Culture and Social Change

Transforming Society Through the Power of Ideas

Brady Wagoner, Eric Jensen, Julian A. Oldmeadow

• Publisher: Information Age Publishing
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN:
  9781617357572
  9781617357589
• eBook ISBN:
  9781617357596
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Social Sciences

This book brings together social sciencists to create an interdisciplinary dialogue on the topic of social change as a cultural process. Culture is as much about novelty as it is about tradition, as much about change as it is about stability. This dynamic tension is analyzed in collective protests, intergroup dynamics, language, mass media, science, community participation, art, and social transitions to capitalism, among others contexts. These diverse cases illustrate a number of key factors that can propel, slow-down and retract social change. An emancipatory and integrative social science is developed in this book, which offers a new explanatory model of human behavior and thought under conditions of institutional and societal change.

Table of contents

• COVER
• HALF TITLE PAGE
• SERIRS
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT
• CONTENTS
• SERIES EDITOR’S PREFACE: Semiotic Freedom For The Social Sciences: Inquiry in a New Key
• 1: INTRODUCTION: Changing Times, Changing Science
• PART I: COLLECTIVE ACTION IN CONTEXT
• 2: THE PSYCHOLOGY OF COLLECTIVE ACTION: Crowds and Change
• 3: COLLECTIVES MAY PROTEST, BUT HOW DO AUTHORITIES RESPOND?
• 4: CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN: The Role of Social Identity, Cognitive Alternatives and Leadership in Group Mobilization and Social Transformation
• 5: CHANGE NON-WESTERNERS CAN BELIEVE IN
• PART II: COMMUNICATING CHANGE
• 6: METAPHOR AND STORIES IN DISCOURSE ABOUT PERSONAL AND SOCIAL CHANGE
• 7: THE EARTH, OLYMPUS, AND THE COMMUTER BUS
• 8: BALANCING STABILITY AND CHANGE: A Neo-Diffusionist Perspective on Cultural Dynamics of Socially Transformative Ideas
• 9: THE MEETING OF IDEAS: Diffusion, Dialogical Interaction, and Social Change
• 10: SCIENTIFIC CONTROVERSIES AND THE STRUGGLE FOR SYMBOLIC POWER
• 11: THE STRUGGLE FOR SCIENTIFIC CONSENSUS: Communicating Climate Science Around COP-15
• PART III: SOCIETIES IN TRANSITION
• 12: MEDIATING SOCIAL CHANGE IN AUTHORITARIAN ANDDEMOCRATIC STATES: Irony, Hybridity, and Corporate Censorship
• 13: SUBVERSIVELY FUNNY: Critical Humor in Art
• 14: ASSESSING SOCIAL CHANGE THROUGH SOCIAL CAPITAL: Local Leadership and Sociopolitical Change in Bolivia
• 15: SOCIAL INFLUENCE AND SOCIAL CHANGE: States and Strategies of Social Capital
• 16: CHANGING FIELDS, CHANGING HABITUSES: Symbolic Transformations in the Field of Public Service in Post-Soviet Ukraine
• 17: DEPENDENT INDEPENDENCE: A Mechanism for Conciliating Determinism and Freedom
• 18: CONCLUSION: Cycles of Social Change
• ABOUT THE AUTHORS