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CHAPTER

The Social Scientific Perspective

GREAT SOCIOCULTURAL revolution is now sweeping our world. Centered in North America, Japan, and the urban, industrialized countries of Western Europe, it extends to the still largely rural, third World nations of Asia, Africa, and Latin America and to the

formerly communist-dominated (“second World”) regions of Central and Eastern Europe. Rapid change, both peaceful and violent, is a fact of life that virtually everyone on Earth today has come to expect, if not unconditionally accept.

The Shape of Things to Come This revolution is now boiling at or near the surface of contemporary social relations everywhere. With increasing regularity, it erupts into our daily affairs, taking on many different guises. In the United States, this revolution is evident in the conflict between the defenders and attackers of government regulation, in the debates about immigration—legal and illegal—about the country’s participation in the United Nations, in the challenges to welfare programs for the poor, and in the post–September 11 concern about “homeland security.” Here, and in other countries throughout the world, it has manifested itself in pro- and antiglobalization protests and movements for civil rights on behalf of formerly excluded ethnic minority groups, gays and lesbians, persons with disabilities, children, and senior citizens. It is also evident in our changing attitudes and behavior in the realm of gender. The realities that our parents and grandparents took for granted are now in such doubt that today we are even asking ourselves what it means to be a man or a woman.

Common to all of these debates, conflicts, challenges, and movements is the explicit recognition that something is wrong with society as we have known it. Those involved, regardless of their specific views on the various issues, acknowledge that serious shortcomings and unwanted costs are now associated with the manner in which people have become accustomed to treating one another.

A historical juncture has been reached at which the old ways of managing human affairs, from the interpersonal to the international levels, are becoming less and less effective. Yet, despite the numerous possible options with which we have experimented or merely dreamed, no clear alternatives have emerged to guide us into a highly uncertain future. Just as modernity displaced feudalism as the dominant cultural form in Europe some 250 years ago, something is

Weinstein, Jay. Social Change, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/capella/detail.action?docID=616416. Created from capella on 2018-10-07 17:18:35.

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displacing modernity throughout the world today, although its precise dimensions remain largely unformed or unfathomed.

One evident feature of this revolution is its global character: in one way or another, it is affecting all of human society (see Sassen 1996, 1998). As sociologist Robert Schaeffer (2009) has noted in a recent survey of the phenomenon of globalization, “We live in a time of global change. But people experience change in different ways. Global change . . . affects some people more than others, and it can have different consequences—good and bad—for people in different settings” (xi).

Such widespread, and uneven, impact is now possible because of the expansive growth of bureaucratic organizations, especially multinational corporations, along with developments in electronic communication technologies. People living in large cities on every continent are now well connected through the automobile and other consumer items they make and buy, the fast food chains that are opening new branches near their homes or offices, and the kinds of music and TV programs they enjoy. With each passing day, people in the most remote hinterlands are being swept into this world system via roads and communication satellites. A trend, a movement, a style, or a new technology that originates in one place can easily find its way to the most far-off and unlikely adopters in practically no time at all.

This phenomenon is the subject of a highly influential study by George Ritzer (2008), professor of sociology at the University of Maryland. Entitled The McDonaldization of Society, the book and related works by ritzer (1998, 2002) argue that the innovations in the mass production and marketing of hamburgers that made the McDonald’s restaurant chain so successful have now become part of the emerging world culture. One can, Ritzer observes, find a McDonald’s outlet virtually anywhere in the world, serving essentially the same main items (along with local specialties to maintain contact with “tradition”). Moreover, the characteristic methods of production and distribution introduced in the 1950s by McDonald’s founder Ray Kroc are rapidly becoming part of the operating procedures in all industries, from machine tool production to gasoline service stations.1

It would be impossible to assess exactly what role electronic telecommunication has played in our global revolution, in part because its effects continue to reverberate and magnify as you read this. Some idea can be gained from considering the fact that an entire new social institution, the communication/information system, is now being formed. The tasks of creating, storing, and distributing information have become so important to modern society that they require their own unique niche in the social structure.

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Like other institutions, the communication/information system is a huge structure made up of large-scale social organizations, comparable in size and scope to entire economic or political systems. Best developed in the highly industrialized countries (but expanding everywhere), it consists of newly created bureaucracies, such as government ministries of communication and the vast system of technicians and managers who keep the Internet functioning. It also includes organizations that were formerly parts of other institutions: corporations, schools, government agencies, and even religious organizations such as missionary websites and TV networks.

