[PDF] Conceptual Structure And Social Change eBook

Author : Sara Schatz
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Page : 236 pages
File Size : 20,36 MB
Release : 2002-09-30
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 031307724X

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Sociopolitical changes are often associated with ideological shifts at the individual and mass level. The study of how sociopolitical and ideological change interrelate has been the subject of debate for decades. Here, however, the authors develop and defend a new theory that treats ideologies as complex cognitive systems that are internally articulated around prioritized principles and values. Focusing on the transition to democracy in Latin America, the book examines the changes in mass beliefs that accompany democratization in an effort to offer a more sophisticated theory of the relationship between belief, ideology, and action in social change. Ultimately, the authors argue for a cognitive-based model that can account for how social actors come to define democracy in current contexts. Taking democratization as a case study, ^IConceptual Structure and Social Change^R focuses on third-wave transitions to democracy of the 1990s because they are evidence of very complex ideological changes and alignments. Using comparative survey data as a tool to track ideological shifts, several ideological uniformities are identified, such as the rise of a unified opposition, the paradoxical support of the masses to the authoritarian party in power, and the ideological shifts and strategies used by ruling and opposition elites to gain mass support. Viewing these changes as the mechanics of ideological systems in flux paves the way for a general theory of ideological change.

Author : Anthony D. Smith
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 368 pages
File Size : 42,2 MB
Release : 2010-01-14
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 1136971076

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Anthony Smith's important work on the concept of social change, first published in 1973, puts forward the paradigm of historical change as an alternative to the functionalist theory of evolutionary change. He shows that, in attempting to provide a theory of social change, functionalism reveals itself as a species of 'frozen' evolutionism. Functionalism, he argues, is unable to cope with the mechanisms of historical transitions or account for novelty and emergence; it confuses classification of variations with explanation of processes; and its endogenous view of change prevents it from coming to grips with the real events and transformations of the historical record. In his assessment of functionalism, Dr Smith traces its explanatory failures in its accounts of the developments of civilisation, modernisation and revolution. He concludes that the study of 'evolution' is largely irrelevant to the investigation of social change. He proposes instead an exogenous paradigm of social change, which places the study of contingent historical events at its centre.

Author : Abraham Edel
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 316 pages
File Size : 20,54 MB
Release : 2018-02-06
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 1351325981

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John Dewey was unique among American philosophers in his insistence that the events, the social structure, the beliefs and attitudes of a period, its models of science and human history, all have some constitutive role in its philosophical theory. This belief is amply demonstrated in Dewey's own writings. Dewey and James H. Tufts' Ethics was first published in 1908 with a revised edition appearing in 1932. Dewey's part in the latter was wholly rewritten, and in effect constituted a new work, showing that Dewey did not believe ethical beliefs were eternal and unchanging. In Ethical Theory and Social Change, Abraham Edel provides a comparative analysis of the two editions to show how Dewey conceived ethics as part of an ongoing culture, not intelligible if isolated.The years between the two editions of Dewey and Tufts' Ethics were momentous in America and across the world. In 1908 industrialism was in high gear, putting greater pressure on social institutions and raising expectations of technological progress and extended democratic growth. By 1932, the devastation of World War I, economic depression, and the rise of totalitarianisms of the left and right had shattered that earlier optimism. The shift toward secular philosophy and new perspectives in research and method in the social sciences was challenging established universalizing views of morality with perceptions of fundamental moral conflict and the threat of relativism in their resolution.Dewey, is an ideal case for comparing changes in ethical theory over a quarter century. Unlike many philosophers he appreciated change and many of his basic ideas are geared to the problem of human control over change. Moreover he is concerned with the relation of theory and practice, and much of his work in metaphysics and epistemology is devoted to discovering the role that doctrines in these fields play and how they reflect the movement of social life. He is constantly concerned with ethics, with the history of ethics, and with the presuppositions of ethical theories that are studied in the social sciences and applied in the normative disciplines of politics, education, and law.Dewey's project of comparison in ethics reveals how theory is crystallized in the processes of the growth of knowledge in all fields and the human vicissitudes of history. Ethical Theory and Social Change will be of interest to philosophers, sociologists, and intellectual historians.

Author : Leo Schneiderman
Publisher :
Page : 264 pages
File Size : 16,41 MB
Release : 1988
Category : Psychology
ISBN :

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This book attempts to show how motives, emotions, psychological defenses, and unconscious mental processes affects social change. Using the constructs of psychology, sociology and anthropology, the author builds a conceptual bridge between the individual and small groups, and social processes. Several significant dimensions of social change are analyzed, including the emergences of new insights on the part of the individual, changes in social roles and social controls, organizational change, and new trends in art and religion.

Author : Douglass Cecil North
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 345 pages
File Size : 38,83 MB
Release : 2009-02-26
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 0521761735

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This book integrates the problem of violence into a larger framework, showing how economic and political behavior are closely linked.

Author : Andreas Sofroniou
Publisher : Lulu.com
Page : 100 pages
File Size : 34,89 MB
Release : 2013-08-09
Category : Reference
ISBN : 1291518886

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Sociology as a social science refers to the systematic study of the development, structure, and functioning of society. In the last two centuries sociologists analysed many facets of their own societies, in the more general context of observing the causes and consequences of the transition from traditional pre-industrial life to modern societies. The fundamental postulate of sociology is that human beings act not by their own free decisions taken rationally, but under the influence of history and culture, and the expectations and demands of others: human beings are both the products and the makers of their societies. During the 20th century, sociologists have been particularly interested in the influence of role, status, class, and power on experience and behaviour, in the family and in the community; in the factors which contribute to cohesion and conflict; in social structure and social stratification; and in social problems such as crime, drug addiction, and domestic violence.

Author : Melvin L. Kohn
Publisher : Anthem Press
Page : 166 pages
File Size : 31,2 MB
Release : 2019-04-30
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 1785270680

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In The Development of a Theory of Social Structure and Personality Melvin Kohn, a pioneer in the cross-national, comparative and collaborative study of social structure and personality examines his sociological research spanning a six-decade career to articulate a theory of social structure and personality.

Author : Theodore R. Schatzki
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 270 pages
File Size : 50,64 MB
Release : 2019-05-02
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0429626827

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Social Change in a Material World offers a new, practice theoretical account of social change and its explanation. Extending the author’s earlier account of social life, and drawing on general ideas about events, processes, and change, the book conceptualizes social changes as configurations of significant differences in bundles of practices and material arrangements. Illustrated with examples from the history of bourbon distillation and the formation and evolution of digitally-mediated associations in contemporary life, the book argues that chains of activity combine with material events and processes to cause social changes. The book thereby stresses the significance of the material dimension of society for the constitution, determination, and explanation of social phenomena, as well as the types of space needed to understand them. The book also challenges the explanatory significance of such key phenomena as power, dependence, relations, mechanisms, and individual behavior. As such, it will appeal to sociologists, geographers, organization studies scholars, and others interested in social life and social change.