Table of Contents Preface Acknowledgments xii xvi Chapter 1. The Personal Experience of Social Change 1 A Twentieth-Century Life: Iris Summers 2 From Farm to Factory 3 Extending the Reach 6 Generations of Stability and Change 8 Decades of Social Movements 11 The Means to Being Modern 13 A Woman in a Changing Society 13 The Changing World of Work 15 The Personal Challenge of Social Change 17 Not Every Person s Story: Capturing Social Change in Personal Experience 20 Defining and Understanding Social Change 21 A Very Brief History of Human Societies (With Apologies to Mel Brooks) 23 Before the Last Ice Age 23 World Population Growth 24 Urbanization 25 New Forms of Production and the Development of Capitalism 26 Dominance of the National State 30 Iris Summers Time and Place in Global Context 31 A More Crowded Continent, a More Crowded World 33 Do Population Dynamics Drive Social Change? 34 The More Things Change... 35 Drivers of Social Change 37 Topics for Discussion and Activities for Further Study 40
Chapter 2. Recognizing Social Change 42 Ways of Recognizing Social Change 44 Science as a Special Approach to Inquiry 47 How Is Research Done? 48 Asking Good Questions 49 Concepts and Variable Language 50 From Questions to Hypotheses 52 Tracing and Untangling Causality 56 Gathering Information 57 Sampling and Drawing Inferences 58 Measures of Central Tendency and Association 63 Analyzing Information 64 The Problem of Recall 67 Drawing Conclusions From Empirical Data 71 Research Ethics and a Cautionary Tale 72 Social Policy and Social Change 74 Generations and Social Change 76 The Concept of Generations 77 Generations in the Past Century 77 Birth Cohorts and Social Change 82 Cohort, Age, and Period Effects on Social Change 85 Cohort Effects 85 Age Effects 86 Period Effects 87 Topics for Discussion and Activities for Further Study 89 Chapter 3. Understanding and Explaining Social Change 91 The Ubiquity of Change 92 Individuals, Groups, Social Structure, and Agency 94 The Enigma of Time 97 Images of Time 97 Measuring Time 98 Social Time 100
Making Sense of Large-Scale Social Change 100 Theory as a Narrative 101 Social History and Social Change 101 A Way of Understanding or Ways of Understanding? 104 Society as an Evolving System 105 Evolutionary Change in Spencer, Veblen, and Sorokin 107 Society as a Site of Conflict, Power, and the Resolution of Contradictions 113 Conflict Perspectives of Karl Marx, C. Wright Mills, and Georg Simmel 115 Understanding Social Change: Two Explanations of a War 120 The Initial Explanation: Ethnic Hatred 121 A Better Explanation: Elite Manipulation 125 Making Sense of Modern Times 127 Topics for Discussion and Activities for Further Study 128 Chapter 4. Technology, Science, and Innovation: The Social Consequences of New Knowledge and New Ways to Do Things 130 The Technology of Literacy 131 A World Without Writing 131 Literacy and Power 132 Literacy and Social Change 133 Understanding Technology as an Agent of Social Change 134 From Stirrups to Cities 135 The Twentieth Century, an Age of Technological Change 137 A Changing Social Reality 138 Technology as Device, Activity, and Social Organization 139 What Is Technology? 139 Technological Change and Social Change 141 Instrumental and Technical Rationality 144 Technology and Science 145 Pure and Applied Research 145 State Funding for Science 147 The Science-Practice-Technology Nexus 148 Innovation and Social Change 151 Diffusion of Innovations 152
Technology and Western Exceptionalism 154 Why the West? 154 Max Weber on the Morality of Work 155 Technology and Economic Growth 158 Technology and Social Change in the Periphery 159 Imperialism and the Quest for Colonies 159 Resistance to Technology or Resistance to Change 162 Utopia, Dystopia, and the Lessons of Dr. Frankenstein 162 Japan s Return to the Sword 164 Conservative Peasants 166 The Technological Fix as Resistance to Change 168 The Global Spread of Technology 169 Technology Transfer 170 The Debate Over Technology Transfer 171 International Development and Appropriate Technology 174 Topics for Discussion and Activities for Further Study 178 Chapter 5. Social Movements: Human Agency and Mobilization for Change 181 Making Social Change Happen 182 How Social Movements Matter 183 Understanding Social Movements as Change Agents 185 What Is a Social Movement? 186 Common Goods and Free Riders 188 Who Are Social Movement Participants? 190 Resource Mobilization 192 Social Movement Framing 193 Social Movement Tactics 196 Political Opportunity for Social Movements 198 Resistance to Social Change 200 Social Movements Opposing the Direction of Social Change 200 State Resistance to Social Movements as Agents of Change 201 Crowds, Social Movements, and Popular Democracy 204
