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SOCIAL ANALYSIS AND SOCIAL ACTION
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MY INTEREST OVER the last ten years has moved from the study of smaller social units to that of larger ones, from greater concern with conceptualization to an emphasis on the social relevance of social science, and from a fair segregationo f the role of the sociologist and the active citizen to a greater effort to articu- late the two. In so doing, I believe my work reflects trends which affect social sciences in general, sociology in particular. I shall focus first on these trends, then briefly discuss a contribution I might have made to their extension. Many a sociological article opens with a definition of a new concept (or relationship) and a discussion of methods to be employed to measure it. This is then frequently followed by presentation of some data relevant to the new concept and relating to it familiar sociological variables (e.g., "the distribution of ele- phantiasis by age and sex in cities with a population of over one hundred thousand"). Most sociologists, the author included, feel that such combination of theory and methods is the very foundation on which sociology as a science ought to be built and is in fact being constructed. But many of us also feel that something is lacking.