Although it is still in its infancy, this institution’s general character is evident in the new

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alliances being formed. These include the landmark agreement announced in January 2001 between America Online and Time (formerly Time-Life Publications)/Warner (formerly Warner Brothers Pictures). At $106 billion, it was the largest corporate merger in history, bringing together three Internet/information/entertainment giants. As indicated in table 1.1, Time Warner continues to top the list of U.S. media giants. Yet, it is the result of only one of dozens of such recent mergers and reorganizations that have linked industries ranging from computer hardware manufacturing to the marketing of entire TV networks, the publication of social science textbooks, and more (Shah 2009; Sterngold 1995; Sloan 1995). If we add to the list in table 1.1 the exclusively Internet and software companies Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft (with market values of $40.1 billion, $154.6 billion, and $306.8 billion, respectively), the magnitude of this institution becomes even more staggering (see Chon et al. 2003; Mother Jones 2007).

Electronic communication not only has contributed to the globalization of change but also has been a major force in accelerating the rate at which the old becomes obsolete and the newer replaces the new. In the 1960s, as the very earliest impacts of the microchip and related innovations were being felt, one student of cultural change remarked that “more than any other period in the history of [hu]mankind, ours is a time of change” (Stebbins 1965, 223). In 1990, these sentiments were expressed with renewed and even greater urgency by sociologist

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Anthony Giddens. Our age, he noted, is distinguished by its “sheer pace of change. . . . Traditional civilisations may have been considerably more dynamic than other premodern systems, but the rapidity of change in conditions of modernity is extreme” (Giddens 1990, 6). In fact, it sometimes seems as if the world is changing too quickly, “starting very slowly but gaining impetus as it goes along, until today it accelerates at an almost frightening rate” (Blum 1963, 33).2

The Science of Change Today

Why? What has happened to make change the rule rather than the exception? How did this global revolution begin, and how might it end? What kind of future will emerge from all the apparent chaos?

This chapter provides some foundations for answering these challenging questions,

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beginning with a brief look at some of the major issues now of concern in the field of sociology and the related disciplines that study social change. With so many aspects of collective life accelerating, globalizing, or being reformed as a result of rapidly shifting ethnic and gender relations, social science, too, is undergoing a thorough reinvention (the earliest observations on this situation include Bauman 1989; Horowitz 1993; and Touraine 1989).

As is the case with people in all professions, social scientists have become increasingly aware that the knowledge and tools they have inherited from past generations are not entirely adequate to deal with today’s realities. So much now happening is unprecedented, and, most seriously, so much of it was unanticipated by relevant experts, who, perhaps, should have seen what was coming.3

This round of intellectual self-examination is part of a broad-ranging cultural movement with roots in architecture, philosophy, and literature. Within the social sciences, two reinventions related to the movement have thus far proved to be especially relevant in gaining a more effective understanding of current conditions.

The first is a renewed interest in applying the analytical tools of sociology to historical material. This approach was developed extensively by social historians such as Fernand Braudel and Edward A. Wrigley and by historical sociologists, especially immanuel Wallerstein, Stephen Sanderson, Charles Tilly, Theda Skocpol, Robert Wuthnow, and Daniel Chirot, all of whose works will be cited in this book. It seeks to trace the sources of today’s social instability to transforming events of the past and to discover common patterns in history that would help explain contemporary political revolutions, religious movements, demographic transitions, and the like.4

The second is a reexamination of the concept of sociocultural evolution. This difficult and highly controversial concept was either openly employed or at least implied by nearly all of the classical theorists of change (Sanderson 1990; 2007, chap. 1 and afterword). Although contemporary social scientists are heirs to this tradition, and although evolutionary theory has shed significant light on the workings of society, we now know that the classic approaches were seriously flawed. In particular, the concept of sociocultural evolution, as traditionally applied, was intended to account for a vast range of changes in all regions of the world and throughout history (as well as prehistoric eras), many of which do not even remotely qualify as evolutionary. In addition, the traditional concept of evolution was far too deterministic because it denied the broad scope that choice and intention actually have in shaping human affairs. And, it was too often burdened with the theorists’ ethnocentric biases to be of much use in scientific explanation. Classic social evolutionists typically assumed their culture was the most “highly” evolved. With these flaws in mind, how, one now wonders, can the undeniable advantages of an evolutionary perspective be preserved without giving in to the excesses of determinism and ethnocentrism?

