Theory and Review of Theory About
Social, Political, Economic Change |
There is a theory which
states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe
is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be
replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.
There is another theory which states that this has already
happened.
The Restaurant at the end of the Universe,
Douglas Adams. Harmony Books.
Classical theories of social change
Why does a society develop the way it does? http://gsociology.icaap.org/report/summary2.htm
out
summary of theories of change.
Haferkamp, Hans, and Neil J. Smelser, editors Social Change and
Modernity. Berkeley : University of California Press, 1992.
http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft6000078s
Available
free on line from University of California Press Scholarship
Editions http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/
See our other
page for further listings.
Social Change, Craig Calhoun http://edu.learnsoc.org/Chapters/4%20key%20concepts%20in%20sociology/4%20social%20change.htm
chapter in Encyclopedia of Sociology, Edgar Borgatta, Ed in chief
and Rhonda Montgomery, Managing Ed.
Social Change lecture notes, from Russel Long
http://www.delmar.edu/socsci/rlong/intro/change.htm
brief
reviews
of theories of change, along with some charts and tables.
Comprehensive Theory of Social Development,
by Garry Jacobs, Robert Macfarlane, and N. Asokan, 1997
http://www.icpd.org/development_theory/comprehensive_theory_of_social_development.htm
"This
paper
identifies the central principle of development and traces its
expression in different fields and levels of social advancement."
The Science of Economics, by Fred Foldvary,1999 http://www.foldvary.net/economics.html
on
line
text. Especially see chapter 14, with a review of economic
growth.
Tribes, Institutions, Markets, Networks: A Framework About
Societal Evolution, 1996 http://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P7967.html
paper
by
David F. Ronfeldt on a theory of social evolution. Full text
is available here.
Tanner Lectures http://www.tannerlectures.utah.edu/
One lecture is by S.N. Eisenstadt, 1988, "Cultural Tradition,
Historical Experience, and Social Change: The Limits of
Convergence." This lecture is about "the nature of the relations
between, on the one hand, the values, the basic premises, and the
traditions of civilizations and, on the other hand, some central
aspects of their social and cultural dynamics." This topic is
"closely related to the challenge of understanding many aspects of
the contemporary scene, and especially to whether we are
witnessing the development of one world-wide civilization."
(quotes from the paper)
Other lectures are Jared Diamond, 1991, "The
Broadest Pattern of Human History", Tomasello, Michael, 2008,
"Origins of Human Cooperation", and Scott, James, 2011, "Four
Domestications: Fire, Plants, Animals, and… Us"
CULTURE CHANGE: An Introduction to the Processes and
Consequences of Culture Change http://anthro.palomar.edu/change/
brief
reviews
of the process of cultural change, acculturation, and global
change.
Theories and approaches to development,
globalization, economic growth, political change
Democracy, Social Change, and Economies in
Transition http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=5852&page=401
by Charles Tilly. This is a chapter in the on line
book, Transforming Post-Communist
Political Economies http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=5852
edited by Joan M. Nelson, Charles Tilley, and Lee
Walker, for the Task Force on Economies in Transition, Commission
on Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education, National Research
Council. "This ...volume focuses on the interaction between
political, social, and economic change in Central and Eastern
Europe and the New Independent States. It includes a wide
selection of analytic papers, thought-provoking essays by leading
scholars in diverse fields, and an agenda for future
research." Also see Understanding
Economic Change, Douglass C. North http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=5852&page=11
A Conceptual Framework for
Interpreting Recorded Human History http://mercatus.org/publication/conceptual-framework-interpreting-recorded-human-history
by
Douglass North, John Wallis, Barry Weingast, April 2007. In
certain "societies, open access and entry into economic and
political organizations sustains economic and political
competition. Social order is sustained by competition rather than
rent-creation. The key to understanding modern social development
is understanding the transition from limited to open access social
orders"
Explaining Large-Scale Historical Change
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/37734891/explaining%20large-scale%20historical%20change.pdf
by Daniel Little, published in Philosophy of the
Social Sciences 2000 30: 89. Dr. Little is Professor of
Philosophy at University of Michigan, Dearborn, and also currently
Chancellor. He also has this site http://understandingsociety.blogspot.com/
which he describes "A dynamic online hypertext document on
social explanation, social change, and social justice... "
Summary of Wallerstein on World System
Theory http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/wallerstein.html
In the Modern History Sourcebook.
Also see my brief review and critique. http://gsociology.icaap.org/wst2.htm
Development
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China Net for Modernization http://www.modernization.com.cn/Index2.htm
(english
version)
has some theories of modernization.
Development and Conflict Theory, 2004. http://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/development_conflict_theory/
Includes
brief
review of development theory
How to help poor countries http://www.cgdev.org/doc/commentary/FAhelp.pdf
Nancy Birdsall, Dani Rodrik, and Arvind Subramanian.
Foreign Affairs, July /August 2005. This is at the Center for
Global Development. What do rich countries really need to do.
The Global Development Network http://www.gdnet.org/cms.php?id=gdn_development_research
has a whole bunch of stuff, like working papers http://www.gdn.int/html/workingpapers.php
Human Development Reports http://hdr.undp.org/
from the United Nations
Research Institute for Social Development http://www.unrisd.org/
also
from UN, various research reports.
Economic change
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Douglas Norths papers are located at
RePec http://ideas.repec.org/
Dr. North's papers are here http://ideas.repec.org/e/pno11.html
Papers include "The Paradox of the West" http://ideas.repec.org/p/wpa/wuwpeh/9309005.html
and "Where have we been and where are we going?" http://ideas.repec.org/p/wpa/wuwpeh/9612001.html
These are available as pdf files and some as html. For a
review of North's approach, see our literature
review page.
Economic History Service http://eh.net
They
also
have reviews of books. Some examples are: Michael G.
Heller's Capitalism, Institutions, and Economic Development,
http://eh.net/book_reviews/capitalism-institutions-and-economic-development
reviewed October 2010, and The British Industrial
Revolution in Global Perspective, published in 2009, reviewed in
2011 http://eh.net/book_reviews/the-british-industrial-revolution-in-global-perspective/
and Economic Development in the Americas since 1500: Endowments
and Institutions, published in 2012, reviewed in 2013
http://eh.net/book_reviews/economic-development-in-the-americas-since-1500-endowments-and-institutions-2/
Gregory Clark has working papers
http://www.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/gclark/index.html
for example, “The Industrial Revolution” in Handbook of
Economic Growth, Volume 2 (eds. Philippe Aghion and Steven
Durlauf), forthcoming, 2014.
Social change
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Anthony Giddens' Runaway world debate on
bbc. http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/events/reith_99/
This
site includes his lectures on the runaway world.
A neoinstitutional theory of social change
in Veblen's The Theory of the Leisure Classs http://www.elegant-technology.com/TVAtool.html
by
Marc
R. Tool
Professor Emeritus of Economics, California State University,
Sacramento
These papers are on the "cultural evolution"
page
Political
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Regarding
Politics.
Essays
on Political Theory, Stability, and Change http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft0k40037v
by Harry Eckstein, 1992.
Social Origins of Democracy http://www.icpd.org/democracy/index.htm
also
from
ICPD, cited above. Some history of democracy and a theory of
how it developed.
IR Theory Knowledge Base http://www.irtheory.com/
not
exactly
change, but very brief reviews (1 or 2 paragraphs) of theories of
international relations.