788 American Anthropologist [71, 19691

ble mosaic of separate and distinct growth loci or centers. Yet, these centers are only relative, for the entire bone is directly involved in the complex remodelling changes that occur throughout its regional areas.

The process of craniofacial bone growth is more or less summarized in what Enlow calls the architectonic factor, i.e., a sort of overall master plan that says of each bone, so to speak, no matter how much you in- crease in size, change in proportion, re- model, relocate, and so on, youll still retain your generalized configuration. A mandible by any growth name is still a mandible. And this holds no less for the nasomaxillary com- plex and its cluster of bones also, as Enlow points out.

Chapter 12, by Hunter, discusses the tech- niques of the interpretation of serial x-ray films of the head (especially the lateral view) in the measurement of size, propor- tional, and angular changes during growth.

This book is a major contribution to anat- omy, physical anthropology, pediatrics, pe- dodontics, and orthodontics. I commend it to all morphologists.

OTHER Constructing Social Theories. ARTHUR L.

STINCHCOMBE. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968. xv+ 303 pp., 18 figures, graphs, 15 tables, index. $3.95 (paper).

Reviewed by MARVIN HARRIS Columbia University

Stinchcombe states that the purpose of this book is similar to that of a calculus text: to enable sophomores to do what once strained Newtons powers (p. 6) . The sophomores are sociology majors, and the Newtonian task is the construction of socio- logical theories. The book contains six c h a p ters, the first three of which are devoted to the logical structure of scientific explana- tions of sociocultural phenomena. Such ex- planations are to be achieved through a vari- ety of causal theories constructed optionally in the functional or historicist modes. Stinchcombe relies on diagrams involving a linear graphing technique to define and illus- trate the causal loops associated with these options. At the end of Chapter 3, a 17-page

appendix devoted to the theory of linear graphing separates two unnamed sections of the book. Thereafter (Chapters 5 , 6 , 7) , Stinchcombe concerns himself essentially with the definition of concepts rather than with the logic of explanation. These cQn- cepts (e.g., power, legitimacy, political incorporation, institution) have a rather conventional definitioual status and are not systematically related to the logical types of explanation set forth in the first three chap- ters. The latter are mentioned, but no fur- ther use of the linear graphing technique is attempted. Instead, concepts are introduced because they are important, while others are added on an ad hoc basis, apparently in order to serve the needs of certain substan- tive examples that Stinchcornbe considers interesting. Thus, in Chapter 5, Stinch- combe introduces a discussion of some of the ingredients of a theory of geopolitical boundaries. The statement of this theory is sketchy and tentative. Yet, in order to deal with the issues involved, Stinchcornbe in- vokes numerous complicated definitions whose epistemological status is intuitive and nonoperational: military vulnerability, killing power, potential state area, heartland, disputed border territory, frontier, power vacuum. This concep tual scheme is applied to one mythical case and to three empirical cases from which the following three conclusions are drawn: (1) The most important develop- ment for an island nation such as Great Britain . . . is the development of ships; (2) with the American settlement of the Great Plains, the transportation develop ment of the Mississippi River system, and the growth of railroads, the vulnerability of the area with respect to the United States changed radically; (3) Sovereignty ex- tends right up to the border now, (in the United States and Western Europe) and then it stops suddenly while the sovereignty of another country starts, with all the atten- dant consequences for cultural borders (pp. 228-229). Chapter 4 contains a series of definitions that attempt to link values and attitudes to power and to the definition of institution. The theoretical output of this ef- fort is summed up in what may be one of the most useless italicized phrases ever writ-

Book Reviews 789 ten: A value will have more eflect in a soci- ety, the higher the correlation between power and commitment to the value in that society (p. 183). Translation: a value is powerful if it has power.

In the final chapter, more chaotic schema concerning structure of attention, deci- sion variables, networks, nodes, etc., are employed to reach further banal conclu- sions such as: U.S. Steel is at the center of the American economy, while Jantzen Sportswear is peripheral, largely because U.S. Steel is so much bigger (p. 243); and, New York, the great port in the United States, is also the great center for processing information (p. 281).

It is doubtful if sophomores will regard Stinchcombes ad hoc patchwork of graphs, definitions, and banal revelations as the equivalent of Newtons calculus. Stinch- combes failure to apply his ideas about how to construct social theory to the actual con- struction of theories that are at once non- trivial and cross-culturally valid is pain- fully evident.

Anthropologists may profitably read this book simply to confirm some of their atavis- tic suspicions about the difference between themselves and their sociological colleagues. Apparently, many sociologists are still of the opinion that descriptions of the regularities of Euro-American social systems are equiva- lent to nomothetic insights about the human condition. This book may also be studied for the unintended light Stinchcombe sheds on the academic posture that permits ab- stract principles and technical virtuosity to take precedence over critical evaluations of politically relevant facts, issues, and the po- litical-moral consequences of alternative re- search strategies. For example, Stinchcombe does not hesitate to offer Durkheims theory of suicide as an exemplary instance of theory construction. It can scarcely be the case, however, that Stinchcombe is unaware of the extent to which this theory has been discredited by research that has been aimed at correcting Durkheims data rather than his logic. Stinchcombe makes no mention of the fact that for all of Durkheims brilliance, he failed to grasp the possibility that the regularities in the statistical data he used de- rived not from regularities in patterns of

dying, but from formal and informal con- ventions surrounding the recording of the causes of death. Equally worthy of note is Durkheims failure to test his conclusions across an adequate sample of cultures drawn from different world areas (or indeed, even to acknowledge the importance of such tests). Stinchcombes silence on these points is perhaps the most important theoretical statement in the book.

