Factor In Social Change Research Articles

The Military Factor in Social Change, Vol. 1: From Provincial to Political Society

The Military Factor in Social Change, Vol. 1: From Provincial to Political Society

A Historical Account of Modern Social Change in Ladakh (Indian Kashmir) with Special Attention Paid to Tourism

In the interest of illustrating how approaches to the study of tourism in a local society can be respectful of its specific social complexity, I will evoke the history and culture of Ladakh and focus in particular on the effects of tourism in relation to the other main factors of social change in the region. The most important of these are the State as well as market imperatives. For reasons of methodological strategy, I have chosen to integrate the question of tourism into a historical account of Ladakh's economy and development, rather than trying to fit Ladakh into the general problem of tourist development. This assuming that an approach which takes history into account is more methodologically sound than the other alternative.

Romania

Educational policy starts from the premise that the long- and medium-term reforms that have already been elaborated in the economic, social, and political sectors cannot achieve success without adequate human resources. As regards these resources, education's role is to ensure that the necessary level of quality is achieved to meet the future needs of society. Educational reform is thus not just a means of restructuring the education system, but also an important factor in social change.

Bureaucratic Domination of Hunter‐Gatherer Societies: A Study of the San in Botswana

ABSTRACTSocial science analysis of hunter‐gatherer societies has highlighted their economic and cultural subordination to neighbouring peoples. This article shows that, at least in the case of the San in Botswana, state bureaucratic domination is becoming the determining factor in social change. The authors provide evidence of bureaucratic domination with respect to settlement of the San, the establishment of headmanship, extension of social services and environmental legislation. In this new environment, hunter‐gatherer self‐determination requires the creation of effective political organizations to counter the bureaucratic state. Some San groups in Botswana are already reacting to the expanding presence of the state by dramatically increasing their involvement in various aspects of Botswana's electoral politics. While the outcome of the San political challenge to the state is still in doubt, the authors conclude that San settlement is a precondition for political change in spite of the serious cultural sacrifice involved.

Social Impact of Changing Domestic Architecture in a Neighborhood in Sapporo, Japan

Prior to 1965, all of the residential architecture in the Sapporo neighborhood of Hanayama had been single‐family housing. Sixteen small apartment buildings were constructed between 1965 and 1980. This article examines the impact of changing domestic architecture on the social organization of a Sapporo neighborhood. Possible factors in social change, such as raw population growth, increased density, and changes in the larger social and physical arenas, are examined and found not to be causal elements. Rather, the crucial elements are the behavior and cultural values of the entertainers who immigrated into the neighborhood during this period. [Japan, urban, social change, neighborhood, domestic architecture]

Modernization and the Status of the Aged in China: Decline or Equalization?

Most models of modernization propose that the status of the aged declines with technological and economic development. These models usually conceptualize the lowered status of the aged as a residual or latent consequence of modernization. Rarely do they address age stratification as a political issue, and they fail to differentiate between subgroups of the aged. We compare accounts of the cultural and structural context of the aged before and after China's socialist revolution, giving particular attention to the role of the family, the state, and technological factors in social change. Technological development and urbanization have not been extensive, and a decline in the traditional authority of the aged has paralleled educational advances and a demographic transition. Government family policies and China's labor-intensive economy facilitate the interdependence of age groups and sex roles. These observations suggest current models of the status of the aged should be revised to incorporate conceptualizations of age and sexual stratification and the role of governmental policies in directing social change.

The tourist art market as a factor in social change

Richter, Dolores. “The Tourist Art Market as a Factor in Social Change,” Annals of Tourism Research, Vol. V, No. 3, July/September 1978, pp.323–338. This paper disputes the theory that participation in the tourist art market has had limited economic impact on African artists. An analysis of social changes that have occured in the social organization of a group of traditional woodcarvers indicates that tourist art market participation is directly responsible for significant changes in many social institutions. It has also provided the economic means by which the carvers have been able to respond positively to government policies and regulations aimed at modernization.

Scientific advice during and since World War II

My part in this programme is to speak about ‘scientific advice’, which I take to mean advice to Government. This subject is clearly more diffuse than those which have been treated so far; but at the same time it does have a connexion with matters which were raised, both by Professor Jones in his opening paper, and later by Professor Cardwell. However primitive or however advanced, science is always a major factor in social change; and in so far as Government tries to modulate or direct change, it obviously has to seek scientific or technical advice, both in the civil and military fields. In 1835, the Government founded a Geological Survey because of its relevance to agriculture, mining and the building of roads and canals.

