Ways of Social Change : Making Sense of Modern Times

by Garth Massey

• ISBN13: 9781412979870
• ISBN10: 1412979870
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-09-15
• Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc

Summary

This text is accessible and informative, acquainting students in the narratives of contemporary social change and teaching the critical thinking skills needed to make sense of the changing world of the 21st century. The question of the book is not: why does social change happen? Rather, it examines five forces that are, and will continue to be, major drivers of social change: science and technology, social movements, corporate power, government actions, and war.This book is very topical. The author unpacks key events in history, such as#xE1;the election of Barak Obama and the uprisings in Egypt that forced President Hosni Mubarak to step down. Not since the 1960s has there been such a time when students wanted and needed to understand social change. This text takes this desire for social change into the realm of social science where clarification, understanding, inquiry and involvement can help provide for both informed opinions and a path to effective engagement.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. xii
Acknowledgments	p. xvi
The Personal Experience of Social Change	p. 1
A Twentieth-Century Life: Iris Summers	p. 2
From Farm to Factory	p. 3
Extending the Reach	p. 6
Generations of Stability and Change	p. 8
Decades of Social Movements	p. 11
The Means to Being Modern	p. 13
A Woman in a Changing Society	p. 13
The Changing World of Work	p. 15
The Personal Challenge of Social Change	p. 17
Not Every Person's Story: Capturing Social Change in Personal Experience	p. 20
Defining and Understanding Social Change	p. 21
A Very Brief History of Human Societies (With Apologies to Mel Brooks)	p. 23
Before the Last Ice Age	p. 23
World Population Growth	p. 24
Urbanization	p. 25
New Forms of Production and the Development of Capitalism	p. 26
Dominance of the National State	p. 30
Iris Summers' Time and Place in Global Context	p. 31
A More Crowded Continent, a More Crowded World	p. 33
Do Population Dynamics Drive Social Change?	p. 34
The More Things Change …	p. 35
Drivers of Social Change	p. 37
Topics for Discussion and Activities for Further Study	p. 40
Recognizing Social Change	p. 42
Ways of Recognizing Social Change	p. 44
Science as a Special Approach to Inquiry	p. 47
How Is Research Done?	p. 48
Asking Good Questions	p. 49
Concepts and Variable Language	p. 50
From Questions to Hypotheses	p. 52
Tracing and Untangling Causality	p. 56
Gathering Information	p. 57
Sampling and Drawing Inferences	p. 58
Measures of Central Tendency and Association	p. 63
Analyzing Information	p. 64
The Problem of Recall	p. 67
Drawing Conclusions From Empirical Data	p. 71
Research Ethics and a Cautionary Tale	p. 72
Social Policy and Social Change	p. 74
Generations and Social Change	p. 76
The Concept of Generations	p. 77
Generations in the Past Century	p. 77
Birth Cohorts and Social Change	p. 82
Cohort, Age, and Period Effects on Social Change	p. 85
Cohort Effects	p. 85
Age Effects	p. 86
Period Effects	p. 87
Topics for Discussion and Activities for Further Study	p. 89
Understanding and Explaining Social Change	p. 91
The Ubiquity of Change	p. 92
Individuals, Groups, Social Structure, and Agency	p. 94
The Enigma of Time	p. 97
Images of Time	p. 97
Measuring Time	p. 98
Social Time	p. 100
Making Sense of Large-Scale Social Change	p. 100
Theory as a Narrative	p. 101
Social History and Social Change	p. 101
A Way of Understanding or Ways of Understanding?	p. 104
Society as an Evolving System	p. 105
Evolutionary Change in Spencer, Veblen, and Sorokin	p. 107
Society as a Site of Conflict, Power, and the Resolution of Contradictions	p. 113
Conflict Perspectives of Karl Marx, C. Wright Mills, and Georg Simmel	p. 115
Understanding Social Change: Two Explanations of a War	p. 120
The Initial Explanation: Ethnic Hatred	p. 121
A Better Explanation: Elite Manipulation	p. 125
Making Sense of Modern Times	p. 127
Topics for Discussion and Activities for Further Study	p. 128
Technology, Science, and Innovation: The Social Consequences of New Knowledge and New Ways to Do Things	p. 130
The Technology of Literacy	p. 131
A World Without Writing	p. 131
Literacy and Power	p. 132
Literacy and Social Change	p. 133
Understanding Technology as an Agent of Social Change	p. 134
From Stirrups to Cities	p. 135
The Twentieth Century, an Age of Technological Change	p. 137
A Changing Social Reality	p. 138
Technology as Device, Activity, and Social Organization	p. 139
What Is Technology?	p. 139
Technological Change and Social Change	p. 141
Instrumental and Technical Rationality	p. 144
Technology and Science	p. 145
Pure and Applied Research	p. 145
State Funding for Science	p. 147
The Science-Practice-Technology Nexus	p. 148
Innovation and Social Change	p. 151
Diffusion of Innovations	p. 152
Technology and Western "Exceptionalism"	p. 154
Why the West?	p. 154
Max Weber on the Morality of Work	p. 155
Technology and Economic Growth	p. 158
