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Showing papers on "Contemporary society published in 1969"


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In the context of the American Sociological Association's 63rd annual meeting, the following themes were discussed: Confusion and disorder, or chaos, may be viewed in large part as the resultant of the dissonance and discord among the various cultural strata, each of which tends to persist beyond the set of conditions, physical and social.
Abstract: SOCIETY as a whole has been viewed historically from many perspectives. It has been envisaged among other ways as "the great society" (Wallas, 1916), "the acquisitive society" (Tawney, 1920), and "the affluent society" (Galbraith, 1958). Contemporary society, whether observed globally, nationally, or locally, is realistically characterized as "the chaotic society" and best understood as "the anachronistic society." Contemporary society is realistically characterized as chaotic because of its manifest confusion and disorder-the essential elements of chaos. On the international scene, to draw upon a few examples, consider the situation in Vietnam, Czechoslovakia, the Middle East, and Nigeria. On the national level consider the United States, France, the United Kingdom, China, and almost any country in Asia, Latin America or Africa. On the local level, in the United States, consider New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Detroit, Cleveland, Memphis, Miami, and over 100 other cities which have been wracked by violence. Contemporary society can be best understood when it is viewed as an anachronistic society. To be sure, society at any time, at least during the period of recorded history, has been an anachronistic society. For throughout the millennia of the historical era, society, at any instant in time, comprised layers of culture which, like geological strata, reflected the passage and deposits of time. Confusion and disorder, or chaos, may be viewed in large part as the resultant of the dissonance and discord among the various cultural strata, each of which tends to persist beyond the set of conditions, physical and social, which generated it. In some ways chaos in contemporary society differs from that in earlier societies only in degree. But there are a number of unique factors in contemporary chaos which make it more a difference in kind. First, contemporary society, as the most recent, contains the greatest number of cultural layers, and, therefore, the greatest potential for confusion and disorder. Second, contemporary society, by reason of the social morphological revolution, possesses cultural layers much more diverse than any predecessor society and, therefore, much greater dissonance. Third, contemporary society, unlike any predecessor, contains the means of its own destruction, the ultimate weapon, the explosive power of nuclear fusion. Fourth, fortunately, contemporary society possesses the knowledge, embodied in the emerging social sciences, including sociology, that affords some hope for the dissipation of confusion and the restoration of order before the advent of collective suicide. It is a moot question, however, as to whether society yet possesses the will and the organization to utilize available knowledge to this end. * Prepared as Presidential Address, 63rd Annual Meetings of the American Sociological Association, Boston. August 28, 1968. 1

32 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: While a good deal of research is aimed at discerning the particular effects of technological change on industry, government, or education, systematic inquiry devoted to seeing these effects together and to assessing their implications for contemporary society as a whole is relatively recent and does not enjoy the strong methodology and richness of theory and data that mark more established fields of scholarship as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: While a good deal of research is aimed at discerning the particular effects of technological change on industry, government, or education, systematic inquiry devoted to seeing these effects together and to assessing their implications for contemporary society as a whole is relatively recent and does not enjoy the strong methodology and richness of theory and data that mark more established fields of scholarship. It therefore often has to contend with facile or one-dimensional views about

19 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In a period of crisis of values like the one which we are going through at present, we cannot deal with problems of how to without first posing the problems of why.
Abstract: In a period of crisis of values like the one which we are going through at present, we cannot deal with problems of "how to" without first posing the problems of "why." If we were to begin discussing immediately the best way to build school buildings for contemporary society without first clarifying the reasons for which contemporary society needs school buildings, we would run the risk of taking for granted definitions and judgments which may not make sense any more; and our speculations would turn out to be sand castles.

12 citations



Journal ArticleDOI
31 Dec 1969
TL;DR: The role of the apocalypse has been to produce hegemony for the ruling establishment that purported itself as being able to prevent or somehow save potential victims as mentioned in this paper, but in contemporary society that role has been passed to governments and to scientific and technological institutions.
Abstract: The turn of the millennium saw a marked increase in apocalypse-themed mass media, especially in television and film, of which the United States is the largest producer. The role of the apocalypse has been to produce hegemony for the ruling establishment that purported itself as being able to prevent or somehow save potential victims. Historically the church possessed this authority, but in contemporary society that role has been passed to governments and to scientific and technological institutions. In contemporary America, apocalypse is part of a spectrum of religious beliefs ingrained into the American Way of life. Commercial America has resurrected the apocalypse myth as spectacle commodity. Apocalyptic media today reflect current values of the American hegemon in globalization, and are portrayed as particularly real in order to be effective. The increased interest in disaster myths specifically reflects Beck’s (1992) concept of a world risk society. Deconstructing the films Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow reveals hegemonic devices that uphold the American way in the advent of globalization through the use of heteronormative values, scientific savior-adversary binaries, and symbolic rebirth through the recreation of frontier space.

4 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The most unlikely conclusion econometricians 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 as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: 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.

