Download or read book Sociology of the Future written by Wendell Bell and published by Russell Sage Foundation. This book was released on 1971-10-12 with total page 486 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Concerns itself with the future of sociology, and of all social science. The thirteen authors—among them Wendell Bell, Kai T. Erikson, Scott Greer, Robert Boguslaw, James Mau, and Ivar Oxaal—are oriented toward a redefinition of the role of the social scientist as advisor to policymakers and administrators in all major areas of social concern, for the purpose of studying and shaping the future. This book contains research strategies for such "futurologistic" study, theories on its merits and dangers, as well as an annotated bibliography of social science studies of the future.
Download or read book The Sociology of the Future written by Wendell Bell and published by . This book was released on 1973 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Robert Michels Political Sociology and the Future of Democracy written by Juan Linz and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These essays by the brilliant historian of political science Juan Linz comprise a remarkable intellectual review of the life and work of Robert Michels, his major book Political Parties, and the dimensions of democracy as a functioning system.Linz elucidates the importance of Michels in a way that offers more than a mechanical view of political parties as some sort of precisely ordered system of authority and influence. Instead, Michels offers a view of politics that is bottom up and untidy, what he calls a "reciprocal deference structure." Michels is not simply the father of the iron law of oligarchy, but the idea of politics as a less than orderly network of responsiveness, responsibility, and accountability. Linz demonstrates, with magisterial power, why Michels must be ranked as a foremost thinker in classical political sociology. The remaining three segments of the volume cover areas with which Linz has also long been identified. Each in its own way illumines aspects of Michels as well. "Time and Regime Change" articulates differences between change within a regime and change of a regime--sometimes hard to identify because of the elongated time frames involved. The next essay explains why Spain is neither a traditional society nor a successful modern nation. The reliance upon central authority displaced the hoped for evolution of a society based on representative democratic institutions. The final section. "Freedom and Autonomy of Intellectuals and Artists" is a topic that gripped Michels and Linz alike. Freedom as a goal of the intelligentsia has been frustrated by those who provide ideological justification for repression of ideas and actions in the name of higher values. This segment provides a bridge between Michels and Weber--not to mention both of these major figures with Linz himself. The role of state power in mediating intellectual freedom is the leitmotif that blankets the twentieth century. The work is graced by a full-length bibliography o
Download or read book The Curriculum of the Future written by Michael F. D. Young and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this important book the author looks back on the 'knowledge question'. What knowledge gets selected to be validated as school knowledge or as part of the school curriculum, and why is it selected? Looking forward, Young discusses how most developed countries have high levels of participation in post-compulsory education, but still use curricula designed for a time when only the elite pursued further education. He argues the need to rethink post-16 education to shift focus onto vocational education, school-work issues and lifelong learning.
Download or read book Foundations and Futures in the Sociology of Religion written by Luke Doggett and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-12-14 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the sociology of religion became recognised as a distinct sub-discipline over the last century, the dominance of approaches taking their inspiration from the sociological classics has increasingly been challenged. Empirical findings have brought the notion of secularisation into question; and theorists have sought to deconstruct how we think of ‘religion.’ This collection appraises the continuing influence of the foundational approaches and places these in relation to newly emerging directions in the field. The book is divided into four sections, each section containing one ‘foundational’ chapter written by an established academic followed by two ‘futures’ chapters contributed by emerging scholars in the sub-discipline. These chapters complement one another by placing the overview of future directions in the context of a survey of the development of the sociology of religion over the last century. Topics discussed in these chapters include lived religion, sexuality, ritual, religion and the media. Combining erudite examinations of the British Sociological Association Sociology of Religion Study Group’s work so far with explorations of the future directions its research might take, this book is vital reading for any scholar whose work combines religious studies and sociology.