Technology and Social Change in the Periphery	p. 159
Imperialism and the Quest for Colonies	p. 159
Resistance to Technology or Resistance to Change	p. 162
Utopia, Dystopia, and the Lessons of Dr. Frankenstein	p. 162
Japan's Return to the Sword	p. 164
Conservative Peasants	p. 166
The Technological Fix as Resistance to Change	p. 168
The Global Spread of Technology	p. 169
Technology Transfer	p. 170
The Debate Over Technology Transfer	p. 171
International Development and Appropriate Technology	p. 174
Topics for Discussion and Activities for Further Study	p. 178
Social Movements: Human Agency and Mobilization for Change	p. 181
Making Social Change Happen	p. 182
How Social Movements Matter	p. 183
Understanding Social Movements as Change Agents	p. 185
What Is a Social Movement?	p. 186
Common Goods and Free Riders	p. 188
Who Are Social Movement Participants?	p. 190
Resource Mobilization	p. 192
Social Movement Framing	p. 193
Social Movement Tactics	p. 196
Political Opportunity for Social Movements	p. 198
Resistance to Social Change	p. 200
Social Movements Opposing the Direction of Social Change	p. 200
State Resistance to Social Movements as Agents of Change	p. 201
Crowds, Social Movements, and Popular Democracy	p. 204
Social Movements as Drivers of Social Change	p. 206
Linking Social Movements to Social Change	p. 206
Social Movements as Effective Change Agents	p. 208
The Movement to Win Collective Bargaining	p. 211
Tracing the Effects of Social Movement Actions	p. 214
Abortion and the Battle for Public Opinion	p. 217
Personal Change as a Consequence of Social Movement Participation	p. 222
Topics for Discussion and Activities for Further Study	p. 225
War, Revolution, and Social Change: Political Violence and Structured Coercion	p. 227
War as an Instrument of Social Change	p. 228
Versions of War as Coercive Politics	p. 229
Ethnic Conflict and Civil Wars	p. 234
War and the State	p. 238
Creating Nationalism and Patriotism	p. 239
Power and Coercion	p. 240
Purification of Space	p. 241
War as a Driver of Social Change	p. 244
Lessons From Twentieth-Century World Wars	p. 244
Migration and War Refugees	p. 246
Psychology of War	p. 250
Constructing Mentalities for War	p. 251
The Social Economy of War	p. 255
Military Research and Development	p. 261
State and Corporate Planning	p. 263
Revolution and Social Transformation	p. 265
Ways of Understanding Revolution	p. 265
War-Weakened States and Defecting Militaries	p. 269
Revolutionary Outcomes: Political Change and Social Change	p. 270
War and Resistance to Social Change	p. 271
War in Opposition to Social Change	p. 272
Resistance to War: Peace as a Trajectory for Social Change	p. 273
Topics for Discussion and Activities for Further Study	p. 277
Corporations in the Modern Era: The Commercial Transformation of Material Life and Culture	p. 280
Understanding Corporations and Social Change	p. 282
Corporations as Evolutionary Systems	p. 283
Corporations in the Conflict Perspective	p. 283
Businesses, Firms, and Large Corporations	p. 285
Tort Victims and the Actual Price You Pay	p. 289
The Corporation's Varied History	p. 290
Monopoly Capitalism	p. 294
The Ways Large Corporations Direct Social Change	p. 298
Technology and the Corporate Dynamic	p. 299
Control and Investment of Capital	p. 302
Transformation of the Labor Process	p. 304
Advertising and the Corporate Creation of Culture	p. 311
Political Power and Agenda Setting	p. 316
Large Corporations and Resistance to Social Change	p. 322
Corporations Working Against Change	p. 322
Organizational Entropy	p. 323
Corporate Culture Versus Innovation	p. 324
Resistance to Corporate-Driven Change	p. 325
The Environmental Crisis and Corporations of the Future	p. 329
Topics for Discussion and Activities for Further Study	p. 331
States and Social Change: The Uses of Public Resources for the Common Good	p. 333
Strong States and Social Change	p. 334
The Role of Strong States in Modern Times	p. 336
The State and Social Change: The United States in the Twentieth Century	p. 336
Public Health: Reducing Sickness and Death	p. 337
The Public Watering of the West	p. 345
The Judicial Road to Civil Rights	p. 352
Political Generations in the Modern Civil Rights Movement	p. 360
State-Driven Social Change in Modern China	p. 369
Two Versions of Democracy	p. 369
Mao's Revolutionary China, 1949-1976	p. 372
Post-Mao China: The Deng Xiaoping Era	p. 378
The Three Gorges Dam	p. 384
Resistance to State-Directed Social Change	p. 386
Using the State in Opposition	p. 387
Opposing the Power of the State	p. 388
Topics for Discussion and Activities for Further Study	p. 390
Making Social Change: Engaging a Desire for Social Change	p. 392
Using Human Agency, Now or Later	p. 393
Vocations of Social Change	p. 394
Nongovernmental Organizations and Gap Year Experiences	p. 397
Agency and Ethical Responsibility	p. 398
Activism as a Part of Life	p. 400
Social Change Happens	p. 402
Topics for Discussion and Activities for Further Study	p. 404
References	p. 406
Name Index	p. 424
Subject Index	p. 429
About the Author	p. 447
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