Soc Rel Ties In

The brave new field of Social Relations is a pretty complex one. Harvard set up its department three years ago, when anthropology, sociology, and psychology began to overlap at their edges. Similar departments are now turning up all over the country.

This lumping of three vigorous fields has apparently left a lot of people with the idea that not everybody in Social Relations knows what his co-workers are talking about. Two weeks ago, Professor Talcott Parsons, who runs Harvard's department, got a good chance to check up. He was appointed head of a Carnegie Corporation-supported committee, and he says its job is "integrating theory and finding the mutual implications of different parts of the field." In other words, Parsons is going to try to get his henchmen thinking and working on the same things.

He will probably have enough work to keep him from getting bored. Social Relations is still actively oozing out from its original component subjects; new research needs to be tied back into the field. One example which is currently concerning Mr. Parsons is a study of the ambitions of high school boys; it has to consider both the psychological and sociological forces acting on these youths. It must mix all this material with batteries of statistics, with reams of physical and cultural data. As far as we can make out, this is where Mr. Parsons comes in and does some integrating. He has a young department and a healthy one and all sorts of interesting courses. We wish him well.