More Equality. by Herbert J. GansReview by: Leonard ReissmanSocial Forces, Vol. 53, No. 3 (Mar., 1975), p. 531Published by: Oxford University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2576628 .

Accessed: 16/06/2014 01:17

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

Oxford University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Social Forces.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 195.78.108.37 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 01:17:23 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Book Reviews / 531

attention not only of those of us who are students of social conflict, social movements, and political sociology, but of anyone interested in the nature of social life and social order. Each of the three parts of the book were published separately in paperback in the Spring of 1974. This should make the work more accessible and suitable for teaching purposes. Comprehensive as this book is, another quality of its achievement is that it pro- vokes many questions for further research. This is a major study, worthy of the subject.

MORE EQUALITY. By Herbert J. Gans. New York: Pantheon Books, 1973. 261 pp. $7.95.

Reviewer: LEONARD REISSMAN, Cornell Uni- versity

Gans gives two reasons for his latest book, a collection of eight essays half previously published and half new. First, he believes that because America is "on the thFeshold of egalitarian changes" and moving toward more equality of results, discussion and study are needed now to make those changes less problem-ridden. Second, because much of what is being written about equality is critical and skeptical (the IQ contro- versy, the defense of meritocracy), he means to help redress the imbalance.

So armed, he has set out in these essays to dis- cuss such matters as income redistribution through changes in the tax mechanism, political changes to increase the participation of minority groups, functional supports for inequality and the barriers that these pose, the pressures of rising expecta- tions of equality, suggested research to study these problems, and some "utopian scenarios" meant to point to paths for attaining more equality in a variety of social sectors.

One must applaud Gans' motives and welcome the addition of his considerable talents to the analysis of these critical issues. Yet, his efforts in this book do not seem to me likely to suc- ceed at either the practical or the theoretical level. For one thing, his identification of the central problems and even his utopian scenarios to help solve them turn out to be rather dilet- tantish. For example, he suggests increasing polit- ical equality by increasing participation through more frequent elections, public opinion feedback, reducing the size of electoral units, and changing recruitment patterns for politicians. For another thing, Gans seems too often inclined to see in- equality and the paths to more equality as resting upon the sentiments, feelings, and beliefs of in- dividuals rather than upon the social system in which they live. For instance, in his discussion of the positive functions of poverty and inequality, he deliberately rejects the broader, societal frame- work in favor of analyzing groups and aggregates so as to avoid the contradiction of finding that "one group's functions are another group's dys- functions." The result is that poverty and inequal- ity are judged as almost impossible to overcome because the group whose functions are being met is also the group that is in control.

Gans' reluctance to phrase the problems of more equality as societal failures binds him to a level of analysis that remains social-psychological in scope rather than macrosociological. He looks for motives and incentives that might persuade those in power to give up something, so as to find a basis for a policy to achieve more equality. This is rather like using a penknife to flense a whale. Even accepting his objectives of getting policy- makers to listen, I would argue that the task of the social analyst is to expose the broad and complex social dynamics of the phenomena and then to deduce policy from such information. If one remains bound to a "practical" rhetoric in discussing inequality and equality (motivations for work, the intensity of feelings for equality, and incentives for upward mobility), then there are no standards for assessing whether proposed "solutions" are simply shifting the focus or are really working. Hence, the "war on poverty" seemed only to raise the ante, but to leave every- one pretty much where they were relative to one another: it was a policy based on tampering with income differentials rather than on trying to alter social inequalities. Much the same is true of anti-discrimination efforts.

Most of the critics and skeptics of equality that Gans identifies in his Preface have chosen to ground their arguments on the broad, macro- sociological level, and it is to this level that Gans, too, must move if he is to make his case.

THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. By Stuart Palmer. New York: Behavioral Publications, 1973. 277 pp. $9.95.

Reviewer: JOHN W. MARTIN, University of Il- linois at Chicago Circle

Social scientists have argued for a long time that the reduction and prevention of crime and other social problems require the reduction and elimination of their sources. The treatment of symptorns is doomed to failure. It is also evident that many of the institutionalized mechanisms for controlling deviant behavior actually exacerbate the problems and serve more to perpetuate them than to reduce them.

Drawing upon this knowledge, Palmer, in The Prevention of Crime, makes several reasonable recommendations to lay citizens and professionals who are seriously interested in prevention per se, control, and rehabilitation-all of which con- tribute to prevention in the broader sense. He makes it clear in the very beginning that the book is not directed to social scientists who specialize in criminological research, but rather toward laymen and professionals-police, pro- bation and parole officers, judges, and wardens- who are actively involved in the criminal justice process.

In Part One of the book, Palmer discusses the crime problem in America and summarizes briefly the nature and extent of major categories of crime such as homicide, assault, rape, robbery, burglary, larceny, fraud, and victimless crimes.

This content downloaded from 195.78.108.37 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 01:17:23 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions