Conference proceeding
Mondale's Blueprint for Applied Sociology
Society for the Study of Social Problems
01 Jan 1978
Abstract
Sociologists have been challenged since A. Comte & C. Saint Simon's sociotechnocratic impetus to discover & sustain the "least worst" solution to the question of how to relate to the State. In the late 1960s, an ambitious blueprint here excited attention, & its sponsor, then Senator Walter F. Mondale, twice won Senate passage of enabling legislation. Mondale urged his congressional colleagues to enact a bill that would establish a Council on Social Analysis & an annual Social Report to the President. Under his plan, social scientists on the government payroll would comment publicly on public policy questions with both immediate & long-range significance. The use of social indicators & social evaluations by the federal government would be vastly increased as well. Mondale stressed the inadequacy of the social welfare & futuristic information on which Congress was operating when forming the Great Society legislation. His proposed Council on Social Analysis would be composed of three top social analysts, & a backup staff of unknown size. Its functions would be to gather data, begin social monitoring, evaluate programs, & interpret sociological findings to Congress. An annual Social Report to the President would be a method of publishing the new Council's work. Critics argue that the thirty-one-year-old Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) could accomplish the same task by adding sociologists to its staff, that social analysis is not as useful to policymakers as is economic analysis, & that there are dangers in overreliance on "scientific" information usage. Revisions in the bill in response to these & other criticisms are described. A number of questions for research are raised about the relevant lessons available in the experience of the CEA. How has its existence shaped the discipline, profession, & practice? The issues of how to provide countervailing power for responsible critics of the proposed CEA are raised.
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Details
- Title
- Mondale's Blueprint for Applied Sociology
- Creators
- Arthur Shostak
- Publication Details
- Society for the Study of Social Problems
- Resource Type
- Conference proceeding
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Sociology; Culture and Communication [Historical]
- Identifiers
- 991020705438704721