Word: smelser
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...most dazzling run-ups in history, and it underscored the enduring psychological lure of the yellow metal as the most consistently sought-after possession in times of strife and uncertainty. Concludes Sociologist Neil Smelser, author of Theory of Collective Behavior: "The gold rush is a classic case of panic. The people who are dealing in gold are operating under the fantasy that the world economic structure is going to collapse. They are living by the myth hat the only thing that will survive is gold." Harvard Social Psychologist Roger Brown compares the panic to he rush on the gates...
...shaped into ingots, bars, coins, which has no nationality, and which is eternally and universally accepted as the unalterable fiduciary value." From the biblical references to the gift of the Magi, to the modern-day totem of triumph in Olympic competition, gold holds a mystic promise. Says Smelser: "Gold resides in the subconscious of man as a tangible symbol for all the fantasies that are completely positive...
...suffering the "baby-boom doldrums" of a generation confronting its inevitable mortality. Sociologists view the despair as something that logically follows a period of growth, the end of heady promise. But they worry about the effects of a prolonged malaise. Observes University of California Sociologist Neil Smelser: "There is abundant evidence that California is presently in a state of psychological depression because of the hollow notion that things are running out. Californians believe the best is behind them...
...church-related colleges), in loco parentis regulations on personal conduct, and so forth. The campus-issue protesters share no thoroughgoing estrangement from the university comparable to the pervasive estrangement from American institutions characteristic of leftists. In their issue-to-issue involvement, the former, in the terms of Neil Smelser's model, typify a "norm-oriented" movement while the student left more nearly suggests a "value-oriented" (ideologically grounded) movement...
...Neil J. Smelser '52, Rhodes Scholar-elect, called for more reading in the G.E. courses and more rigor in the lectures. A student, he said, "often comes out of a lecture only aware that a given historical event was caused by a number of things...