Rate Of Social Change Research Articles

Teaching Latin American Law

Latin America, as the subject of legal area studies, presents a special problem in justification. The defense of Latin American studies cannot rest on the values, however they may be described, of comparison with the so-called non-Western areas-at least not when we are talking about legal studies. Law, as it is written and taught in Latin America, lies plainly within the traditions of Europe and North America. Indeed, so many of Latin America's institutions and so much of its legal doctrine are derived from foreign sources that it is arguable that there is little point in focusing on Latin America in a basic course in comparative law. The European countries have produced incomparably richer source materials, both primary and secondary. Some years back I tried to formulate what it is about law in Latin America that makes it a worthwhile focus for study by American lawyers. Since this is a gathering of academics, perhaps it will seem entirely normnal if I quote myself. . . .Latin America . . . has features that make the comparative study of legal institutions particularly rewarding: (a) a view of the role of law in the community that differs markedly from attitudes in the United States and Western Europe; (b) a degree of disparity between the written law and the law in action characteristic of the world's developing societies; (c) a varying social structure, ranging from the modern and highly Westernized to the semi-feudal; and (d) a rate of social change whose rapidity places serious strain on society's institutional framework. I am willing to stick with that statement. You will have noticed that there is nothing in the statement about training lawyers to handle the affairs of clients with interests in Latin America, or even training them to be able to talk to local counsel about a problem that might arise there. I do not reject those objectives as unworthy; I know of at least one course that is taught in an excellent law school by a talented professor, and which is aimed principally at those objectives. I say only that they are not my objectives. The statement quoted above emphasizes the study of Latin American legal institutions in their social contexts. Once again we should be hard put to demonstrate how such a course differs from any other law school course. Now that the realists have largely won the day,

Crisis Prediction

The importance of the social sciences has been much exaggerated. The social scientists are particularly bad at prediction, and so at helping us to forestall the socio-political crises that occur more and more often. The rate of social change has gone up very sharply for a number of reasons, so surprises are more frequent. This rate should be reduced, at least in rich countries, which face far more unknown situations. Poor countries, on the other hand, face mainly situations known from those slightly more advanced. What poor countries mostly need, therefore, is better information of old kinds, not new kinds of information. Crisis-anticipating information will mostly be valueless, since no one knows how to winnow it. It also requires many low-level informers, and the identity of these people is a major problem of political power. So is the identity of the processor and publisher of their data. Substantial improvements in information and its use might abolish democracy.

The public health and social change: implications for professional education in public health in the United States.

In the coming decades, health needs are likely to be characterized by great and rapid changes in their nature, in their dimensions, and in their relative importance. The list of forces that will affect them includes: growth of population and changes in its composition, concentration in large urban centers, high levels of social mobility both national and international, increasing size and complexity of organization, new and unexpected technologic developments in every phase of life, greater potentiality for affecting health, and rising expectations of health and fulfilment. Traditional organizations and methods for dealing with health needs will not prove adequate. The rate of social change requires that health professionals learn quickly to recognize changes in old problems and the emergence of new ones. They will need also to devise sensitive means to evaluate and modify programs and methods. The skills and knowledge of many disciplines will have to be brought to bear in order to identify problems and to find the means to solve them. Disorders arising from technical developments, from new and old agents in the environment, and as byproducts of medical developments, will require an improved surveillance system, new research methods, and new methods of control, in order to produce a cadre of workers equal to the task of discovery, innovation, planning, and leadership. Public health teaching requires emphasis on concepts, on research training and advanced technical competence, and on the ethical and human consequences of professional activities.

Science Fiction and the Rate of Social Change

Science Fiction and the Rate of Social Change

The Authority of the Teacher*

EDUCATION CONSISTS essentially in the initiation of members of a society into a form of life that is thought to be worth-while. Such initiation takes place, for the most part, in schools and colleges, in which there are often acute problems of social control. These problems of social control have been accentuated by the accelerated rate of social change with an increased gap and lack of understanding between the generations consequent on it, which has made it even more difficult for the young to identify themselves with the values which it is the business of schools and colleges to transmit. The most crucial concept for discussing social control in the school is that of 'authority'. A school is not an organisation like a prison in which coercion is the main form of social control; neither is it like an industry in which control is exercised predominantly by economic sanctions and rewards. Its raison d'itre is to transmit what a community values. It can approximate to a prison; the rat-race in a society can also become so severe that the organisation of a school can be distorted to reflect it. But these are both degenerate forms of a school. To get clearer about what is the appropriate-form of social control in a school more has to be said about the key concept of 'authority'.

Social Change in the United States

ALL education, broadly speaking, is preparation for living. From this it follows that the specific forms and purposes of education must be related to the kind of world in which the living is to be done. Changes in the social world, therefore, are of direct significance in any discussion of critical issues in education, and it is the purpose of this article to select and analyze five clusters of change in recent years in the United States which seem to be of primary importance. These analyses, together with a preliminary note on the nature and rate of social change, comprise the six sections of this article. Other changes, equally important, are assigned by editorial fiat to other contributors to this volume.

The Sociology of Parent-Youth Conflict

IT IS in sociological terms that this paper attempts to frame and solve the sole question with which it deals, namely: Why does contemporary western civilization manifest an extraordinary amount of parentadolescent conflict ?' In other cultures, the outstanding fact is generally not the rebelliousness of youth, but its docility. There is practically no custom, no matter how tedious or painful, to which youth in primitive tribes or archaic civilizations will not willingly submit.2 What, then, are the peculiar features of our society which give us one of the extremest examples of endemic filial friction in human history? Our answer to this question makes use of constants and variables, the constants being the universal factors in the parent-youth relation, the variables being the factors which differ from one society to another. Though one's attention, in explaining the parent-youth relations of a given milieu, is focused on the variables, one cannot comprehend the action of the variables without also understanding the constants, for the latter constitute the structural and functional basis of the family as a part of society. The Rate of Social Change. The first important variable is the rate of social change. Extremely rapid change in modern civilization, in contrast to most societies, tends to increase parent-youth conflict, for within a fastchanging social order the time-interval between generations, ordinarily but a mere moment in the life of a social system, become historically significant, thereby creating a hiatus between one generation and the next. Inevitably, under such a condition, youth is reared in a milieu different from that of the parents; hence the parents become old-fashioned, youth rebellious, and clashes occur which, in the closely confined circle of the immediate family, generate sharp emotion.