Download or read book Contested Futures written by Nik Brown and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-03-02 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a unique volume, Contested Futures brings together a group of scholars to examine the relationships between social action and the future. Rather than speculating upon what the future might bring, the volume interrogates the metaphors and practices through which the future is mobilized as an object of present day action and agency. The book shifts the analytical gaze from looking into the future to looking at the future as a sociological phenomenon in its own right. Futures are thus contested in as much as they register differences of interest, time frame or organizational and political form. Contestation is also evident in the ascendancy of certain discourses, languages and metaphors which foreclose some futures whilst facilitating others. But futures are far from being simply linguistic abstractions, and in fact can often be seen to harden into material entrenchment as expectations become scripted into 'path dependency' and 'lock in'. Contested Futures is an invaluable analysis for both academics and policy actors seeking a better understanding of the ubiquity of futures-discourse in the context of today’s uncertainties.
Download or read book Occupy the Future written by David Grusky and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2013-01-18 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How the Occupy movement has challenged the gap between American principles and American practice—and how we can realize our most cherished ideals. The Occupy Wall Street movement has ignited new questions about the relationship between democracy and equality in the United States. Are we also entering a moment in history in which the disjuncture between our principles and our institutions is cast into especially sharp relief? Do new developments—most notably the rise of extreme inequality—offer new threats to the realization of our most cherished principles? Can we build an open, democratic, and successful movement to realize our ideals? Occupy the Future offers informed and opinionated essays that address these questions. The writers—including Nobel Laureate in Economics Kenneth Arrow and bestselling authors Paul and Anne Ehrlich—lay out what our country's principles are, whether we're living up to them, and what can be done to bring our institutions into better alignment with them. Contributers: David Grusky, Doug McAdam, Rob Reich, Erin Cumberworth, Debra Satz, Kenneth J. Arrow, Kim A. Weeden, Sean F. Reardon, Prudence L. Carter, Shelley J. Correll, Gary Segura, David D. Laitin, Cristobal Young, Charles Varner, Doug McAdam, Paul R. Ehrlich, Anne H. Ehrlich, Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne H. Ehrlich, Donald A. Barr, Michele Elam, Jennifer DeVere Brody, H. Samy Alim and David Palumbo-Liu.
Download or read book Take Back Our Future written by Ching Kwan Lee and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2019-11-15 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a comprehensive and theoretically novel analysis, Take Back Our Future unveils the causes, processes, and implications of the 2014 seventy-nine-day occupation movement in Hong Kong known as the Umbrella Movement. The essays presented here by a team of experts with deep local knowledge ask: how and why had a world financial center known for its free-wheeling capitalism transformed into a hotbed of mass defiance and civic disobedience? Take Back Our Future argues that the Umbrella Movement was a response to China's internal colonization strategies—political disenfranchisement, economic subsumption, and identity reengineering—in post-handover Hong Kong. The contributors outline how this historic and transformative movement formulated new cultural categories and narratives, fueled the formation and expansion of civil society organizations and networks both for and against the regime, and spurred the regime's turn to repression and structural closure of dissent. Although the Umbrella Movement was fraught with internal tensions, Take Back Our Future demonstrates that the movement politicized a whole generation of people who had no prior experience in politics, fashioned new subjects and identities, and awakened popular consciousness.
Download or read book Imagined Futures written by Jens Beckert and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2016-06-07 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a capitalist system, consumers, investors, and corporations orient their activities toward a future that contains opportunities and risks. How actors assess uncertainty is a problem that economists have tried to solve through general equilibrium and rational expectations theory. Powerful as these analytical tools are, they underestimate the future’s unknowability by assuming that markets, in the aggregate, correctly forecast what is to come. Jens Beckert adds a new chapter to the theory of capitalism by demonstrating how fictional expectations drive modern economies—or throw them into crisis when the imagined futures fail to materialize. Collectively held images of how the future will unfold are critical because they free economic actors from paralyzing doubt, enabling them to commit resources and coordinate decisions even if those expectations prove inaccurate. Beckert distinguishes fictional expectations from performativity theory, which holds that predictions tend to become self-fulfilling prophecies. Economic forecasts are important not because they produce the futures they envision but because they create the expectations that generate economic activity in the first place. Actors pursue money, investments, innovations, and consumption only if they believe the objects obtained through market exchanges will retain value. We accept money because we believe in its future purchasing power. We accept the risk of capital investments and innovation because we expect profit. And we purchase consumer goods based on dreams of satisfaction. As Imagined Futures shows, those who ignore the role of real uncertainty and fictional expectations in market dynamics misunderstand the nature of capitalism.
