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Critical junctures and incremental change. An important new issue in the study of change is the relative role of critical junctures and incremental change. On the one hand, the two kinds of change are sometimes starkly counterposed.
Manifest functions are the consequences that people see, observe or even expect. It is explicitly stated and understood by the participants in the relevant action. The manifest function of a rain dance, used as an example by Merton in his 1957 Social Theory and Social Structure, is to produce rain, and this outcome is intended and desired by people participating in the ritual.
Science emerges as a means of directing and shaping lives. Hence, the modern conception of sexuality emerges from Christian codes of morality, the science of psychology, the laws and enforcement strategies adopted by the police and judiciary, the way in which issues of sexuality are discussed in the public media, the education system, etc.
On the other hand, discontinuous development involves distinct and separate stages, with different kinds of behavior occurring in each stage. [ 3 ] [ page needed ] Stage theories of development rest on the assumption that development is a discontinuous process involving distinct stages which are characterized by qualitative differences in behavior.
Each behavioural change theory or model focuses on different factors in attempting to explain behaviour change. Of the many that exist, the most prevalent are learning theories, social cognitive theory, theories of reasoned action and planned behaviour, transtheoretical model of behavior change, the health action process approach, and the BJ Fogg model of behavior change.
Smelser porter considered social movements to be the side-effects of rapid social change. [2] He argued that six things were necessary and sufficient for collective behavior to emerge, [1] and that social movements must evolve through the following relevant stages: [2] [3]
The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (1966), by Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, proposes that social groups and individual persons who interact with each other, within a system of social classes, over time create concepts (mental representations) of the actions of each other, and that people become habituated to those concepts, and thus assume ...
Social cycle theories are among the earliest social theories in sociology.Unlike the theory of social evolutionism, which views the evolution of society and human history as progressing in some new, unique direction(s), sociological cycle theory argues that events and stages of society and history generally repeat themselves in cycles.