The following section briefly considers these concerns. First we discuss the basis on which researchers decide what kinds of historical events and “episodes”—among all the possibilities—are viewed as especially significant in accounting for contemporary change. Anthony Giddens’s (1981) definition of episode is used here: “Episodes refer to processes of social change which have a definite direction and form, analysed through comparative

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research, in which a major transition takes place in which one type of society is transformed into another” (82).

This overview is followed by a summary of four specific transforming episodes, profound social upheavals widely believed to have played an especially important role in setting the stage for the great drama now being played out on a global scale. These are (1) the Holocaust, (2) the rise of Third World nations, (3) the U.S. Civil Rights movement, and (4) the fall of Communism in Central and Eastern Europe. Subsequent chapters return to the four episodes at several points, and the discussion of evolution is continued at a more detailed level in chapter 2.

The final section of this chapter provides some concluding comments about the general direction in which humanity appears to be headed during the first decades of the West’s third millennium.

Critical Episodes: Scale and Intention In a strict sense, society and culture are always changing: friendships are formed and broken, families started and dissolved, and corporations merged and divested. In this respect, all social scientists must be concerned with dynamics, regardless of their area of specialization. Nevertheless, a certain kind of change has for several generations been viewed as unique and worthy of special attention. Thus, it has been treated as a separate topic under the specific label social change.

Two of the very earliest social scientists, Henri Saint-simon and Herbert Spencer, drew attention to this distinction with their similar paired concepts of organic versus critical periods (Taylor and Saint-Simon 1975, 60) and industrial versus militant change (Spencer 1862, 1898).5 Organic periods, years or decades of industrial change, are characterized by a relatively slow, orderly, and peaceful flow of events. The established order appears to be operating effectively, and disturbing influences from within or from other societies are insignificant. In contrast, critical periods are times of militant change during which relations, organizations, and institutions are being rapidly transformed, and the established order is under serious challenge from domestic sources and possibly from abroad. By these criteria, ours is surely one of the most critical periods in recent history.

In keeping with Spencer’s and Saint-Simon’s categories, contemporary social scientists emphasize the more militant types of change—not exclusively, of course, but as a major concern. This is clearly reflected in the kinds of events of special interest to historical sociologists today, including the four critical episodes.

Scale The scale of change can vary from the small or microlevel to the large or macrolevel, depending on the number of individuals and relationships that are involved. As a result, there are two relatively distinct ways in which to understand how and why particular changes occur. Consider, for instance, an increase in the activities of a social protest movement such as the U.S. Civil Rights movement in the 1960s. At the microlevel, the focus is on individuals: their

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recruitment, leadership capabilities, and interests and motives for participating, remaining uninvolved, or even joining an opposition movement. At the macrolevel, emphasis is placed on the organizations associated with the movement (such as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference) and on the effects of international events and government policies on the movement’s progress.

Of course, the two levels do not operate independently: the motives and interests of leaders undoubtedly affect the functioning of the organizations they lead, and vice versa. In fact, macrolevel change consists of several interconnected microlevel variations so that, in principle, explanations focusing on individuals and small groups should build up to explanations of interinstitutional and international relations. However, so many microlevel events are occurring so rapidly that such complete explanations are never possible in practice. Thus, the study of sociocultural dynamics has been, of necessity, somewhat compartmentalized.

In the discipline of sociology, in particular, the microlevel has been most thoroughly explored within the subfields of symbolic interactionism and group dynamics, and the macrolevel is most often identified with “social change” and, within social change studies, with the specialization in political movements and revolutions. This macrolevel orientation also defines the kinds of changes researchers consider to be most important and how these episodes are tied to larger historical trends and institutional crises (Tilly 1984).

Intention and Order of Impact Society and culture vary over time as the result of human actions. In some cases, this is the direct outcome of planning and purpose; in others, it is indirect, unanticipated, and unintended. Most often, however, the effects of our acts are a combination of intent and accident.

