Page 36 - Decoding Culture

THE WAY WE WERE 29

the form taken by that individualism varies, ranging from the stim­
ulus-response automaton presumed in the more psychologically
disposed areas of the tradition to the socialized actor common in
sociologically influenced work. In the former, where the tendency
has been to focus upon such features as behavioural attributes,
reinforcement, and the acquisition and modification of dispositions
and expectations, the 'social' is all but eliminated from the tacit
ontology. The consequent difficulties of psychological effects
research in generalizing from the laboratory and/or establishing
consistent results are too well known to need enumeration here.
Rather more interesting are the more sophisticated assumptions
about social action which inform less psychologically restrictive
approaches. Carey and Kreiling (1974), in the course of a persua­
sive critique of Uses and Gratifications studies, draw attention to
that framework's utilitarian and functionalist underpinnings. Their
diagnosis can usefully be applied more generally, for utilitarian and
functionalist conceptions inform the whole effects research trad­
ition, at least where it actively seeks to conceptualize the social.
This is to be expected. Just as effects research was epistemologi­
cally caught up in social science conceptions of scientific inquiry, so
it looked to the sociological orthodoxy of the time for its social ontol­
ogy. In this conception the social world is composed of actors, with
ends in view, making choices among the means available to them.
The terms within which they act are fundamentally structured by
normative constraints and by prescriptions as to what counts as
appropriate action, processes to be understood, above all, through
the ubiquitous concepts of role and socialization. Role defines our
social position and the normative expectations attendant upon that
position, and, in the course of socialization, we internalize from our
culture the norms and values proper to our roles. Systems of roles
are in turn ordered into institutional structures, and these structures
are interrelated in a complex system of which they constitute the

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