Social change

About: Social change is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 61197 publications have been published within this topic receiving 1797013 citations.

Community Participation, Social Development and the State

Abstract: This book examines the complex and controversial issue of the role of the state in community participation in developing countries. By examining the application of community participation ideas to different social development sectors, it discovers whether state and community involvement can be harmonized or whether the 2 approaches are antithetical. In addition to its central theme, it traces the history of Other CABI sites 

Social anxiety in children with anxiety disorders: relation with social and emotional functioning.

Abstract: Investigated the psychometric properties of the Social Anxiety Scale for children-Revised (SASC-R) as well as relations between social anxiety and children's social and emotional functioning. Participants were a clinic sample of children, ages 6-11 with anxiety disorders (N = 154) who completed the SASC-R. For a subset of these children, parent ratings of social skills, and self-ratings of perceived competence and peer interactions were also obtained. Factor analysis of the SASC-R supported the original three-factor solution and internal consistencies were in the acceptable range. Among children with simple phobia, scores on the SASC-R differentiated those with and without a comorbid social-based anxiety disorder. Social anxiety was also associated with impairments in social and emotional functioning. Specifically, highly socially anxious children reported low levels of social acceptance and global self-esteem and more negative peer interactions. Girls with high levels of social anxiety were also rated by parents as having poor social skills, particularly in the areas of assertive and responsible social behavior.

The idea of demographic transition and the study of fertility change: a critical intellectual history.

Abstract: The position is argued that progress in the further study of fertility change rests on a reappraisal of the recent intellectual history of demography. Principally recognition needs to be given to the policy influences which were apparent even before the 1950s. The notion of demographic transition as merely a descriptive term is unproductive and impedes a wider range of approaches to the field. The discussion was an examination of the methodological constraints and the reasons for the continuing reliance on descriptive notions of demographic transition. The theory of demographic transition in 1944-45 and the contrasts between Thompsons 1929 notions and the 1945 notions in the United States were discussed as influenced by the changing institutional context important new intellectual developments and the impact of political events. Notesteins ideas were a primary reference point for discussion as reflecting the distinct change in thinking between 1947 and 1949. Democratic stability and long-term prosperity were hinged on the whole process of modernization and widespread economic development; fertility non-regulation was related to lack of motivation. Notestein and Kingsley Davis were thus at the helm of advocating government sponsored policies on family planning for pretransitional countries. "Peasants were not stupid" they were economically rational and the notion of awkward nonrational institutions and social mores was ignored. The impact of the fall of China and Chiang Kai-sheks nationalist regime and the change in foreign affairs on the Princeton Office and demographic intellectual life was discussed in some detail. The ideological competition of the 1960s and 1970s thwarted self reflection on the inadequacies and flaws in the supply centered activism of the international family planning industry and the "overly dogmatic commitment and rigidity to demographic transition." The historical model (Talcott Parsons variations in classifications) was too fluid and general as a causal explanation for change but it became an irrefutable theory. Modernization became the dominant theory in the 1950s and 1970s even though it could not generate unambiguous testable hypotheses about the specific causes of fertility change. Hodgson and Demeny recognized these inadequacies. Demographic transition theory was both a product of a conception in social science and a means for examining predicting and guiding social change. Current schools of thought are the deductivist the contextualist or interpretative and various realist approaches which interact with the aims of control understanding and intervention. There is a need for historical reconstruction in specific contexts of fertility and perceived costs of childrearing.

Experimental evidence for tipping points in social convention

Abstract: Theoretical models of critical mass have shown how minority groups can initiate social change dynamics in the emergence of new social conventions. Here, we study an artificial system of social conventions in which human subjects interact to establish a new coordination equilibrium. The findings provide direct empirical demonstration of the existence of a tipping point in the dynamics of changing social conventions. When minority groups reached the critical mass—that is, the critical group size for initiating social change—they were consistently able to overturn the established behavior. The size of the required critical mass is expected to vary based on theoretically identifiable features of a social setting. Our results show that the theoretically predicted dynamics of critical mass do in fact emerge as expected within an empirical system of social coordination.

Structural social work : ideology, theory, and practice

Abstract: This second edition has been substantially rewritten and includes new sections on globalized capitalism, modernism and postmodernism, and a new chapter on oppression as the source of social problems and the focus of structural social work. This book is intended for introductory social work and/or social welfare courses. Upper level courses on social work theory.