Intentional changes in laws, styles, or organizational structures come about because of concerted efforts on the part of people to bring them about (Sztompka 1991). Although these kinds of changes have always been possible, today they are the rule. The future course of events is now increasingly directed by the conscious actions of groups and organizations that are routinely and purposely engaged in promoting change. Formal governments, economic systems, and other institutional structures are specifically charged with altering the way society is structured and functions, and they carry out this responsibility on a regular basis. At the same time, social movements, operating largely outside the formal system, are also vying for a greater say in determining how our social structures and values should be reorganized and reordered (chapters 6 and 7 feature the nature and impact of social movements).

In contrast, some trends just seem to take hold of their own accord, without anyone intending them: they emanate neither from conscious planning within established institutions nor from antiestablishment movements. The urbanization of human society illustrates this type of unintentional or nonpurposeful change.

At one time, not long before 1750, very few people anywhere in the world—less than 5 percent of the human population at the time—lived in cities. Today, in Europe, North America, and other places, more than three-quarters of the people live in metropolitan areas: in the cities, suburbs, and exurbs of urban societies. About one-half of the world’s population—more

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than 3.5 billion people—are now urbanized (see Massey 2002; United Nations Population Division 2009). This shift came about as the result of myriad human migrations and other activities, many of them purposeful at the microlevel. But amidst all of these smaller purposes, nowhere was there a grand plan to create urban society as such. Rather, the many little acts and plans coalesced into a very large-scale, profound social and cultural change. Such instances illustrate well the observation of the legal historian Karl F. Savigny: “The outcome of the general will is no one’s will in particular” (Savigny 1829, quoted in Schneider 1987, 185).

Purpose is often a matter of degree. At one extreme we find changes that are the direct result of explicit intentions. Technology is an especially important instance, as it is by definition knowledge with a purpose, or “know-how.” Many inventions are purposeful in this sense, although, of course, not all inventions are successful. Television is by no means the invention of one person, but it was nevertheless the outcome of a conscious, largely planned collective project intended to discover how to transmit and receive visual images over distance. And that, indeed, was achieved. Yet, it is far from being its only effect (Bell 1989; Paik 1999; Singer and Singer 2005).

Television, like every other technological innovation, has had effects that extend beyond, sometimes far beyond, the achievement of its original, explicit objective. Television did not simply introduce the new cultural skill of sending pictures through the air. It has done, and continues to do, many other things. It made programs like Sesame Street possible. Sesame Street, in turn, changed the socialization experiences of North American children, and eventually children throughout the world (Waterman 1987, 164–66). And on it goes.

This characteristic of technology’s effects is referred to as order of impact: first order, second order, and so on (Bauer 1966; Bauer, Rosenbloom, and Sharp 1969). Achievement of the explicit technical goal of research on a new technology, for example, the broadcasting of pictures, is a first-order impact, or a manifest function (Merton 1968, chap. 3). As effects reverberate through the social system, becoming more remote from the original intentions, the order increases. The creation of Sesame Street is one of TV’s third-order impacts, and changes in socialization practices are fourth-order effects. As the order increases, the technological impact per se becomes progressively diluted because in proceeding from order to order through time, other factors enter the chain of causation (see figure 1.3).

The order-of-impact principle applies to other sources of purposeful change, such as government planning, social movements, and community organizing (Coria 2009; NEJAC 2006). Television did not, in itself, cause Sesame Street to be invented. Instead, a certain type of writing and acting also had to be developed. New theories of early childhood education required formulation. U.S. public television had to be established. And several other things had to occur (none of them pursued specifically with the goal of creating a certain type of children’s program) before the TV–Sesame Street causal link was eventually forged.

This suggests a process in which the effects of one cause (e.g., a new technology, law, or organization) radiate outward through time. As they do, they join with other parts of the sociocultural system in which the cause was introduced, and thus create additional and increasingly remote effects. As the process continues, the number of unintended consequences, or latent functions and dysfunctions, of the initiating change multiplies. Participating individuals, such as inventors, legislators, consumers, and protesters, experience progressively

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less control over the ultimate outcomes of their actions, as the world they set out to change seems ever-more “autonomous” (van der Valk 1997; Winner 1977).

This image of radiating, higher-order impacts symbolizes how social scientists treat intention as relative. We know that people act collectively with purposes in mind and that bringing about social and cultural change is often one of their goals. Seeking change, they work in groups, make alliances, accumulate resources, and enter into communication networks. These social relations in which they participate very much affect the chances that their goals will actually be achieved. Yet, as plans are enacted, several other factors enter the situation to give rise to higher-order impacts.

