Contemporary society

About: Contemporary society is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 3991 publications have been published within this topic receiving 91755 citations.

Ten suggestions for improving academic research in education and technology

Abstract: Despite the ever-increasing use of digital technologies in contemporary society, education researchers have yet to fully get to grips with the ‘digital age’. While the topic attracts large amounts ...

Belonging and Becoming: National Identity and Exclusion:

Abstract: This article considers how the increasing national and ethnic diversity typical of many contemporary societies relates to conceptions of national identity in such societies. Particular concern is given to the extent to which these conceptions are likely to include or exclude those characterized by ‘difference’ in terms of their national or ethnic origins. Contemporary survey evidence is used to explore exclusion from a specific national identity - Scottishness. The findings show that for two key minority groups, access to a Scottish identity can be undermined by the perspectives of the majority, who are likely to have a more straightforward sense of this identity. At the same time, the agency which people have in determining their own identities is illustrated, not least by an evident process of ‘becoming’ Scottish among a small minority who were neither born in Scotland nor have Scottish parents.

What Future for Employment

Abstract: Contemporary society is increasingly confronted with the socio‐economic problems generated by what has been described as the end of industrial society and its transition to a post‐industrial society. The most immediate symptom of this transition process is the high rate of unemployment being experienced by all the advanced industrialised nations. The aggregate percentage of the labour force unemployed in April 1978 in Canada was 8.6; in Italy 6.8; in Belgium 10.4; in Great Britain 5.8; in West Germany 4.4; and in the United States 6.0.

Race and Schooling in the South, 1880-1950

Abstract: The interrelation among race, schooling, and labor market opportunities of American blacks can help us make sense of the relatively poor economic status of blacks in contemporary society. The role of these factors in slavery and the economic consequences for blacks has received much attention, but the post-slave experience of blacks in the American economy has been less studied. To deepen our understanding of that experience, Robert A. Margo mines a wealth of newly available census data and school district records. By analyzing evidence concerning occupational discrimination, educational expenditures, taxation, and teachers' salaries, he clarifies the costs for blacks of post-slave segregation. "A concise, lucid account of the bases of racial inequality in the South between Reconstruction and the Civil Rights era. . . . Deserves the careful attention of anyone concerned with historical and contemporary race stratification."—Kathryn M. Neckerman, Contemporary Sociology "Margo has produced an excellent study, which can serve as a model for aspiring cliometricians. To describe it as 'required reading' would fail to indicate just how important, indeed indispensable, the book will be to scholars interested in racial economic differences, past or present."—Robert Higgs, Journal of Economic Literature "Margo shows that history is important in understanding present domestic problems; his study has significant implications for understanding post-1950s black economic development."—Joe M. Richardson, Journal of American History

Histories of Protected Areas: Internationalisation of Conservationist Values and their Adoption in the Netherlands Indies (Indonesia)

Abstract: National parks and wildlife sanctuaries are under threat both physically and as a social ideal in Indonesia following the collapse of the Suharto New Order regime (1967‐1998). Opinion-makers perceive parks as representing elite special interest, constraining economic development and/or indigenous rights. We asked what was the original intention and who were the players behind the Netherlands Indies colonial government policy of establishing nature ‘monuments’ and wildlife sanctuaries. Based on a review of international conservation literature, three inter-related themes are explored: a) the emergence in the 1860‐ 1910 period of new worldviews on the human-nature relationship in western culture; b) the emergence of new conservation values and the translation of these into public policy goals, namely designation of protected areas and enforcement of wildlife legislation, by international lobbying networks of prominent men; and 3) the adoption of these policies by the Netherlands Indies government. This paper provides evidence that the root motivations of protected area policy are noble, namely: 1) a desire to preserve sites with special meaning for intellectual and aesthetic contemplation of nature; and 2) acceptance that the human conquest of nature carries with it a moral responsibility to ensure the survival of threatened life forms. Although these perspectives derive from elite society of the American East Coast and Western Europe at the end of the nineteenth century, they are international values to which civilised nations and societies aspire. It would be a tragedy if Indonesia rejects these social values and protected areas because subsequent management polices have associated protected areas with aspects of the colonial and New Order regime that contemporary society seeks to reform.