Sex Structure

Abstract

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. Canadian Journal of Sociology is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Canadian Journal of Sociology / Cahiers canadiens de sociologie. All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions do accept that the radical Porter became the respectable Porter one might fault the thesis on methodological grounds and for the unanswered questions it leaves. Why did Porter compromise his "thoroughgoing democratic values" (p. 112)? Heap feels that a deliberate strategy of respectability was followed. That is, Porter is not really lose his commitment to socialism, but chose to mute his radicalism. Heap notes (p. 93) that other explanations are possible and, for instance, Porter may simply have changed his political views. These alternative possibilities might profitably have been pursued by Heap. It would have given him a book length piece of work, without using reprinted reviews as "fill." More than that, it might itself form a valuable case study of elites at work. Did the elite do-opt or muzzle Porter? Did middle age and recognition simply mellow him? Is he conscious of having altered his views, as Heap charges he did? The direct strategy of asking Porter suggests itself, but despite the interesting beginning that Porter himself gives in his volume with Coleman and Etzioni, Macrosociology: Research and Theory (Allyn and Bacon, 1970), biographical evidence and Porter's own perceptions of his work are ignored. Heap makes some good points in the section on the concepts used in The Vertical Mosaic. This should provide useful supplementary material for students studying the book, if only to illustrate how difficult it is to use terms like "social class" consistently in a down to earth study. A sporting gesture on Heap's part would have been a reprinting of Porter's rejoinder (in the Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology, May, 1972, pp. 188-9)to an article version of part of Heap's critique. In any case, the price of fame, for Porter, will probably continue to be minute scrutiny of his work, and it is not an unhealthy exercise. University of Waterloo John GoyderAnne-Marie Henshel, Sex Structure. Don Mills: Longman Canada Limited, 1973, 166 pp. $2.95.