Download or read book Theoretical Sociology written by Seth Abrutyn and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-03-30 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since Durkheim’s influential work a century ago, sociological theory has been among the most integrative and useful tools for social scientists across many disciplines. Sociological theory has nevertheless, due to its usefulness, expanded so very broadly that some wonder whether the concept of "general theory," or even the attempt to link middle-range theories, is still of any use. This book, a collection of top theorists reflecting on the present and future of the craft, addresses this most important question. Taking their lead from Jonathan Turner’s important recent work, and drawing on their own broad experience, Seth Abrutyn and Kevin McCaffree have organized the chapters in this book from the general, integrative and review-focused bookend chapters to more specific chapters on innovations in theory construction at the micro, meso and macro levels. Moreover, the book’s microsociological content on interpersonal violence, solidarity, identity and emotion coheres with chapters in mesosociological dynamics on class, education and networks, which in turn integrate with the chapters on inequality, justice, morality and cultural evolution found in the section on macrosociology. The distinguished contributors share a distinct commitment to the development, innovation and relevance of general sociological theory. This volume is an invaluable sourcebook for advanced students and social science faculty interested in understanding how sociological theory’s past and present are informing its future.
Download or read book Future Shock written by Alvin Toffler and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2022-01-11 with total page 625 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The classic work that predicted the anxieties of a world upended by rapidly emerging technologies—and now provides a road map to solving many of our most pressing crises. “Explosive . . . brilliantly formulated.” —The Wall Street Journal Future Shock is the classic that changed our view of tomorrow. Its startling insights into accelerating change led a president to ask his advisers for a special report, inspired composers to write symphonies and rock music, gave a powerful new concept to social science, and added a phrase to our language. Published in over fifty countries, Future Shock is the most important study of change and adaptation in our time. In many ways, Future Shock is about the present. It is about what is happening today to people and groups who are overwhelmed by change. Change affects our products, communities, organizations—even our patterns of friendship and love. But Future Shock also illuminates the world of tomorrow by exploding countless clichés about today. It vividly describes the emerging global civilization: the rise of new businesses, subcultures, lifestyles, and human relationships—all of them temporary. Future Shock will intrigue, provoke, frighten, encourage, and, above all, change everyone who reads it.
Download or read book Figures of the Future written by Michael Rodríguez-Muñiz and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2024-06-04 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An in-depth look at how U.S. Latino advocacy groups are using ethnoracial demographic projections to bring about political change in the present For years, newspaper headlines, partisan speeches, academic research, and even comedy routines have communicated that the United States is undergoing a profound demographic transformation—one that will purportedly change the “face” of the country in a matter of decades. But the so-called browning of America, sociologist Michael Rodríguez-Muñiz contends, has less to do with the complexion of growing populations than with past and present struggles shaping how demographic trends are popularly imagined and experienced. Offering an original and timely window into these struggles, Figures of the Future explores the population politics of national Latino civil rights groups. Based on eight years of ethnographic and qualitative research, spanning both the Obama and Trump administrations, this book investigates how several of the most prominent of these organizations—including UnidosUS (formerly NCLR), the League of United Latin American Citizens, and Voto Latino—have mobilized demographic data about the Latino population in dogged pursuit of political recognition and influence. In census promotions, get-out-the-vote campaigns, and policy advocacy, this knowledge has been infused with meaning, variously serving as future-oriented sources of inspiration, emblems for identification, and weapons for contestation. At the same time, Rodríguez-Muñiz considers why these political actors have struggled to translate this demographic growth into tangible political gain and how concerns about white backlash have affected how they forecast demographic futures. Figures of the Future looks closely at the politics surrounding ethnoracial demographic changes and their rising influence in U.S. public debate and discourse.
