Throughout history, social and intellectual crises have given rise to compelling suggestions for reform steeped in various progressive sensibilities. For example, within the discipline of criminology -- particularly during the 1980’s and 1990’s -- a number of unconventional theoretical perspectives emerged that sought to challenge many of the assumptions embedded within its own mainstream discourse, and to propose alternative solutions for meaningful, sustainable change. Conceived of as "critical" in overarching orientation, these efforts to rethink the foundations of criminological verstehen can be traced to several specific theoretical and methodological strands of inquiry (e.g., anarchism, peacemaking, chaos theory, postmodernism). Though distinct in some respects, these emerging models are linked paradigmatically by their shared discontent with conventional criminological thought and by their radicalized posture toward existing and previously unexamined epistemic crises. Collectively, this is an agenda for reform that seeks to establish a more humane and just social order, particularly as citizens and society confront the institutional and communal problems posed by crime, delinquency, and deviance. Theory, Justice, and Social Change: Theoretical Integrations and Critical Applications represents a provocative series of essays that systematically reviews or extends the role of critical social theory in fostering justice and change in several relevant, though problematic, social contexts. Mindful of the need to address both conceptual exegeses and pragmatic concerns, the articles contained in this volume grapple with the ongoing "double crisis" that confronts theory and practice in the construction of knowledge. By appropriating and integrating various insights from several heterodox and critically animated lines of inquiry, each chapter deftly exposes where and how conventional sociological and criminological thought has failed to effectively address such human social issues as homelessness, mental illness, minority rights, juvenile justice, global violence, and criminal punishment. In doing so, Theory, Justice, and Social Change provides new and much needed direction regarding theory development in the social sciences, and indicates why charting such a course of theory/action yields more enlightened prospects for justice and change in society and in our lives.

Institutional change is a central driving force behind social changes, and thus a central topic in all major fields of social sciences. Yet, no general theory of institutional change exists. Drawing from a diverse literature, this book develops a general theory of institutional change, based on a social evolutionary synthesis of the conflict approach and the harmony approach. The book argues that because the whole process of institutional change can be understood as a process of selecting a few ideas and turning them into institutions, competition of ideas and struggle for power to make rules are often at the heart of institutional change. The general theory not only integrates more specific theories and insights on institutional change that have been scattered in different fields into a coherent general theory but also provides fundamental new insights and points to new directions for future research. This book makes a fundamental contribution to all major fields of social sciences: sociology (sociological theory), political sciences, institutional economics, and political theory. It should be of general interest to scholars and students in all major fields of social science.

Ralph Cohen was highly regarded as the visionary founding editor of New Literary History, but his own theoretical essays appeared in such a scattering of publications that their conceptual originality, underlying coherence, and range of application have not been readily apparent. This new selection of twenty essays, many published here for the first time, offers a synthesis of Cohen’s vital work. In these pages Cohen introduces change and continuity as essential modes of discourse in the study of literary behavior, an approach that can produce reliable narratives of literary, artistic, and cultural change. Here Cohen conceptualizes and develops a compelling, innovative theory of genre that promotes a systematic study of historical change, offering rewarding insights for twenty-first-century scholars.

This is Volume XIX of twenty-two in the Social Theory and Methodology series. First published in 1969, this study looks at four views of the theory of social change and is intended for students in social studies, education and social psychology at university level.

This volume brings together some of the biggest names in the field of sociology to celebrate the work of Pitirim A. Sorokin, professor and founder of the department of sociology at Harvard University. Sorokin, a past president of the American Sociological Association, was a pioneer in many fields of research, including sociological theory, social philosophy, methodology, and sociology of science, law, art, and knowledge. Edward A. Tiryakian's updated introduction examines major factors, inside and outside sociology, that have led to new appreciation of Sorokin's contributions and scholarship, and demonstrates their continued relevance. This new edition also includes an updated bibliography of works by and about Sorokin.The volume includes Arthur K. Davis, who describes Sorokin's importance as a teacher in the Socratic tradition. Talcott Parsons examines internal differentiation in Christianity in its historical Western development. Thomas O'Dea deals with the institutionalization of religious values. Walter Firey examines how actors relate their conception of a distant future to their present behavior. Florence Kluckhohn focuses upon the problem of cultural variations within a social system. Robert K. Merton and Elinor Barber examine the sociological aspect of ambivalence. Bernard Barber considers the American business's efforts to institutionalize professionalism.Other contributors include Charles P. Loomis, Wilbert E. Moore, Georges Gurvitch, Marion J. Levy, Jr., Nicholas S. Timasheff, Carle Zimmerman, and Logan Wilson. This volume is an essential collection of essays concerning the work of one of the most prominent thinkers in twentieth-century sociology.

The book contains the Proceedings of the 2010 Conference of the Italian Systems Society. Papers deal with the interdisciplinary study of processes of changing related to a wide variety of specific disciplinary aspects. Classical attempts to deal with them, based on generalising approaches used to study the movement of bodies and environmental influence, have included ineffective reductionistic simplifications. Indeed changing also relates, for instance, to processes of acquisition and varying properties such as for software; growing and aging biological systems; learning/cognitive systems; and socio-economic systems growing and developing through innovations. Some approaches to modelling such processes are based on considering changes in structure, e.g., phase-transitions. Other approaches are based on considering (1) periodic changes in structure as for processes of self-organisation; (2) non-periodic but coherent changes in structure, as for processes of emergence; (3) the quantum level of description. Papers in the book study the problem considering its transdisciplinary nature, i.e., systemic properties studied per se and not within specific disciplinary contexts. The aim of these studies is to outline a transdisciplinary theory of change in systemic properties. Such a theory should have simultaneous, corresponding and eventually hierarchical disciplinary aspects as expected for a general theory of emergence. Within this transdisciplinary context, specific disciplinary research activities and results are assumed to be mutually represented as within a philosophical and conceptual framework based on the theoretical centrality of the observer and conceptual non-separability of context and observer, related to logically open systems and Quantum Entanglement. Contributions deal with such issues in interdisciplinary ways considering theoretical aspects and applications from Physics, Cognitive Science, Biology, Artificial Intelligence, Economics, Architecture, Philosophy, Music and Social Systems.

This work discusses many optimization and linguistic issues in great detail. It treats the history of a variety of languages, including English, French, Germanic, Galician/ Portuguese, Latin, Russian, and Spanish and shows that the application of Optimality Theory allows for innovative and improved analyses. It contains a complete bibliography on OT and language change. It is of interest to historical linguists, researchers into OT and linguistic theory, and phonologists and syntacticians with an interest in historical change.

"This is a book for activists and educators who not only think schools need to be improved but are also fiercely committed to their reinvention and hopeful that it can be achieved"--

This book is an important account of the state of the art of both theoretical and practical issues in the present-day research on conceptual change. Unique in its complete treatment of the questions that should be considered to further current understanding of knowledge construction and change, this book is useful for psychologists, cognitive scientists, educational researchers, curriculum developers, teachers and educators at all levels and in all disciplines.

This volume presents a collection of essays devoted to the analysis of scientific change and stability. It explores the balance and tension that exist between commensurability and continuity on the one hand and incommensurability and discontinuity on the other. The book constitutes fully revised versions of papers that were originally presented at an international colloquium held at the University of Nancy, France, in June 2004.