Showing papers on "Social change published in 1970"

Marginality, Stress and Ethnic Identification in an Acculturated Aboriginal Community

Abstract: Psychological changes which result from culture contact and social change have been described for many years within a number of theoretical frameworks, among which is the theory of Marginal Man: Persons living in an acculturated Aboriginal (Australian) community were interviewed in an attempt to comprehend the relations among a number of scaled variables involved in this and other theoretical approaches. Measures taken, in addition to psychological marginality itself, were for alienation, social deviance, psychosomatic stress, attitudes to modes of relating to the dominant White society, degree of westernization, personal barriers to interacting with the dominant community, and ethnic identification. A pattern of results emerged which, in part, supported marginality theory, but which also pointed to a pattern involving more marginality, more deviance and more stress for those rejecting the dominant White society. An interpretation of the data, is offered in terms of reaffirmation of traditional values, a ...

Requirements, problems, and strategies: A theory of persuasion for social movements

Abstract: (1970). Requirements, problems, and strategies: A theory of persuasion for social movements. Quarterly Journal of Speech: Vol. 56, No. 1, pp. 1-11.

Children's Social Sensitivity and the Relationship to Interpersonal Competence, Intrapersonal Comfort, and Intellectual Level.

Abstract: A method of measuring children's social sensitivity is described and the relationship between social sensitivity and certain variables hypothesized as important in its development is investigated. Using a series of four tape recordings depicting two adults in happy, angry, anxious, and sad interactions, social sensitivity was assessed in third and fifth grade children. Age, intellectual ability and interpersonal adjustment contributed most to the development of accurate social perceptions. Surprisingly, there were no significant effects on social sensitivity due to sex, ordinal position, or size of family.

The English novel from Dickens to Lawrence

Abstract: Raymond Williams begins his brilliantly perceptive study of the English novel in the 1840s, a period of rapid social change brought on by the Industrial Revolution, the struggle for democratic reform, and the growth of cities and towns Unsettling, indeed critical, for individuals and communities alike, this process of change prompted the novelists of the time to explore new forms of writing The genius of Dickens, the powerful originality of the Bronte sisters, the passionate vision of George Eliot - all gave new force and humanity to the English novel, whose roots in the evolving community Raymond Williams proceeds to trace through the work of Hardy, Gissing and Wells, and on to D H Lawrence

Modernization and the Politics of Communalism: A Theoretical Perspectve1

Abstract: It has been said that technological and economic development lead ultimately to the decline of communal conflict, and that the emergence of new kinds of socio-economic roles and identities undercuts the organizational bases upon which communal (that is, “racial,” “ethnic,” “religious,” or “tribal”) politics rests. In the past decade, several scholars working in culturally plural societies have challenged this conventional view. They have suggested that communalism may in fact be a persistent feature of social change, and that the dichotomous traditionmodernity models which have often guided our empirical investigations have obscured this theoretical alternative and thereby produced false expectations concerning the direction of change. This paper attempts to synthesize the various elements of this emerging theoretical perspective through the formulation of several propositions which link modernization to communalism. While our discussion will draw primarily upon the Nigerian experience for illustrative material, the propositions are intended to be applicable across societies. “Communalism,” in this paper, refers to the political assertiveness of groups which have three distinguishing characteristics: first, their membership is comprised of persons who share in a common culture and identity and, to use Karl Deutsch's term, a “complementarity of communication;” second, they encompass the full range of demographic (age and sex) divisions within the wider society and provide “for a network of groups and institutions extending throughout the individual's entire life cycle;” and, third, like the wider society in which they exist, they tend to be differentiated by wealth, status, and power.

Encountering the Male Establishment: Sex-Status Limits on Women's Careers in the Professions

Abstract: Despite impressive extensions in the scope of women's social and political rights, there have been few extensions of sex-linked boundaries in the prestigious, male-dominated professions. This paper identifies the processes and structure of the professions in the United States which act to limit women's participation and achievement within them. Because their sex status is defined within the culture of professions as inappropriate, women find that the institutionalized channels of recruitment and advancement, such as the protege system, are not available to them. Various modes of behavior on the part of women and their colleagues are described which are consequences of women's minority position and which reinforce it. Social changes affecting the traditional structures and opening careers in the professional hierarchy are discussed.

Notes on social indicators: Promises and potential

Abstract: Widespread interest in social indicators—indeed, what may be characterized as a new social movement—has developed among both social scientists and policymakers. The concept of social indicators, however, continues to be diffuse and there are exaggerated claims of the utility of indicators. Deficiencies in both conceptualization and method limit the potential of indicators for such tasks as priority setting and program evaluation. Moreover, the development of social accounts, based on the analogy with economic accounts, is fallacious. Redirection in effort and more realistic claims can reduce the possibility of an eventual decline in work on indicators and enhance the value of the movement for both policymakers and social scientists concerned with the analysis and prediction of social change.

The Development of Role-Taking as Reflected by Behavior of Bright, Average, and Retarded Children in a Social Guessing Game.