2 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The cognitive value of these theories, their practical significance in the solution of various pressing problems arising in contemporary society on the basis of changes consequent upon scientific and technological progress, the improvement of the organization of labor and rationalization of the processes of economic decision-making, chang... as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: We have grown accustomed to looking at the tasks of sociology from the standpoint of ideological struggles and ideological confrontation of the socialist countries with the Atlantic bloc, in the light of the tempestuous events of 1968. Under such an approach, first place is always given to those tasks that have to do with the ideological role of our discipline — i.e., its role in shaping political views and formulating propositions, hypotheses, and theories to explain the social processes arising in the world of today and capable of influencing political convictions, positions, and actions of significance in political struggle. At the same time, less attention is paid to the cognitive value of these theories, their practical significance in the solution of various pressing problems arising in contemporary society on the basis of changes consequent upon scientific and technological progress, the improvement of the organization of labor and rationalization of the processes of economic decision-making, chang...

2 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Mead's ideas on the development of an international society, which accompanied the unparalleled development of US society during the 20th century, still remain much neglected by contemporary sociology.
Abstract: The publication of these previously unpublished papers (in their complete version) (2) by George Herbert Mead unveils a very interesting aspect of his thought, and should attract attention because of their deep and original sociological foundations. Whereas Mead is widely known for his theoretical contribution to the development of social psychology (mainly through his posthumous book Mind, Self and Society)? which has had a considerable influence in sociology, his own sociological conceptions have remained somewhat less known. For a number of reasons, ranging from the fact that he scattered his articles in philosophical, psychological, and sociological journals without ever assembling them into a book, to the somehow problematic legacy of his thought in the Chicago School of sociology, as well as the almost exclusive--if partial--appropriation of his views by the symbolic interactionist school, Mead's wider sociological reflections have remained virtually unexplored until recently. (4) And even though the last part of Mind, Self and Society is devoted to "society," amounting to almost one-fourth of the total volume and pointing to many fertile developments in sociology, Mead's conceptions of society and sociological analysis per se still remain much neglected by contemporary sociology. While the "return to Mead" movement initiated by Hans Joas in the 1980s has been a fruitful and decisive attempt to revive the originality of this thinker, much work remains to be done if we want a more complete and clearer picture of Mead's legacy for sociological theory and sociological analysis. (5) For one thing, Mead's ideas on the development of an international society, which accompanied the unparalleled development of US society during the 20th century, strike us today as acutely relevant in these times where a unilateral "globalization" has imposed itself as the new catchword to describe our world--albeit more often than not deprived, because of the strictly positive (if not positivistic) content of that notion, of its internal dialectical dynamics concerning the individual's self-consciousness and social movements which were so crucial for Mead's sociological understanding. Also, Mead's historical reflections, which shun historicism while nevertheless embracing the requirements of a scientific view of society and an historicity inspired by the logic of experimentation, can still teach us some lessons about the possible contributions a Meadian sociological analysis can provide regarding the present state of contemporary society. Mead's concept of society, in other words, still demands further attention, and much can be gained in contemporary sociological analysis from his reflections on social larger dynamics, particularly when coupled with his ideas about social reform and an "experimental path" for social action. At any rate, and as the reader will see, the papers that follow presents Mead's main analytical claim about the relationship between individuals and society, the idea that "mind" always appears as the mediation between self-consciousness and the historical development of a specific society. For example, in addressing the development of Greek society with respect to its philosophy, Mead pays attention to the different movements that composed social relations of the times, as well as to the different spiritual and philosophical expressions that reflect them, making possible the reconstruction of highly complex social situations. The first paper situates a very important step in Mead's reflections, since it locates the origins of the scientific mind together with the social reforms that took place in ancient Greece, roughly between the 7th and 4th centuries BCE, which also witnessed the emergence of democracy as a political concept and practice. What interested Mead in this paper, then, is the demonstration of the social processes that form the basis of self-reflection, both on the part of the formation of individual consciousnesses and society as a whole, in terms of its reorganization. …

2 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
Kenneth H. Cooper1
TL;DR: The Role of Exercise in Our Contemporary Society as discussed by the authors discusses the role of exercise in our contemporary society and its role in the development of health and well-being in the 21st century.
Abstract: (1969). The Role of Exercise in Our Contemporary Society. Journal of Health, Physical Education, Recreation: Vol. 40, No. 5, pp. 22-25.

1 citations




Journal ArticleDOI
31 Dec 1969
TL;DR: In this article, the authors define the concepts "ethnical" and "minored" by the Social Sciences perspective, applying it's to the Brazilian contexts, and point out the historical routs of that social inequalities and advocacy that it's have racial basis in contemporary society.
Abstract: The article defines the concepts “ethnical” and “minored”, by the Social Sciences perspective, applying it’s to the Brazilian contexts. Pointed the historical routs of that social inequalities and advocacy that it’s have racial basis in contemporary society. To confer this situation to slavery moralities reproduction connoted that process like a social try to keep the status quo. Advocacy that this situation hurt the ethical presuppositions, like its can verifier in bioethicals theories development in country.