Abstract
THIS little book, planned on the lines of the author's “Vicious Circles in Disease,” is intended to emphasise that, just as in disease, so in social life, various pernicious factors are at work which act and react upon one another, constituting a “circle.” Thus crime leads to loss of employment, which leads to loss of means of subsistence, which again begets crime, and tuberculosis leads to poverty, and poverty is a potent factor in the causation of tuberculosis. The author recognises ten such circles met with in sociology, and while they may act separately, several of them may be in simultaneous operation, e.g. poverty, uncleanliness, overcrowding, alcoholic indulgence, and disease. The remedy is to break the circle, and according to the author “the first task of the sociologist is to extricate from the symptom-complex those dominant factors that constitute the circle, to discover the weakest link in the unending chain, and to effect a breach at the point of least resistance.” The book should be of service to the social worker in assisting him to analyse social problems into their constituent factors, and the references to standard authorities which have been freely introduced will likewise be helpful.
Vicious Circles in Sociology and their Treatment.
By Dr. J. B. Hurry. Pp. 34. (London: J. and A. Churchill, 1915.) Price 2s. net.
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Vicious Circles in Sociology and their Treatment . Nature 96, 564 (1916). https://doi.org/10.1038/096564a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/096564a0