Download or read book Dissecting the Social written by Peter Hedstrom and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2005-11-10 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past few decades serious reservations have been expressed about the explanatory power of sociological theory and research. In this important book, leading social theorist Peter Hedström outlines the foundations of an analytically oriented sociology that seeks to address this criticism. Building on his earlier influential contributions to contemporary debates, Professor Hedström argues for a systematic development of sociological theory so that it has the explanatory power and precision to inform sociological research and understanding. He discusses various mechanisms of action and interaction and shows how strong links can be forged between the micro and the macro, and between theory and empirical research. Combining approaches to theory and methodology and using extensive examples to illustrate how they might be applied, this clear, concise and original book will appeal to a broad range of social scientists.
Download or read book The Future of Sociology written by Edgar Borgatta and published by SAGE Publications, Incorporated. This book was released on 1988-11 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Future of Sociology brings together outstanding sociologists in a variety of areas to present their expectations for the future development of sociological knowledge in their areas of expertise. The editors suggest that sociology, having forfeited primacy in the study of many social questions to other fields in the past few years, needs to become more responsive to changes. They react favourably to the increased concern among sociologists with research methodology, development of better data bases, and the application of knowledge. Specific prognoses for different areas of the field follow, covering the theoretical and methodological core of the discipline and different subfields -- social institutions, phenomena, agents of cha
Download or read book The Sociology of Globalization written by Luke Martell and published by Polity. This book was released on 2010-03-08 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: List of Figures, Tables and Boxes p. vi Introduction: Concepts of Globalization p. 1 1 Perspectives on Globalization: Divergence or Convergence? p. 19 2 The History of Globalization: Pre-modern, Modern or Postmodern? p. 43 3 Technology, Economy and the Globalization of Culture p. 67 4 The Globalization of Culture: Homogeneous or Hybrid? p. 89 5 Global Migration: Inequality and History p. 105 6 The Effects of Migration: Is Migration a Problem or a Solution? p. 120 7 The Global Economy: Capitalism and the Economic Bases of Globalization p. 135 8 Global Inequality: Is Globalization a Solution to World Poverty? p. 159 9 Politics, the State and Globalization: The End of the Nation-state and Social Democracy? p. 188 10 Global Politics and Cosmopolitan Democracy p. 214 11 Anti-globalization and Global Justice Movements p. 239 12 The Future World Order: The Decline of American Power? p. 259 13 War and Globalization p. 287 Conclusion p. 310 Acknowledgements p. 316 References p. 317 Index.
Download or read book Perspectives on the Future of the Sociology of Aging written by Panel on New Directions in Social Demography, Social Epidemiology, and the Sociology of Aging and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2013-02-14 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The population of the United States is growing inexorably older. With birth rates historically low and life expectancy continuing to rise, the age distribution of the population in the United States is growing steadily older. This demographic shift is occurring at a time of major economic and social changes, which have important implications for the growing elderly population. Other changes, such as the move away from defined-benefit toward defined-contribution retirement plans, changes in some corporate and municipal pension plans as a result of market pressures, and the 2008 financial crisis precipitated by the crash of the housing market, all have economic implications for older people. They are also likely to make it more difficult for certain groups of future retirees to find their retirements at the level that they had planned and would like. To deal effectively with the challenges created by population aging, it is vital to first understand these demographic, economic, and social changes and, to the extent possible, their causes, consequences, and implications. Sociology offers a knowledge base, a number of useful analytic approaches and tools, and unique theoretical perspectives that can be important aids to this task. The Panel on New Directions in Social Demography, Social Epidemiology, and the Sociology of Aging was established in August 2010 under the auspices of the Committee on Population of the National Research Council to prepare a report that evaluates the recent contributions of social demography, social epidemiology, and sociology to the study of aging and seeks to identify promising new research in these fields. Perspectives on the Future of the Sociology of Aging provides candid and critical comments that will assist the institution in making the final published volume as sound as possible and to ensure that the volume meets institutional standards for objectivity, evidence, and responsiveness to the study charge.
Download or read book New Directions in Sociology written by Ieva Zake and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2011-07-25 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written by the new generation of sociologists, these essays chart a course for the future of the discipline, both by revisiting forgotten theories and methods and by suggesting innovative theoretical and methodological approaches. Comprised of seven essays on theory and five on methodology, the volume also attempts to reconnect theorists and methodologists in a discussion about the future of the sociological enterprise.