The mother blunder of these errors is to be found in Stinchcombes explicit and de- termined support of eclecticism as a basic theoretical strategy: I have a firm convic- tion that some things are to be explained one way, some another. . . . The point of view of this book is deliberately eclectic. . . . If one approach does not work . . . the theo- rist should try another (p. 4). It is remark- able that a book about the logic of theory building should depart from a premise whose logical status and strategic conse- quences remain wholly unexamined. There happens to be a logical connection between the incidence of banal, trivial, and ethnocen- tric theories and a tolerance for ad hoc changes in the explicit and implicit premises about the ultimate causes of sociocultural phenomena. Eclecticism is an invitation to construct weak theories of narrow scope and of mutually irrelevant substance. Eclecticism is a strategy that is scientifically counter-pro- ductive; it sanctions and encourages the maximization of logically and empirically disconnected and even contradictory gener- alizations. Eclecticism precludes the devel- opment of a coherent corpus of theory as distinguished from collections of random platitudes and assorted oddities. When Stinchcombe writes that the theorist ought to be trained to be adept at all kinds of ap- proaches so that he will never be at a loss for alternative explanations, we would be well advised to ponder the narrow distinc- tion between theories that enlighten and theories that obscure. Stinchcombe himself comes remarkably close to admitting that the functional significance of eclectic, mid- dle-range theories may reside in their capac- ity to mask the causes of sociocultural phe- nomena. If this seems harsh, how else shall we interpret Stinchcombes assertion that for a social theorist, ignorance is more excus-

790 American Anthropologist [71, 19691 able than vagueness (p. 6)7 Stinchcombe goes even further; it is clear that his lack of concern with substance verges on intellec- tual irresponsibility. I make no apology for the false statements about the world which are sure to be found here (p. 6).

I do not propose that Stinchcombes inter- est in the theory of theory as opposed to a theory of history requires an apology. Stinchcombe ought to be free to indulge his particular intellectual passion without hav- ing to fend off critics who are simply bored and unsympathetic. We have every right to object, however, when Stinchcombe at- tempts to delude sophomores into the belief that valid theories of history (the world) will ultimately result from the work of theo- rists who are not first and foremost con- cerned with the truth about what happened in history.

Symbols in Society. HUGH DALZIEL D m - CAN. New York: Oxford University Press, 1968. xvi + 262 pp., chapter notes, index. $6.75 (cloth).

Communication and Social Order. HUGH DALZIEL DUNCAN. London & New York: Oxford University Press, 1968. 475 pp., index, chapter notes. $2.95 (paper). [Re- print of 1st ed., 1962.1

Reviewed by JAMES PEACOCK University of North Carolina

Dr. Duncan claims to have written Sym- bols in Society in opposition to the me- chanist sociology presented by Talcott Par- sons and his associates in Toward a General Theory of Action. The metaphors that un- derlie the models of the mechanists are, Duncan feels, distasteful, for they mix the mechanical with the symbolic. The resulting mechanical monsters almost rival the chi- meras of antiquity; firebreathing monsters, with a lions head, a goats body, and a ser- pents tail, have been matched by grotesques with mechanical heads and symbolic bod- ies. True, Parsonss school does pay lip ser- vice to symbols, but for the Parsons school symbols are only ephiphenomena which exist on the surface of a social system whose gearing and meshing (in modern mecha- nistic parlance) really determines human motivation. Since symbols are thus, accord- ing to mechanists, only surface reflections of

underlying social machinery, it follows that analysis of the form of symbols is less im- portant than laying bare the machinery that they reflect. This reasoning, asserts Duncan, results in widespread sociological bias against analysis of symbolic form as form. Thus, sociology boasts no field of symbolic form analysis, but instead harbors content analysis, which aims to reveal underlying psychosocial machinery expressed in a forms content; sociology does not trust great literature, where form is significant, as a means of social understanding, but relies instead on bad literature (such as life histo- ries), where, sociologists mistakenly believe, the artifice of form is insignificant and the underlying psychosocial machinery is clearly revealed by content; sociology generally ig- nores the arts, as can be seen by observing the space given to the arts in any standard sociological compendium. All of these de- formities, and more, asserts Duncan, reflect the mechanistic bias of contemporary socio- logical thought.

As an alternative to the mechanistic model of contemporary sociology, Duncan proposes a dramatistic model inspired by Kenneth Burke, as well as by luminaries of the Chicago symbolic interaction school. Duncans definition of his dramatistic model is as follows:

The form of the act consists of five elements . . . the stage (situation) on which the act takes place, the kind of act it is (its social function), the roles involved in the action, the ways in which communication occurs within the act, and the kind of social order which is invoked as the purpose of the act. The conrenr of the act exists in social inter- ests as these are expressed in the basic insti- tutions of society . . . such contents include (1) the family, (2) ruling, being ruled, and reaching common agreement [and nine other familiar areas of life].

Unfortunate in its vagueness and in its re- semblance to definitions of social action proposed by Duncans opponent, Parsons, this formal definition is less important than the informal images of society as drama that emerge from Duncans writings. These im- ages are two, the tragic and the comic.

Society as tragedy is hierarchical, empha- sizing relations between superiors and inferi- ors, Such relations constantly generate guilt,