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THE ADVENT OF THE ALL-VOLUNTEER ARMY IN THE US HAS RAISED CONCERNS AMONG SOCIOLOGISTS & POLICY-MAKERS REGARDING THE STRUCTURAL ISOLATION OF THE ARMED FORCES FROM CIVILIAN SOCIETY. DATA FROM A 1973 SURVEY CONDUCTED BY THE DETROIT AREA STUDY (N=576) WERE ANALYZED TO DETERMINE THE EXTENT TO WHICH LINKAGES EXIST BETWEEN MEMBERS OF THE CIVILIAN POPULATION OF DETROIT & US MILITARY INSTITUTIONS. ROUGHLY 20% OF THE SAMPLE WAS COMPOSED OF VETERANS, & ROUGHLY 25% REPORTED TAKING ADVANTAGE OF EACH OF THE 3 MAJOR FORMS OF VETERAN'S BENEFITS: EDUCATION, MORTGAGE LOANS, & INSURANCE. ABOUT 15% OF THE SAMPLE REPORTED HAVING HELD JOBS THAT BROUGHT THEM INTO CONTACT WITH MILITARY PERSONNEL. A BIT MORE THAN 50% REPORTED A MILITARY VETERAN AMONG THEIR 3 CLOSEST FRIENDS. VERY LITTLE DISCUSSION WAS FOUND TO TAKE PLACE REGARDING MILITARY AFFAIRS, & FEW OTHER LINKAGES WERE IDENTIFIED TO THE MILITARY ESTABLISHMENT. ALTHOUGH THE R'S TENDED TO OPPOSE THE VIETNAM WAR & MILITARY SPENDING, & FAVORED THE END OF CONSCRIPTION, THEY HAD FAVORABLE EVALUATIONS OF THE MILITARY AS AN INSTITUTION. 5 TABLES. AA.

The relative roles of mass media and interpersonal communication in the transmission of information about war and the armed forces are evaluated using data from a sample of the population of the Detroit Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area. Little interpersonal discussion was found to take place regarding military affairs. The most common source of information was found to be the printed media, with the visual media second most important. The data suggest that a "one-step" rather than a "two-step" flow model best represents communication about the military.

The notion that a relationship exists between social stratification and politics is axiomatic in political sociology. In Canada, as in other western industrial nations, we know that such elements of the stratification system as economic class, race, and religion are associated with political party choice (Reid, 1967; Meisel, 1967).In traditional societies there tends to be a high correlation among the various dimensions of the stratification system. That is, a person who is of high status on one dimension will tend to be of high status on others, and vice versa. Since traditional societies also tend to be characterized by ascriptive stratification systems, individuals pass their relative advantages or disadvantages on to their children, and the class structure remains more or less stationary.With the rationalization of economic systems through the process of developing industrial organization, achievement-oriented bases of social status become differentiated from traditional ascriptive bases, and assume increased importance. Thus, capable people from low status backgrounds may through education or skill enter high status occupations; that is, social mobility occurs.Such social mobility confounds the relationship between stratification and politics, because the correlation between dimensions of social stratification becomes more imperfect. Some members of society who have little claim to status on the basis of ascriptive criteria find themselves in high status positions through their own achievements. At the same time, others from high status backgrounds find themselves earning through their own achievements lower status positions than their parents' occupied.

Analysis of survey data on party identification in US presidential elections from 1952 to 1964 (N's=1,614; 1,772; 3,021; 1,418, respectively), collected by the Survey Res Center, U of Michigan, suggests that L. B. Johnson's victory over B. Goldwater in 1964 was not due to the defection of Republicans in that yr. Rather, it was due to a shift away from the Republican Party that began in 1956. In addition, almost 66.6% of the R's calling themselves Independents in 1964 (N=224) voted for the Democratic candidate. The Democrats were victorious at the polls despite the facts that numerically, Republican defections were almost equaled by Democratic defections, & turnout was higher among Republicans than among Democrats. These data cannot be used to predict the outcome of the 1968 election, since the intensity of att's & the presence of a strong 3rd party suggest that 1968 will be a critical election in the US. AA.

As a major socio-political doctrine in the industrializing West, Marxism has had great impact on die research and theory of political sociology and behavioral political science. Particularly, a great deal of research energy has been expended on establishing the nature and degree of the relationship between social class and political partisanship in Western democracies.

Since the advent of the all-volunteer force in the 1970s, marriage, parenthood, and family life have become commonplace in the U.S. military among enlisted personnel and officers alike, and military spouses and children now outnumber service members by a ratio of 1.4 to 1. Reviewing data from the government and from academic and nonacademic research, Molly Clever and David R. Segal find several trends that distinguish today's military families. Compared with civilians, for example, service members marry younger and start families earlier. Because of the requirements of their jobs, they move much more frequently than civilians do, and they are often separated from their families for months at a time. And despite steady increases since the 1970s in the percentage of women who serve, the armed forces are still overwhelmingly male, meaning that the majority of military parents are fathers.

Despite these distinguishing trends, Clever and Segal's chief finding is that military families cannot be neatly pigeonholed. Instead, they are a strikingly diverse population with diverse needs. Within the military, demographic groups differ in important ways, and the service branches differ from one another as well. Military families themselves come in many forms, including not only the categories familiar from civilian life—two-parent, single-parent, and so on—but also, unique to the military, dual-service families in which both parents are service members. Moreover, military families' needs change over time as they move through personal and military transitions. Thus the best policies and programs to help military families and children are flexible and adaptable rather than rigidly structured.