Social Change Theories in Motion

Social Change Theories in Motion

Author: Thomas C. Patterson

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-02-01

Total Pages: 579

ISBN-13: 1351137646

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This book assesses how theorists explained processes of change set in motion by the rise of capitalism. It situates them in the milieu in which they wrote. They were never neutral observers standing outside the conditions they were trying to explain. Their arguments were responses to those circumstances and to the views of others commentators, living and dead. Some repeated earlier views; others built on those perspectives; a few changed the way we think. While surveying earlier writers, the author’s primary concerns are theorists who sought to explain industrialization, imperialism, and the consolidation of nation-states after 1840. Marx, Durkheim, and Weber still shape our understandings of the past, present, and future. Patterson focuses on explanations of the unsettled conditions that crystallized in the 1910s and still persist: the rise of socialist states, anti-colonial movements, prolonged economic crises, and almost continuous war. After 1945, theorists in capitalist countries, influenced by Cold War politics, saw social change in terms of economic growth, progress, and modernization; their contemporaries elsewhere wrote about underdevelopment, dependency, or uneven development. In the 1980s, theorists of postmodernity, neoliberalism, globalization, innovations in communications technologies, and post-socialism argued that they rendered earlier accounts insufficient. Others saw them as manifestations of a new imperialism, capitalist accumulation on a global scale, environmental crises, and nationalist populism.


Encyclopaedia Britannica

Encyclopaedia Britannica

Author: Hugh Chisholm

Publisher:

Published: 1910

Total Pages: 1090

ISBN-13:

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This eleventh edition was developed during the encyclopaedia's transition from a British to an American publication. Some of its articles were written by the best-known scholars of the time and it is considered to be a landmark encyclopaedia for scholarship and literary style.


Theories of Social Innovation

Theories of Social Innovation

Author: Danielle Logue

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 204

ISBN-13: 1786436892

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As we grapple with how to respond to some of the world’s most pressing problems, such as inequality, poverty and climate change, there is growing global interest in ‘social innovation’ as a potential solution. But what exactly is ‘social innovation’? This book describes three ways to theorise social innovation when seeking to manage and organize for both social and economic progress.


Darwinian Social Evolution and Social Change

Darwinian Social Evolution and Social Change

Author: William Kerr

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2021-07-29

Total Pages: 239

ISBN-13: 3030779998

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This book introduces the value of a Darwinian social evolutionary approach to understanding social change. The chapters discuss several different perspectives on social evolutionary theory, and go on to link these with comparative and historical sociological theory, and two case-studies. Kerr brings together social change theory and theories on nationalism, whilst also providing concrete examples of the theories at work. The book offers a vision of rapprochement between these different areas of theory and study, and to where this could lead future studies of comparative history and sociology. As such, it should be useful to scholars and students of nationalism and social change, sociologists, political scientist and historians.


Social Change and Development

Social Change and Development

Author: Alvin Y. So

Publisher: SAGE

Published: 1990-03

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 9780803935471

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During the past four decades, the field of development has been dominated by three schools of research. The 1950s saw the modernization school, the 1960s experienced the dependency school, the 1970s developed the new world-system school, and the 1980s is a convergence of all three schools. Alvin Y. So examines the dynamic nature of these schools of development--what each of them represents, their contributions, how they have criticized each other, how they have defended themselves, and how they were transformed. He reviews a variety of empirical studies, focusing on the "classical" and the "new" models, to show how each of the perspectives affects the study of development. In addition, this book features a unique emphasis on the research implications of the three perspectives, involving changes in orientation, agenda, methodology, and findings.


Economic Theory and Social Change

Economic Theory and Social Change

Author: Hasse Ekstedt

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2010-06-30

Total Pages: 325

ISBN-13: 1136948821

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This book is a discourse on modelling Man in a social context. Its focus is on economic main-stream theory in its capacity to handle basic problems such as uncertainty, social dynamics and ethics. The point of departure is a systematic critique of the specific methodology of economics and its axiomatic structure. The ultimate aim is to develop an economic theory for a socially sustainable society. Economic Theory and Social Change analyses the foundation of economic market theory in relation to its social implications. On rejecting the axiomatic structure of the market theory Hasse Ekstedt and Angelo Fusari analyse the concept of growth and uncertainty with respect to a more realistic modelling of man, The book also addresses central political problems and their potential solutions, including permanent unemployment, distribution of income, the interaction of real and financial growth, money and the credit system. In seeking objective values to help to obtain a socially sustainable society, the book traces a tentative revision of economic and social thought based on a deepening of some crucial features of modern economies and societies. These features include innovation, the connected flows of uncertainty, entrepreneurship, and their role in fuelling and characterizing economic growth and development. This book will be of interest to postgraduate students and researchers of Economics, particularly to those focussing on Economic Theory and Political Economy.


A Measure for Measures

A Measure for Measures

Author: R Pawson

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2004-08-02

Total Pages: 499

ISBN-13: 113497289X

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First Published in 2004. This challenging and pioneering work aims to provide a measure (a set of standards) for measures (empirical data) in sociological research. It argues that the critique of positivism has resulted in a methodological impasse. Criticism has pulled the rug from under positivist method but left nothing in its place. In a devastating and systematic critique the author rejects phenomenological and relativist objections to sociological measurement. A wholly new model for the empirical substantiation of sociological theory is developed based on an examination of scientific measurement techniques and a reading of realist philosophical principles. Unlike many books heralding a new direction in sociology, A MEASURE FOR MEASURES goes beyond meta-theory, providing detailed examples to show how the 'new realism' can provide a viable empirical method.


Social Theory after the Internet

Social Theory after the Internet

Author: Ralph Schroeder

Publisher: UCL Press

Published: 2018-01-04

Total Pages: 210

ISBN-13: 178735122X

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The internet has fundamentally transformed society in the past 25 years, yet existing theories of mass or interpersonal communication do not work well in understanding a digital world. Nor has this understanding been helped by disciplinary specialization and a continual focus on the latest innovations. Ralph Schroeder takes a longer-term view, synthesizing perspectives and findings from various social science disciplines in four countries: the United States, Sweden, India and China. His comparison highlights, among other observations, that smartphones are in many respects more important than PC-based internet uses. Social Theory after the Internet focuses on everyday uses and effects of the internet, including information seeking and big data, and explains how the internet has gone beyond traditional media in, for example, enabling Donald Trump and Narendra Modi to come to power. Schroeder puts forward a sophisticated theory of the role of the internet, and how both technological and social forces shape its significance. He provides a sweeping and penetrating study, theoretically ambitious and at the same time always empirically grounded.The book will be of great interest to students and scholars of digital media and society, the internet and politics, and the social implications of big data.


Critical Theory and Social Transformation

Critical Theory and Social Transformation

Author: Gerard Delanty

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-02-24

Total Pages: 395

ISBN-13: 1000037320

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Critical Theory and Social Transformation provides an exploration of the major themes in critical social theory of recent years. Delanty argues that a critical theory perspective can offer much-needed insights into the pressing socio-political challenges of our time. In this volume, he advances the need to reconnect social theory and social research and to return to the foundational concerns of critical social theory. Delanty engages with the key topics facing critical social theorists: capitalism, cosmopolitanism, modernity, the Anthropocene, and legacies of history. The connecting thread is that the topics are all contemporary challenges for critical theory and relate to major social transformations. The notions of critique, crisis, and social transformation are central to the book. Critical Theory and Social Transformation will be of interest to the broad readership in social and political theory. It will appeal to those working in sociology, political sociology, politics, and international studies and to anyone with an interest in any of the chapter-specific topics, such as public space, memory, and neo-authoritarianism.