Societies In Change

An exploration of how societies have changed over the past five thousand years. The discussion focuses on the idea that industrial societies, despite their great success, have created a new set of recurring and unsolved problems which will serve as a major impetus for further social change.

This teachers' book accompanies a Schools History Project's new core text for National History (1500-1750) in Year 8/age 12 for pupils of all abilities. It focuses on different kinds of change - political, social and religious - demonstrating how they are linked and also drawing comparisons.

The 21st century has brought a cornucopia of new knowledge and technologies. But there has been little progress in our ability to solve social problems using social innovation – the deliberate invention of new solutions to meet social needs - across the globe. Geoff Mulgan is a pioneer in the global field of social innovation. Building on his experience advising international governments, businesses and foundations, he explains how it provides answers to today’s global social, economic and sustainability issues. He argues for matching R&D in technology and science with a socially focused R&D and harnessing creative imagination on a larger scale than ever before. Weaving together history, ideas, policy and practice, he shows how social innovation is now coming of age, offering a comprehensive view of what can be done to solve the global social challenges we face.

" ... Structure of capitalism, the nature and history of social class, and the role of the state [government]. Attention is also paid to social inequality in Canadian society as manifest in income, race, ethnicity, and gender, as well as to the ways in which the agents of socialization -- particularly the mass media and the education system -- help perpetuate the dominant ideologies."--Back cover.

Climate change over the past thousands of years is undeniable, but debate has arisen about its impact on past human societies. This book explores the link between climate and society in ancient worlds, focusing on the ancient economies of western Eurasia and northern Africa from the fourth millennium BCE up to the end of the first millennium CE. This book contributes to the multi-disciplinary debate between scholars working on climate and society from various backgrounds. The chronological boundaries of the book are set by the emergence of complex societies in the Neolithic on the one end and the rise of early-modern states in global political and economic exchange on the other. In order to stimulate comparison across the boundaries of modern periodization, this book ends with demography and climate change in early-modern and modern Italy, a society whose empirical data allows the kind of statistical analysis that is impossible for ancient societies. The book highlights the role of human agency, and the complex interactions between the natural environment and the socio-cultural, political, demographic, and economic infrastructure of any given society. It is intended for a wide audience of scholars and students in ancient economic history, specifically Rome and Late Antiquity.

Non-Aboriginal material.

Carefully contextualizing the ethnography by taking scale and time seriously, the book shows why fieldwork is both necessary and insufficient if the aim is to make sense of the contemporary world. It is a significant contribution to the renewal of anthropological theory and methodology. Highly recommended! -Thomas Hylland Eriksen, University of Oslo, Norway With an eye for various scales, biographies of people and things, and processes as they take place, this book provides insights into how, to whom, and when things change, how it feels like - and also how some things stay the same. -Samuli Schielke, Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (Berlin) This important book, drawing on ethnographic research from across the globe, addresses both the 'why' and the 'how' of studying societal change, inviting the reader to reflect on the potential - and the limits - of qualitative methods. - Jonathan Rigg, University of Bristol, UK This open access book provides methodological devices and analytical frameworks for the study of societies in transformation. It explores a central paradox in the study of change: making sense of change requires long-term perspectives on societal transformations and on the different ways people experience social change, whereas the research carried out to study change is necessarily limited to a relatively short space of time. This volume offers a range of methodological responses to this challenge by paying attention to the complex entanglement of qualitative research and the metanarratives generally used to account for change. Each chapter is based on a concrete case study from different parts of the world and tackles a diversity of topics, analytical approaches, and data collection methods. The contributors' innovative solutions provide valuable tools and techniques for all those interested in the study of change. Yasmine Berriane is permanent researcher at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS, Centre Maurice Halbwachs), France. Annuska Derks is Associate Professor in the Department of Social Anthropology and Cultural Studies at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. Aymon Kreil is Assistant Professor in the Department of Languages and Cultures at Ghent University, Belgium. Dorothea Lüddeckens is Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Zurich, Switzerland.