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“Role Theory,” Political Science, and African Studies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Alvin Magid
Alvin Magid
Affiliation:
State University of New York, Albany
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Abstract

Numerous studies of role, employing diverse methodologies in a wide range of social contexts, have accumulated in the social sciences over many decades. The concept of role retains considerable appeal for some who still pursue the goal of a unified theory of behavior for the social sciences, and for many others who discern in the role perspective a major source of concepts and insights on which they may draw eclectically for all manner of social research. Since the 1950s, and especially during the current decade, political scientists have produced studies of role and of role conflict focusing on political and administrative actors caught up in the process of change in various independent African states. Because die number and diversity of these studies are likely to increase in the future, they merit description and evaluation as a group. Both objectives are pursued in this article, with particular reference to three works on politics and administration in Ghana, Sierra Leone, and Tanzania.

Type
Review Articles
Information
World Politics , Volume 32 , Issue 2 , January 1980 , pp. 311 - 330
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1980

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References

1 Biddle, Bruce J. and Thomas, Edwin J., eds., Role Theory: Concepts and Research (New York: Wiley 1966), 383–429Google Scholar; Sarbin, Theodore, “Role Theory,” in Lindzey, Gardner, ed., Handbook, of Social Psychology, I (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley 1959), 223–58Google Scholar; Neiman, Lionel J. and Hughes, James W., “The Problem of the Concept of Role—A Re-Survey of the Literature,“ Social Forces, xxx (December 1951), 141–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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8 See Biddle and Thomas (fn. 1), 4.

9 Role conflict involves contradictory expectations that cannot be fulfilled simultaneously by the same actor. The concept is explicated on pp. 320–21.

10 See the extensive bibliography cited in Magid, , Men in the Middle: Leadership and Role Conflict in a Nigerian Society (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press and Africans 1976), 2Google Scholar, n. 1.

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23 Magid (fn. 10), 9–12.

24 See, for example, Ibid., 116–18, 183–89; Barrows, Grassroots Politics in an African State, 97–142.

25 See, for example, Burchard, Waldo W., “Role Conflicts in Military Chaplains,“ American Sociological Review, xix (October 1954), 528CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Spiegel, John, “The Resolution of Conflict Within the Family,“ Psychiatry, xx (February 1957), 2Google Scholar, n. 1; Jacobson, Eugene and others, “The Use of the Role Concept in the Study of Complex Organizations,” Journal of Social Issues, vii, No. 3 (1951), 22–23Google Scholar; Getzels, J. W. and Guba, E. G., “Role, Role Conflict, and Effectiveness,” American Sociological Review, xix (1954), 165Google Scholar.

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28 The four alternatives are contradictory role expectations involving one role-set; contradictory role expectations involving multiple role-sets; contrary role expectations involving one role-set; contrary role expectations involving multiple role-sets.

29 Barrows's discussion of modernization and of role conflict draws on Whitaker (fn. 20), and Nadel, S. F., The Theory of Social Structure (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press 1957)Google Scholar.

30 Magid (fn. 10), 12–19.

31 Ibid., 122–24, I93–99J 222–28.

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