Some of the factors are nonpurposeful, such as the size of the population in which the change is sought, the specific cultural values that prevail, and the characteristics of the organizations involved. But also included are the intentional acts of other actors: people who may be seeking different, even contradictory goals. These relations always complicate the path that joins intent with outcome. Depending on how others react and on the nonpurposeful

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influences, the potential results of intentional change, from the point of view of one who consciously seeks it, can thus range from direct success to partial realization and to dismal failure.

Actual outcomes depend on many things, some of which may be (at least temporarily) beyond our control. When we deal with complex, dynamic events and societies—especially over the course of decades—we find that there are highly elaborate causal chains linking intentional acts with their ultimate effects. In the case of transforming events such as the four critical episodes, this principle is realized in the form of historical ironies, simultaneous triumphs and setbacks, personal and interpersonal conflict, and a generally puzzling combination of progress and regress. No one would doubt, for instance, that a major outcome of the Nazi movement and the Holocaust was the humiliation of the German nation in the eyes of most of the world, including many German citizens. Yet, this was as far as possible from the goals of the perpetrators, who sought to establish a “thousand-year reign” of German nationalism over all of humanity.

Evolutionary Impact The ideas of progress and regress and the possibility that change can lead to significant improvements and deterioration in social relations are closely tied to the concept of sociocultural evolution. This connection is discussed briefly here and again in chapter 2, of which it is the main topic. Because everything is always changing, it is never a simple matter to decide among those trends and variations that demand scientific attention and those that can be safely ignored. The possibility that some trends may be leading humanity in a specific direction (that we may wish to encourage or avoid) has guided researchers to focus on critical episodes, such as the Holocaust, and to be less concerned with (apparently) inconsequential changes, such as growth in the pizza delivery business.

Evolution is a leading concept in the history of social science, in part because it addresses the problems of survival, that is, why some populations and their socio-cultural traits persist and grow over the generations whereas others decline and even become extinct. Contemporary researchers are keenly aware that there are both benefits and serious limitations in applying this (or any) type of organic metaphor to human relations, for sociocultural change is a superorganic process in which consciousness, intent, and meaning intervene between the organism and the environment in ways unknown among other species.6

One major advantage of the evolutionary perspective is that it underscores how a people’s very existence may be at stake when its society and culture change. In fact, in the larger evolutionary scheme of things, our sociocultural systems, in themselves, can be viewed as general and often highly effective survival adaptations (Huxley 1953, chap. 6).

The human animal lacks the physical advantages of other species, such as running speed, powerful teeth and claws, the ability to endure long periods without food and water, the capacity of newborn individuals to fend for themselves, and the ability to fly. Instead, we have developed cooperative mechanisms and elaborate systems of symbols and tools, embodied in our sociocultural heritage, that compensate for these shortcomings. If somehow a human

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population suddenly lost its ability to cooperate and transmit cultural material within and between generations, one can imagine how impotent its members would be in coping with their potentially hostile environment, including other species and more advantaged humans. It certainly could not survive very long.

Some social and cultural changes have greater impact than others do on a population’s capacity to adapt to its always-changing environment. For this reason, major discoveries, such as the development of electronic media, and massive movements, such as Third World nationalism, have received prime attention from theorists and researchers. Because these have clearly contributed to the ability of human populations to survive, they represent significant changes. Whether or not they should be properly termed “advances” is another matter, an issue that chapter 2 explores.

Stage-Setting Events: The Four Critical Episodes Our special concern with macrolevel changes that (1) involve planning and purpose, (2) produce multiple higher-order impacts, and (3) appear to have significant evolutionary consequences leads us to take an especially careful look at certain kinds of transforming events. Included among these are four major episodes that, perhaps more than any other, made the first decade of the twenty-first century such a uniquely critical period.

These episodes involved millions and billions of people, hundreds of complex organizations, and they extended over thousands of miles of territory. In addition, all of them included a prominent component of intentional change: social movements and revolutions, legislation, and institutional planning. As a consequence, all were characterized by several second, third, and higher orders of impact. In each case, some goals were achieved with a high degree of accuracy, others met with less than desired optimal results, and, as often happens at this level of complexity, some outcomes even turned out to be the very opposite of what was intended by those who sought change. Such episodes are among the most consequential in altering individual lives, and they have had the greatest effects on the recent course of sociocultural evolution. Because of their extensive higher-order impacts, however, they are also the kinds of change that are the most challenging to explain in an adequate scientific manner.