The Extended Family as an Independent Factor in Social Change: A Case from India

The Extended Family as an Independent Factor in Social Change: A Case from India

The Judicial Agreements in Yorubaland 1904–1908

The role of law in British expansion in Africa has received insufficient attention from historians, yet there is nothing new in the use of law as an instrument of imperial or colonial expansion. Law occupied an important position in the organization of the Roman Empire. The Norman kings strengthened their hold on medieval England by centralizing the administration of justice through the establishment of royal courts whose varied jurisdictions eventually became predominant throughout the whole country.This paper discusses the circumstances in which English law was introduced into Yorubaland early in this century largely through a series of judicial agreements signed with a number of indigenous rulers. The primary consideration behind the making of the agreements was the protection of British commercial interests, but the importance of the agreements really transcends this objective. They provided a firm basis for the establishment of British colonial rule in this part of Nigeria—by making provisions for the punishment of criminal offences, by introducing a machinery of justice which struck at the sovereignty of the Yoruba states, and by ensuring the supremacy of English law over the indigenous laws and customs. The agreements also marked the beginning of the introduction into Yorubaland of new legal ideas and principles, which were a potent factor of social change.

REVIEWS

The Melanesian Cargo Cult (Millenarism as a Factor in Social Change). By Palle Christiansen. (Translated from Danish by John R. B. Gosney.) Akademisk Forlag (for the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, University of Copenhagen), 1969. Pp. 5–148. (No price mentioned.)

Comment: The Role of Technology in Society and the Need for Historical Perspective

The unique contribution the historian of technology and society can hope to make is to inject a chronological dimension. Hence historians are not likely to fit well among those who see technology either as an unalloyed blessing or as an unmitigated curse. Historians have, despite a lack of firm methodological assumptions, been piling up empirical evidence that technology has been a well-recognized factor in social change not only back to the Industrial Revolution but also back at least to Olduvai Gorge and the end of the Pleistocene glaciation. However, the most unlikely conclusion they could possibly draw from this chronological sequence is the one which Mesthene attributes to them-that technology as such is not worthy of special notice. Perhaps the econometricians have rubbed out the acceleration of productivity since the 1880s and have denied a change in time period between invention and adoption of technological components in recent decades. The historian is interested in precisely those social, cultural, psychological, and political effects which render the conclusions of the econometricians elegant exercises, beautiful in their way but divorced from the choices which men and women fixed in time have always had to make. For the understanding of contemporary society, technology is worthy of such special notice that a program on technology and society cannot afford to overlook the possibility that important elements in the present interaction between technology and society took shape long before the 20th century. Even if one accepts Mesthene's proposition that the contemporary situation is qualitatively different from that of past societies, the way is still open to use the new insights our present technology and plight give us to reexamine the past with eyes better focused to understand the nature of technology in its interactions with society in any period. Two leading ideas of the present scene-the systems approach and ecological balance-have the possibility of combining to elucidate the nature of technology and innovation, but these ideas need a long time span to test themselves adequately.

Factors of Social Change in a Chiga Village

Factors of Social Change in a Chiga Village

Changing Roles of Men and Women: Illustrations from Egypt

The objective of this paper is to explore and illustrate from contemporary Egypt certain patterns expressing the changing roles of men and women as they confront the demands, responsibilities, and opportunities of their society. Most discussions about changing roles in or modernizing societies in the Arab world begin with the assumption that it is primarily the rising status of women that is the most powerful force for change in the family and the larger society (Berger 1964:134; Berques 1964:172-184; Hamamsy 1958). Implicit in this assumption is the idea that the most important factor in social change is the status of women-that it is the woman's aspirations, demands and successes that will transform Arab society profoundly and permanently. Many of the social reforms carried out in Egypt since 1952, for example family planning and the effort to raise social and educational standards, are intimately bound up with the status of women. The National Charter of May 1962 which is the foundation stone of modern Egypt has stated this principle:

Psychiatric Studies of Patient Needs in Emergency Services of General Hospitals

THE RECENT GROWTH of emergency treatment services in the general hospitals of large urban centers seems to be related to two factors of social change: the increasing ghettoization of inner city populations; and the flight of physicians to suburbia and exurbia in the wagon-trains of their more prosperous clientele, creating a medical care vacuum for the slum poor. The emergency services have been left to fill the vacuum. Our New Haven findings indicate that 85 to 90 per cent of all ER patients are in the lowest socioeconomic groups, i.e., they are poor by any standards, and they are medically indigent.5 To serve its new and growing population adequately, the ER will have to identify its task realistically, and reorganize its program to meet the demands its patient population presents. The emergency service of the general hospital, as now organized, is uniquely adapted to fail in such an undertaking. It is an accommodation designed for the transient. It was established to as-

The religious factor in social change : Max Weber and the Moravian Paradox

The religious factor in social change : Max Weber and the Moravian Paradox

The Servant Class in a Developing Country: Ecuador

Emphasis today is on the political and economic factors in social change in undeveloped countries. This approach, combined with the wholehearted acceptance of the role of the middle class as a psychological leavening agent in such countries, tends to obscure the presence of other factors. Especially are there other categories of human beings who are responding to the forces put into play by world changes and by the increasing pressures exerted upon the social systems of which they are a part. Recently, some of these groups have been given more notice, such as students, intellectuals, labor union members, etc. Another such important category is the servant class which for the most part has been ignored and yet which appears significant, even though not as a political group, in terms of both the effects it has on changes being attempted in social organizations and on the personality development of nationals in such countries.

Stimulus Conditions as Factors in Social Change

Stimulus Conditions as Factors in Social Change

Race Prejudice and Social Change

Race prejudice approach is inadequate to define intergroup and race relations. Scientific formulations do not warrant the degree of precision ascribed to the operation of prejudice or the importance frequently give it as a predictive factor in social change. A two-category hypothesis of prejudice is suggested: (a) prejudice having its source in a personality type and (b) prejudice as a body of attitudes derived from adventitious sources. The latter are held especially important in the prognosis of constructive change, for they derive from social and cultural influences and are modifiable quantities. Implications for a strategy of race relations, centering upon public policy and institutional reform, are drawn.

A Note on Sociological Research as a Factor in Social Change:The Reception of the Kinsey Report

A MONG the criticisms leveled against a recent study of drinking and dating habits of college women' was one which alleged that sociological research which dealt with the mores was intrinsically subversive. The argument was twofold, as follows: (1) the normal reaction to nonconformity to rules should be one of severe disapproval. It is essential that rules have the sanction of such disapproval back of them or else they cannot be enforced. The researcher's attitude, on the contrary, is completely nonmoral. He accepts whatever happens simply as data. He does not support the mores, he merely studies their effectiveness. Such an attitude is subversive because it detracts from the sacred nature of the mores. The subjects of study see that it is possible to view non-conformity in an objective, nonpunitive manner, thus weakening their own drive toward conformity. Increased nonconformity results. The mores are abrogated. They may even be destroyed. In brief, social change is effected. (2) Sociological research, it is argued further, by publishing the facts of nonconformity is doubly subversive. Not only does the process of fact finding itself lead to disorganization among the subjects of study but the airing of the facts further stimulates nonconformity by others. These arguments are very interesting sociologically. They suggest that scientific research is in and of itself a factor making for social change, quite aside from any material or nonmaterial inventions that may result from it. As presented above, they are a converse aspect of the feeling common two or three generations ago among the muckrakers. (Even sociologists like R. E. Park shared it.) Their idea was that if they could only make the facts of nonconformity (in their case, political and economic corruption) known to the public, the public would take the proper measures to change them. At that time, research was looked upon as an ally to social reform, rather than, as intimated above, an ally to social disorganization. Similar criticisms have been leveled against the Kinsey study of sexual behavior in American men. It has been alleged that publishing data of this nature, revealing as they do a seemingly widespread flaunting of the mores, makes for further flaunting on the part of others. If everyone is violating the mores, I might as well, too, it is argued, becomes the common reaction. It is, of course, impossible as yet to test either of these hypotheses. We cannot yet measure or even isolate out the impact on the subjects studied nor on the mores themselves of such a study as Kinsey's. The results of any social invention take time to reveal themselves. Five or ten years from now we may, conceivably, be able to look. back and trace certain results back to the Kinsey report. The points here raised, however, suggest an interesting approach to the whole problem of social change. Perhaps we can trace in detail the exact steps by which an invention (in this case a social invention, the Kinsey report) infiltrates the cultural pattern and modifies its design. In line with this suggestion, a project was attempted to explore the possibilities.