Social change

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

Social Entrepreneurship: A Critical Review of the Concept

Abstract: This paper undertakes an analytical, critical and synthetic examination of "social entrepreneurship" in its common use, considering both the "social" and the "entrepreneurship" elements in the concept. On both points there is a range of use, with significant differences marked out by such things as the prominence of social goals and what are thought of as the salient features of entrepreneurship. The paper concludes with the proposal of a suitably flexible explication of the concept: social entrepreneurship is exercised where some person or persons (1) aim either exclusively or in some prominent way to create social value of some kind, and pursue that goal through some combination of (2) recognizing and exploiting opportunities to create this value, (3) employing innovation, (4) tolerating risk and (5) declining to accept limitations in available resources.

Privatizing Risk without Privatizing the Welfare State: The Hidden Politics of Social Policy Retrenchment in the United States

Abstract: Over the last decade, students of the welfare state have produced an impressive body of research on retrenchment, the dominant thrust of which is that remarkably few welfare states have experienced fundamental shifts. This article questions this now-conventional wisdom by reconsidering the post-1970s trajectory of the American welfare state, long considered the quintessential case of social policy stability. I demonstrate that although most programs have indeed resisted retrenchment, U.S. social policy has also offered increasingly incomplete risk protection in an era of dramatic social change. Although some of this disjuncture is inadvertent—an unintended consequence of the very political stickiness that has stymied retrenchment—I argue that the declining scope of risk protection also reflects deliberate and theoretically explicable strategies of reform adopted by welfare state opponents in the face of popular and change-resistant policies, a finding that has significant implications for the study of institutional change more broadly.

The social development model: A theory of antisocial behavior.

Abstract: This chapter presents a theory of antisocial behavior, the social development model, which organizes the results of research on risk and protec· tive factors for delinquency, crime, and substance abuse into hypQtheses regarding the development of antisocial and prosocial behavior. The social development model is grounded in tests of prior criminological theory. It hypothesizes similar general processes leading to prosocial and antisocial development, and specifies submodels for four specific periods during ch ildhood and adolescent development. Theoretical Considerations The social development model seeks to explain a broad range of distinct behaviors ranging from the use of illegal drugs to homicide. Crime, including violent and nonviolent offending and drug abuse, is viewed as a constellation of behaviors subject to the general principles incorporated in the model. .By considering evidence from research on the etiology .of both delinquency and drug abuse, it is possible to identify general constructs that predict both types of behavior and to use this knowledge in specifying predictive relationships in the development of antisocial behavior. ~ used here, the terms delinquency and drug use refer to behaviors. All behaviors are subject to influence from a variety of forces. The same principles, factors, or processes that influence one behavior should predict other behaviors. At the least, this suggests that a theory of antisocial behavior should be able to predict both drug use and criminal behavior, whether committed by children or adults. More ambitiously, it suggests a search for universal factors, mechanisms, or processes that predict all behavior. This implies a general theory. Gottfredson and Hirschi ( 1990), for example, have proposed "A General Theory of Crime," which attributes all criminal Preparation of this chapter was supported in part by grants from the National Insti· tute on Drug Abuse.

Gender As a Social Structure Theory Wrestling with Activism

Abstract: In this article, the author argues that we need to conceptualize gender as a social structure, and by doing so, we can better analyze the ways in which gender is embedded in the individual, interactional, and institutional dimensions of our society. To conceptualize gender as a structure situates gender at the same level of general social significance as the economy and the polity. The author also argues that while concern with intersectionality must continue to be paramount, different structures of inequality have different constructions and perhaps different influential causal mechanisms at any given historical moment. We need to follow a both/and strategy to understand gender structure, race structure, and other structures of inequality as they currently operate while also systematically paying attention to how these axes of domination intersect. Finally, the author suggests we pay more attention to doing research and writing theory with explicit attention to how our work can indeed help transform as w...

Social indicators: the EU and social inclusion

Abstract: Social indicators are an important tool for evaluating a country's level of social development and for assessing the impact of policy. Such indicators are already in use in investigating poverty and social exclusion in several European countries and have begun to play a significant role in advancing the social dimension of the EU as a whole. The purpose of this book is to make a scientific contribution to the development of social indicators for the purposes of European policy‐making. It considers the principles underlying the construction of policy‐relevant indicators, the definition of indicators, and the issues that arise in their implementation, including that of the statistical data required. It seeks to bring together theoretical and methodological methods in the measurement of poverty/social exclusion with the empirical practice of social policy. The experience of member states is reviewed, including an assessment of the National Action Plans on Social Inclusion submitted for the first time in June 2001 by the 15 EU governments. The key areas covered by the book are poverty, including its intensity and persistence, income inequality, non‐monetary deprivation, low educational attainment, unemployment, joblessness, poor health, poor housing and homelessness, functional illiteracy and innumeracy, and restricted social participation. In each case, the book assesses the strengths and weaknesses of different indicators relevant to social inclusion in the EU, and makes recommendations for the indicators to be employed. The book is based on a report prepared at the request of the Belgian government, as part of the Belgian presidency of the Council of the EU in the second half of 2001, and presented at a conference on ‘Indicators for Social Inclusion: Making Common EU Objectives Work’ held at Antwerp on 14–15 Sept 2001.