Abstract: DEVRIES, RHETA. The Development of Role-taking as Reflected by Behavior of Bright, Average, and Retarded Children in a Social Guessing Game. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1970, 41, 759-770. 3 studies explored the performance of young bright, average, and retarded children in a binary-choice, social guessing game. Results suggested a 5-stage sequence of development from a total lack of recognition of the need for secrecy and deceptiveness in the first stage to the fifth stage in which the child was competitive and attempted to outwit the opponent by utilizing an irregular, shifting strategy. Stage changes were viewed in terms of increased role-taking ability. The development of competitive and deceptive hiding prior to competitive and deceptive guessing suggested that the child is able to take account of the other's perspective before he is able to take account of the-other's-taking-account-of the child's perspective. Psychometric ability seems to be a more crucial factor than age in the development of role taking at the lower end of the psychometric range, and chronological age seems to be a more crucial factor than psychometric ability at the average or above range.

Determining the Social Effects of a Legal Reform: The British "Breathalyser" Crackdown of 1967

Abstract: The social effects of a legal reform are examined in this paper utilizing the Interrupted Time-Series research design, a method of analysis that has broad potential use in studies of legal change more generally. A previous demonstration of the applicability of this design to the sociology of law concerned the Connecticut crackdown on speeders (see Campbell and Ross, 1968; Glass, 1968). In that study, the substantive findings were that the crackdown had little effect on the highway death rate, and that it introduced certain unexpected and undesirable changes into the legal process in Connecticut. The present study concerns a similar attempt to lower the highway death rate through changes in the law, specifically the British Road Safety Act of 1967. Critical scrutiny of the data indicates that in this instance the legal change quite impressively achieved its goal. The British crackdown attempted to get drunken drivers off the road, and thus took aim at a scientifically demonstrated correlate of automobile accidents. The Connecticut crackdown, in contrast, was based on commonsense considerations unsupported even by correlational studies. Its sponsors claimed success prematurely, before such possibilities as random variation and statistical regression could be ruled out as explanations of an apparently strikii~g decline in accident rate. In the present study, similar claims turned out to be justified.

Soldiers in Mufti: The Impact of Military Rule Upon Economic and Social Change in the Non-Western States

Abstract: When military officers are either sitting in the governmental saddle or have one foot securely in the stirrup, is it likely that such military controlled governments will pursue policies of socio-economic change and reform? What are the officer-politicians' motivations in reacting to the possibilities of such modernizing changes? Under what conditions are their motivations likely to vary? This essay attempts to answer these questions with regard to the contemporary non-western states. And in making the attempt, I believe that the analysis falls squarely within the purview of certain recent changes that are taking place in the study of comparative politics. These changes may be most broadly depicted as a movement away from that aspect of behavioralism that has focused exclusively upon “inputs,” and away from that dimension of “scientism” that has focused upon abstract concepts at the expense of empirical analysis. The change can also be described (in an overly facile manner) as a movement toward the politics in political science and the government in comparative politics. As is evidenced in LaPalombara's call for “parsimony” in the selection of problems, we should choose problems for analysis that are blatantly political and of obvious contemporary relevance. In approximately half of the contemporary non-western states military officers either occupy the topmost seats of government themselves or they have a marked influence upon the civilian incumbents. And when this fact is placed alongside the potential of most contemporary governments to influence the pace and direction of social and economic change, this essay's central concern fulfills LaPalombara's criterion.

The economics of insurgency in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam

Abstract: Much of the material for this book was obtained through interviews with farmers, landlords, moneylenders, and laborers in the Delta. The author discusses general economic conditions in the area, agricultural productivity, capital and labor, land tenure, fertilizer use, and a subsistence innovation involving the use of an intermediate technology. The analysis focuses not only on the theoretical issues of development economics, such as disguised unemployment, innovation, and investment decisions, but also upon their larger social and political implications.Several chapters are devoted to a detailed examination of the Viet Cong and South Vietnamese government economies at war. Particularly significant is the role that economic issues and policies played in the successful efforts by the Viet Cong from 1960 to 1964 to gain the support of the peasant. Land reform, rent reduction, and even a minimum rural-wage policy were employed. The author provides the first documentary evidence that the Viet Cong were a major force for constructive economic and social change in the Delta.On the other hand, by 1967 massive U.S. economic assistance had gone some distance toward putting the Vietnamese government in a more favorable position with regard to economic benefits associated with dependence on its economy. No doubt, however, long-standing economic and social grievances are still a potent force for the Viet Cong, and there is as yet no complete assurance that the revolutionary social and economic changes wrought by the Viet Cong would not be reversed if the Vietnamese government gained complete control in the countryside.

A class analysis of the bureaucratic process in Mali

Abstract: Summary The impact of colonization had different results according to the native social structures which it met and according to the degree of economic transformation which it brought about. In this process, the African countries were an appendage of the Western capitalist economies, and the social forces which were stirred up in Africa were thus the dependent and terminal part of European society. Such an incomplete and dependent process of social development was bound to give aberrant results in terms of class analysis. Mali is a case in point. A native aristocratic and slave society was developing when this process was halted by the French conquest. The lack of industrial development which followed did not permit the emergence of capitalist classes, while administrative growth gave rise to a comparatively large bureaucracy. African trade remained in the hands of a Moslem and illiterate native bourgeoisie. The colonial crisis abruptly brought these forces into a competition for power in which the outcom...