concrete ill.u.s.trations.

5. What is the social significance of touch as compared with that of the other senses?

6. In what sense is touch a social contact?

7. By what principle do you explain desire or aversion for contact?

8. Give ill.u.s.trations indicating the significance of touch in various fields of social life.

9. How do you explain the impulse to touch objects which attract attention?

10. What are the differences in contacts within and without the group in primitive society?

11. In what way do external relations affect the contacts within the group?

12. Give ill.u.s.trations of group egotism or ethnocentrism.

13. To what extent does the dependence of the solidarity of the in-group upon its relations with the out-groups have a bearing upon present international relations?

14. To what extent is the social control of the immigrant dependent upon the maintenance of the solidarity of the immigrant group?

15. What are our reactions upon meeting a person? a friend? a stranger?

16. What do you understand Shaler to mean by the statement that "at the beginning of any acquaintance the fellow-being is evidently dealt with in the categoric way"?

17. How far is "the sympathetic way of approach" practical in human relations?

18. What is the difference in the basis of continuity between animal and human society?

19. What types of social contacts make for historical continuity?

20. What are the differences of social contacts in the movements of primitive and civilized peoples?

21. To what extent is civilization dependent upon increasing contacts and intimacy of contacts?

22. Does mobility always mean increasing contacts?

23. Under what conditions does mobility contribute to the increase of experience?

24. Does the hobo get more experience than the schoolboy?

25. Contrast the advantages and limitations of historical continuity and of mobility.

26. What do you understand by a primary group?

27. Are primary contacts limited to members of face-to-face groups?

28. What att.i.tudes and relations characterize village life?

29. Interpret sociologically the control by the group of the behavior of the individual in a rural community.