The illustrative cases presented here are among the most frequently cited by contemporary social scientists (Gamson 1995). They are mentioned in all of the current introductory and social change texts, and they would surely be at or near the top of most researchers’ lists of important, meaningful episodes in recent history.

Interestingly, many books in this area also discuss some events that did not happen—at least not exactly. These are the unvarying rhythms of life in George Orwell’s antiutopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. Life in “Oceania” (Orwell’s name for the imaginary country in which the novel’s events take place) provides a useful comparison, for it is a fascinating and frightening portrayal of what the world would be like if there were no authentic social change.

The Holocaust, 1939–1945 Weinstein, Jay. Social Change, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/capella/detail.action?docID=616416. Created from capella on 2018-10-07 17:18:35.

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Between 1939 and 1945, approximately twenty million civilians were killed by police and soldiers in more than twenty sovereign European nations, and millions more were driven from their homes and imprisoned.7 These included members of several ethnic groups, members of Communist and other left-wing political organizations, and thousands of disabled people and gay men of various backgrounds (Freedman 1990; Plant 1986). The groups most affected were the Jewish communities of these nations, whose losses are estimated between 5.1 and 5.9 million (Anti-Defamation League 1993; Hilberg 1971, 1985). This episode is known as the Holocaust, from the Latin roots holo, meaning “all,” and caust, “to burn.” In Israel and in Jewish communities throughout the world, the Hebrew word that refers to a burnt offering, Shoah, is used. These terms vividly evoke an image of a great fire sweeping over the land, destroying everything.

The program was carried out under the strict control of the government of Germany, following the direct orders of its charismatic leader and chancellor, Adolf Hitler. The idea of such a program of mass destruction has ancient roots in Western civilization, but planning for its specific application began in 1923, when Hitler was serving a jail sentence in Munich for attempting to overthrow the government by force of arms. The plan was written down in a book, Mein Kampf (“my battle” or “my struggle”; Hitler [1925] 1948), which was to become a best seller in Germany and in Hitler’s home country of Austria.

In terms of sheer numbers of people affected, the Holocaust was among the most monumental population control projects ever envisioned. The victims were selected according to criteria codified in laws and statutes. The best known of these are the so-called Nuremberg Laws of 1935. They were part of the official legal and political framework of Germany, Austria, Poland, and the other nations that came under Nazi domination during World War II. They refer to members of certain hereditary populations and political organizations as entartete (“degenerate”) who are not entitled to civil rights, including, for some groups and under certain circumstances, the right to live (Dawidowicz 1975).

Much has been written during the past fifty years about this horrifying episode, although survivors tell us that nothing can describe or explain it effectively (“Fiftieth Anniversaries of 1995” 1995; Oliner 2000). There are now journals and professional organizations devoted to the subject, and Holocaust museums and memorials have been established in Israel, Central Europe, and the United States (Milton 1988). In fact, several books and articles have been written about the substantial interest that Holocaust study and commentary has engendered (see Alexander 2002; Levy and Sznaider 2006).

Box 1.1 HOLOCAUST DENIAL

Beginning in the early 1980s, a movement surfaced in the United States, France, and other nations that styled itself “Holocaust Revisionism” (Anti-Defamation League 1993). Its aim is to challenge the validity of the historical record that documents the major events surrounding the Holocaust and, in many instances, to challenge the very existence of the episode. As such, most scholars more properly refer to it as Holocaust denial. A leading spokesperson for the

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denial movement is David Irving. Irving has written extensively on the subject and has consistently claimed that no evidence exists to prove that millions of Jews died in Auschwitz and the other camps. As is true of other deniers, his position is that the accounts of the Holocaust were largely fabricated by Jews for monetary gain and in support of the State of Israel.

In the early 1990s, historian Deborah Lipstadt published an important book on the Holocaust denial movement (Lipstadt 1993). In it she argued that Irving is a fraud, a neo- Nazi, and an anti-Semite, whose “research” amounts to little more than pseudo-scholarship. Because of her pointed criticism of Irving and other leaders of the denial movement, Lipstadt achieved wide recognition and was in great demand as a lecturer and guest on talk shows.

