Professor Dexter asserts that practitioners must learn to overcome the tendency to make only those observations and draw only those con clusions that can be pressed into simplistic and fashionable theoretical frames. He shows that the sociology of occupations is a perspective that is especially useful to practitioners, though largely ignored, and he urges that practitioners take up an interest in the now unfashionable but relevant area of political philosophy. Lewis A. Dexter, presently of the University of Maryland faculty, is co-author with R. Bauer and I. Pool of American Business and Public Policy which won the Woodrow Wilson Prize in 1963 for the best book in Political Science.
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References
1.
M. Mead, "The New Isolationism," American Scholar, 24 (1955), pp. 378-82
2.
Mead wrote in 1955; and fashions have changed since. One might add, of course, that there were certainly sections of the world where breast-feeding was, in '55, and is now the only conceivable desirable action.
3.
E. Bramah "The Ghost at Massingham Mansions," republished in D. Sayers (ed.), Third Omnibus of Crime, Garden City, 1929, p. 213.
4.
In Lewis A Dexter, Tyranny of Schooling, An Inquiry Into the Problem of "Stupidity," Basic Books, N.Y.C., 1964, I try to show how the "good custom" of educational opportunity has now become a dogma which interferes with some of the very values which led to its initial formulation and creates other undesirable by-products, not because the initial approach was wrong, but because it has been carried too far.
5.
See here R. Bauer, I. Pool, and L. Dexter, American Business and Public Policy, New York: Atherton, 1963, esp. Ch. 30
6.
, and Lewis A. Dexter, "Marginal Attention and Pressure Politics," Int. Rev. Hist. & Poli. Sci., Vol. 1, 1963.
7.
See Dexter, Tyranny, op. cit., esp. Ch. 6; I am now preparing a paper to be read at Northeast Regional Meeting, Am. Assn. Mental Deficiency, 1965, indicating some reasons why expectation creates perception and determines interpretation m this field.
8.
A minor possible contribution to this effort in the field of interviewing technique is found in Lewis A. Dexter, "Role Relationships and Conceptions of Neutrality in Interviewing," Am. J. Socio., 62 (1956) 153-7.
9.
Free Press, 1958.
10.
University of Edinburgh Social Sciences Research Center , 1958. Monog. No 2.
11.
New Republic, 2 vols 1937.
12.
Basic Books, 1954.
13.
U. of Chicago Press, 1943.
14.
U of Toronto Press, 1957
15.
Men at Work, op. cit., "License and Mandate," pp. 78-87.
16.
See on this, Lewis A. Dexter, "Analogies Useful In Understanding Congress What Does Congress Resemble In What Respect?" paper read at American Political Science Association meetings, Sept. 9, 1965.
17.
Op. cit. pp. 20 ff, citing E. Lenz " A Comparison of Medical and Surgical Floors," mimeo, N Y. School Ind. & Lab. Relns, Cornell U., 1954.
18.
See the insightful article by A. Keith-Lucas, "The Political Theory Imphcit in Social Casework Theory," Am Poli. Science Rev., 47 (1953).
19.
In fact, they are, in somewhat different ways, also, technical requirements for effective participation in practical politics.
20.
As a research interviewer or as a dean of men, it might be desirable oi unavoidable for me to sympathize with students who cheat in a way which I should avoid as a teacher or dean of liberal arts, or a research student of extremist groups or an analyst of political theories must show a sympathy towards John Birch Society views which few political scientists as citizens feel.
21.
See T. Szasz , The Myth of Mental Illness, Hoeber, 1960, for an indication of some factors leading to this development.
22.
An excellent example of how social work philosophy (and presumably practise) could be changed by some concern with traditional political philosophy would be provided by an analysis of N. Cohen's otherwise admirable Social Work in the American Tradition, Dryden, 1958; in fact, it would be easily possible to take the first three pages of this valuable book by themselves and write a lengthy critical commentary showing what such men as Leslie Stephen, William Graham Sumner, Aristotle, Halifax and Edmund Burke would have said about (what they would in all probability have interpreted as) a failure to take into account relevant institutional and ethical considerations which each of them dealt with
