Social change

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

Fatherhood in the Twenty-First Century

Abstract: The twentieth century has been characterized by four important social trends that have fundamentally changed the social cultural context in which children develop: womenOs increased labor force participation, increased absence of nonresidential fathers in the lives of their children, increased involvement of fathers in intact families, and increased cultural diversity in the U.S.. In this essay, we discuss how these trends are changing the nature of father involvement and family life, and in turn affecting childrenOs and fathersO developmental trajectories. We end with an eye toward the twenty-Þrst century by examining how the children of today will construct their expectations about the roles of fathers and mothers as they become the parents of tomorrow. This life-span approach to fatherhood considers the broader sociohistorical context in which fatherhood develops, and emphasizes the urgent need to consider mothers, fathers, and family structure in future research as we seek to understand and model the effects of parenting on childrenOs development.

Gender: An Intersectionality Perspective

Abstract: Intersectionality, the mutually constitutive relations among social identities, is a central tenet of feminist thinking and has transformed how gender is conceptualized in research. In this special issue, we focus on the intersectionality perspective in empirical research on gender. Our goal is to offer a “best practices” resource that provides models for when and how intersectionality can inform theory and be incorporated into empirical research on psychological questions at individual, interpersonal, and social structural levels. I briefly summarize the development of the intersectionality perspective, and then review how the realization of its promise has been diverted by preoccupation with intersectionality as a methodological challenge. I conclude with a discussion of why intersectionality is an urgent issue for researchers invested in promoting positive social change.

India: Economic Development and Social Opportunity

Abstract: 1. Introduction 2. Economic Development through Social Opportunity 3. India in Comparative Perspective 4. China and India 5. Public Action and Social Inequality 6. Basic Education as a Political Issue 7. Gender Inequality and Women's Agency 8. Well Beyond Liberalization Statistical Appendix

Enacting the social

Abstract: This paper is concerned with the power of social science and its methods. We first argue that social inquiry and its methods are productive: they (help to) make social realities and social worlds. They do not simply describe the world as it is, but also enact it. Second, we suggest that, if social investigation makes worlds, then it can, in some measure, think about the worlds it wants to help to make. It gets involved in 'ontological politics'. We then go on to show that its methods - and its politics - are still stuck in, and tend to reproduce, nineteenth-century, nation-state-based politics. How might we move social science from the enactment of nineteenth-century realities? We argue that social-and-physical changes in the world are - and need to be - paralleled by changes in the methods of social inquiry. The social sciences need to re-imagine themselves, their methods, and their 'worlds' if they are to work productively in the twenty-first century where social relations appear increasingly complex, elusive, ephemeral, and unpredictable. There are various possibilities: perhaps, for instance, there is need for 'messy' methods. But in the present paper we explore some implications of complexity theory to see whether and how this might provide productive metaphors and theories for enacting twenty-first-century realities.