Suchergebnisse

The current attempt by European and American scholarship to come to grips with Africa is bound to be frustrating work for some years to come. The continent is vast and varied; Western knowledge of it is, for the most part, recent and superficial; and yet the demand for understanding, arising out of Africa's increasing importance in world affairs, will not wait for the slow process of maturation which scholarship normally requires. Policies must be made and points of view arrived at, and it is no use complaining that the stock of information and ideas out of which these policies and points of view must be fashioned are the premature products of half-digested thought. At the same time, it is clear that it is in such circumstances as these, where standards are non-existent or only half-formed, that the academic charlatan and the purveyor of facile formulae thrive. The more long-term goals of orthodox scholarship may be in danger of being sacrificed to the search for quick answers.

The 'trickle effect' is the tendency for new styles or fashions in consumption goods to be introduced in America via the SE elite and then to pass downward through the status hierarchy, often in the form of inexpensive, mass-produced copies. The trickle effect commonly has been interpreted as supporting the ideology of broad social equality, an ideal pattern which exists side-by-side with differential SS and its symbols. A different and perhaps more signif function is suggested: 'The trickle effect is a mechanism for maintaining the motivation to strive for success, and hence for maintaining efficiency of performance in occup'al roles, in a system in which differential success is possible for only a few.' That is, new types of status symbolic consumption goods become continually available even to non-mobile persons, thus giving the illusion of success to those who cannot achieve actual differential success in the SE pyramid. The maintenance in this way of a strong achievement orientation is dependent upon constant industrial innovation and expansion, and vice versa. A number of researchable areas and hypotheses are suggested. For example, '...the great mass of the labor force may be oriented more to long-term success in terms of their own life histories ... without particular regard to differential status.' K. Geiger.