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Exploring Social Change America and the World

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ISBN-10: 0205748082

ISBN-13: 9780205748082

Edition: 6th 2011 (Revised)

Authors: Charles L. Harper, Kevin T. Leicht

List price: $132.60
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Description:

This introduction to social change focuses on theories that explain social change, innovation, social movements, and revolutions. The last part of the book shifts explicitly to the global level to analyze population and environmental issues and globalization. Within this framework, the book discusses topics about change and its problems familiar in sociology and social science.
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Book details

List price: $132.60
Edition: 6th
Copyright year: 2011
Publisher: Prentice Hall PTR
Publication date: 10/20/2010
Binding: Paperback
Pages: 416
Size: 6.00" wide x 9.00" long x 0.75" tall
Weight: 0.990
Language: English

Charles Harper is a professor of sociology at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska. As a member of the faculty there since 1968, he has developed and taught numerous courses in the sociology department. Dr. Harper's teaching and scholarly interests inolve the study of social change, globalization, the sociology of religion, social theory, and environmental sociology. He has published papers in a variety of academic journals.Along with Environment and Society, Dr. Harper is the author of two other textbooks. Co-authored with Kevin Leicht, his book Exploring Social Change: America and the World (Prentice Hall, 2007) is now in its Fifth Edition. Another book, Food, Society, and Environment…    

Preface
By Way of Introduction
What Is Social Change?
Sociology and Social Change
What you Can Expect from This Book and How It Is Organized
Thinking Personally about Social Change
Explaining Change
The Causes and Patterns of Change
Theory in Sociology
The Causes of Change
Materialistic Perspectives
Idealistic Perspectives
Patterns of Change
In Conclusion
Thinking Personally about Social Change
Social Theory and Social Change
Functionalist Theory
Conflict Theory
Multiple Perspectives and Change: Reconciling Agency and Structure
In Conclusion: Large-Scale Change and Human Agency
Thinking Personally about Social Change
Social Change in the United States
American Social Trends
Structural Trends
Changing Cultural Themes
Countertrends and Reactions to Modernity: Antimodernism and Postmodernism
In Conclusion
Thinking Personally about Social Change
Change in the Settings of Everyday Life: Populations, Families, and Work
Demographic Change
Changing Families
Transforming Work
In Conclusion
Thinking Personally about Social Change
Economics, Politics, and the American Prospect
The Changing Economy
Change in the Political System
Change, Problems, and the American Prospect
In Conclusion
Thinking Personally about Social Change
Processes of Social Change
Social Movements
What Are Social Movements?
Types of Social Movements
Explaining the Origins of Social Movements
In Conclusion
Thinking Personally about Social Change
American Reform Movements and Social Change
The Social Context of Twentieth-Century American Reform Movements
Social Class and Reform Movements at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
Social Status and Reform Movements in Mid-Twentieth Century
In Conclusion: What Kinds of Changes Do Reform Movements Produce?
Thinking Personally about Social Change
Revolutions
What is a Social Revolution?
Theories of Revolution
The Outcomes of Revolution
Successful and Failed Revolution in the Contemporary Context
A World Revolution: The Collapse of the Communist System
But Was It a Revolution?
In Conclusion: The Inevitability of Revolutionary Surprise
Thinking Personality about Social Change
Technology, Innovation, and Networks
Innovations as a Change Process
The Act of Innovation
Sources of Innovation: Social and Cultural
Diffusion: How Innovations Spread
Adoption of Innovations: Social Systems and Individuals
Instutional Change and the Spread of Innovations
Social Networks
In Conclusion: Back at the Information Technology Revolution
Thinking Personally about Social Change
Creating Change
Creating Change in Omaha: Muddling Through and Planning
Basic Change Strategies
The Role of Violence in Creating Change
Mixed and Complex Strategies
Being a Change Agent
The Ethics of inducing Change
In Conclusion: Some Final Thoughts about the Feasibility of Creating Change
Thinking personally about Social Change
Global Change
The Emerging Global System: Development and Globalization
Two Worlds
What is Development?
Uneven Development
Developmentalist Thinking: Perspectives and Dimensions
Explaning Failed Development
Dependency and World Systems Theories
Structure and Dynamics of the World System
Globalization
In Conclusion: Development, Globalization, and Human Progress
Thinking Personally about Social Change
Society, Environment, and Change
Ecological Perspectives on Change and Problems
Aspects of Ecological Change and Problems
Human Impacts and Global Environmental Change
In Conclusions: Societies, Environment, and Global Stability
Thinking Personally about Social Change
World Futures
New World order or New World Chaos?
Looking at the Next Fifty Years
Prophetic Visions: Some Longer Views
In Conclusions: The Third Revolution and Power from Below
Thinking Personally about Social Change
Epilogue: Living in a Rapidly Changing World
References
Author Index
Subject Index