Social Movements as Drivers of Social Change 206 Linking Social Movements to Social Change 206 Social Movements as Effective Change Agents 208 The Movement to Win Collective Bargaining 211 Tracing the Effects of Social Movement Actions 214 Abortion and the Battle for Public Opinion 217 Personal Change as a Consequence of Social Movement Participation 222 Topics for Discussion and Activities for Further Study 225 Chapter 6. War, Revolution, and Social Change: Political Violence and Structured Coercion 227 War as an Instrument of Social Change 228 Versions of War as Coercive Politics 229 Ethnic Conflict and Civil Wars 234 War and the State 238 Creating Nationalism and Patriotism 239 Power and Coercion 240 Purification of Space 241 War as a Driver of Social Change 244 Lessons From Twentieth-Century World Wars 244 Migration and War Refugees 246 Psychology of War 250 Constructing Mentalities for War 251 The Social Economy of War 255 Military Research and Development 261 State and Corporate Planning 263 Revolution and Social Transformation 265 Ways of Understanding Revolution 265 War-Weakened States and Defecting Militaries 269 Revolutionary Outcomes: Political Change and Social Change 270 War and Resistance to Social Change 271 War in Opposition to Social Change 272 Resistance to War: Peace as a Trajectory for Social Change 273 Topics for Discussion and Activities for Further Study 277
Chapter 7. Corporations in the Modern Era: The Commercial Transformation of Material Life and Culture 280 Understanding Corporations and Social Change 282 Corporations as Evolutionary Systems 283 Corporations in the Conflict Perspective 283 Businesses, Firms, and Large Corporations 285 Tort Victims and the Actual Price You Pay 289 The Corporation s Varied History 290 Monopoly Capitalism 294 The Ways Large Corporations Direct Social Change 298 Technology and the Corporate Dynamic 299 Control and Investment of Capital 302 Transformation of the Labor Process 304 Advertising and the Corporate Creation of Culture 311 Political Power and Agenda Setting 316 Large Corporations and Resistance to Social Change 322 Corporations Working Against Change 322 Organizational Entropy 323 Corporate Culture Versus Innovation 324 Resistance to Corporate-Driven Change 325 The Environmental Crisis and Corporations of the Future 329 Topics for Discussion and Activities for Further Study 331 Chapter 8. States and Social Change: The Uses of Public Resources for the Common Good 333 Strong States and Social Change 334 The Role of Strong States in Modern Times 336 The State and Social Change: The United States in the Twentieth Century 336 Public Health: Reducing Sickness and Death 337 The Public Watering of the West 345 The Judicial Road to Civil Rights 352 Political Generations in the Modern Civil Rights Movement 360 State-Driven Social Change in Modern China 369 Two Versions of Democracy 369 Mao s Revolutionary China, 1949 1976 372 Post-Mao China: The Deng Xiaoping Era 378
The Three Gorges Dam 384 Resistance to State-Directed Social Change 386 Using the State in Opposition 387 Opposing the Power of the State 388 Topics for Discussion and Activities for Further Study 390 Chapter 9. Making Social Change: Engaging a Desire for Social Change 392 Using Human Agency, Now or Later 393 Vocations of Social Change 394 Nongovernmental Organizations and Gap Year Experiences 397 Agency and Ethical Responsibility 398 Activism as a Part of Life 400 Social Change Happens 402 Topics for Discussion and Activities for Further Study 404 References 406 Name Index 424 Subject Index 429 About the Author 447