In response to this notoriety, Irving filed a lawsuit in 2000 against Lipstadt and her publisher, Penguin Books, Ltd., claiming that he had been libeled. According to English law, the burden of proof is on the defendant in such a case, that is, Lipstadt and Penguin were forced to prove their case about Irving. Following a dramatic trial in London’s High Court of Justice, Queen’s Bench Division, on April 11, 2000, Presiding Justice Hon. Gray rendered the following judgment acquitting Lipstadt and the publisher:

The charges which I have found to be substantially true include the charges that Irving has for his own ideological reasons persistently and deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence; that for the same reasons he has portrayed Hitler in an unwarrantedly favourable light, principally in relation to his attitude towards and responsibility for the treatment of the Jews; that he is an active Holocaust denier; that he is anti-Semitic and racist and that he associates with right wing extremists who promote neo-Nazism. In my judgment the charges against Irving which have been proved to be true are of sufficient gravity for it be clear that the failure to prove the truth of the matters set out in paragraph 13.165 above does not have any material effect on Irving’s reputation. In the result therefore the defence of justification succeeds.

Source: Irving’s website, www.fpp.co.uk/Letters/History/Don2511202.html; the Nizkor Project, www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/i/irving-david/judgment-00-00.html.

One of the most significant features of this enormous demographic change is that it was so purposeful: well organized and highly bureaucratized.8 It occurred largely under the legitimate auspices of national authorities (Laqueur 1980; Wistrich 1985). It was institutionalized through a social movement, and it became official policy in several countries. At the same time, democratic institutions were systematically disassembled in Germany and in other Axis powers (Linz 1988). In place of a secular, democratic government, the regime was made sacred, worshiped as the true embodiment of a “superior race” (Cristi 2001).

This extraordinary authority was then used to destroy members of “lesser races”: through invasion where the “inferiors” had a national territory and through internal “solutions” when the people had no homeland. The latter applied especially to political refugees, Jews, and the Sinti and Romani people (“Gypsies”; Lewy 2000; Ramati 1986). This was the most complete and most manifest application of a long-standing heritage of racism and anti-Semitism in Europe (Goldhagen 1996; Weinstein and Stehr 1999).

The legal and moral impact of the Holocaust has been enormous. The Nuremberg Tribunal, held in the fall of 1945, served to change the structure of international law (Taylor 1992;

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Woetzel 1962). The trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem occurred in 1961 (Arendt 1964). And numerous government and academic forums have been held to examine the events. In these contexts, questions have been raised concerning the limits of state power, human rights, complicity with immoral commands from social superiors, the meaning of evil, and countless other dilemmas that were revealed in their harshest light during World War II (Furet 1989; Levi 1988; Roth and Berenbaum 1989).9

The Rise of the Third World Nations, 1945–1975 In 1945, at the end of World War II, the United Nations (UN) was created (Glendon 2001; Schlesinger 2003). It was envisioned as the organizational framework for a new world government to replace the discredited League of Nations. At the time of its founding, fifty sovereign countries were members, nearly all of them located in Europe and the Americas (see table 1.3).

By 1975, at the thirtieth anniversary of the UN, there were over 150 member nations, most of them in Asia, Africa, and the Pacific region. One of these was the Jewish homeland of Israel, founded by UN mandate in 1947, in part as the result of a civil war in Palestine against the British administration and in part as a response to the Holocaust. The State of Israel was created in a territory that had been under British control since the World War I era and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. In 1947–1948, the borders of the Palestinian Mandate territory and of Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria were redefined as constituents of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim holy lands. These boundaries have been under dispute since their creation.

India and Pakistan were also created in 1947–1948, two countries formed out of one to correspond to the homelands of ethnically homogenous populations (Inder Singh 1987; Khan 2007). These nations won their independence after a long anticolonial war against England, which had established sovereignty over parts of India some two hundred years earlier. The Indian independence struggle involved several leading personalities of the day, prominent among whom was the charismatic leader Mohandas K. Gandhi.

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The post–World War II anticolonial movement spread from the Middle East and India to other parts of the former British and other European empires. Region by region, the old colonial regimes disintegrated during the first thirty years of the UN (Chamberlain 1985; Wallerstein 1961, 1966). Throughout Africa and Asia, local leaders, who, like Gandhi, had received professional training in Europe or the United States, organized and eventually won the battles for independence.

These movements inspired political leaders and academics in Latin America, and beginning in the early 1970s, they declared themselves in league with the emerging nations. Even though these countries had been sovereign for a century or more, they were (and some still are) nearly as poor as the colonial areas of Asia and Africa. Thus, the struggle was defined as being against neocolonialism, a term coined by Ghana’s independence leader, Kwame Nkrumah (1909–1972), to describe the implicit policies of political and economic domination pursued by European and North American governments (Nkrumah 1965).

In the late 1950s, a term was coined to describe these new nations plus Latin America: the Weinstein, Jay. Social Change, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/capella/detail.action?docID=616416. Created from capella on 2018-10-07 17:18:35.

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Third World (Horowitz 1966; Worsley 1964). This designation distinguishes them from both the developed capitalist (First World) and the semideveloped socialist (Second World) countries of Europe and North America, and Japan. Through the efforts of India’s first prime minister, J. N. Nehru, and the Yugoslav leader, Marshal Tito, the argument was put forth that the new nations should not be aligned with either of the two post–World War II power blocs, the United States and the Soviet Union. Thus, they were conceived as a “third” force in international relations, although many observers have concluded that nonalignment turned out to be largely a myth in a world divided by the Cold War.

The period during which the Third World was created included some of the boldest experiments in planned social change ever attempted, for these were also the three “decades of development” (Goulet 1977). It was an era of nation creation and building, and it was a time of large-scale attempts to improve significantly and rapidly the standard of living of some two billion people (which had increased to nearly five billion by the year 2010). The preceding centuries of colonial rule had been characterized by an asymmetry of power as well as the creation of vast disparities in wealth. This, it was hoped, would be rectified through massive investments, along with the creation of large-scale bureaucratic organizations to administer the investments in development projects, rural electrification, literacy programs, a Green Revolution (Karim 1986; Perkins 1997), and more.

Although Israel and India were among the first postwar new nations, they were not typical in having (to this day) civilian governments (Horowitz 1982; Horowitz et al. 1984). As the native people of the former colonial areas addressed the problems of independence and development, they established democratic constitutions, often modeled after that of the “First New Nation,” the United States (Lipset 1963). Yet, in country after country, “emergencies” made it necessary to suspend the new constitutions, as military regimes came to the fore with their own, often autocratic solutions to the challenge of self-rule. At times, these were peaceful transitions, but typically they involved violent insurrection (Kposowa and Jenkins 1993; Skocpol 1994).

Another unexpected inheritance of the newly independent nations was internal ethnic conflict. Many of the Third World countries, including India, Pakistan, and Israel, are the creations of mapmakers. Natural territories of indigenous populations often have little to do with the boundaries that were drawn at UN headquarters or in postcolonial military negotiations. As a result, the original claims of indigenous people for independence from the European powers have more recently been echoed within the Third World. These have often been fostered by representatives of ethnic groups asserting their rights for independence from the new, local central authorities (Stephens 1993).

The struggles for democracy and against military rule, the ethnic conflict, and the development programs continue to this day (although center stage, in terms of the target for social reconstruction investment, must now be shared with the newly emerging Second World). Confrontations that have pitted Arabic and other Muslim nations (including Pakistan) against the United States and the West are significant by-products of the end of colonial rule. The momentum generated during the anticolonial struggles and the rush for development in the Third World by these and other events continue to have effects. Yet, it would be difficult to say with certainty whether or not the results correspond with what was desired by key actors. What

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is certain, however, is that James Joyce’s prophecy that “the East will shake the West awake” has come true (see the detailed discussion of “the Easternization of the West” in Campbell 2007).

The fall of colonialism and the rise of the Third World have changed the terms of international relations and have redefined the quest for human rights and social and economic justice (Gastil 1986). Regardless of the specific impacts that lie ahead, the rise of the Third World represents the voice of the majority of humanity, demanding to be heard and to be treated as equals.10

The U.S. Civil Rights Movement, 1954–1968 On May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down the landmark decision in the case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (Cottrol, Diamond, and Ware 2003; Tushnet 1987).11 This decision was the culmination of activity in the African American community and concern among academics and jurists in the decade following the return of the troops after World War II. African American leaders perceived the sharp contradiction between segregation and discrimination at home and in the armed services, on one hand, and, on the other, the ideals for which members of their ethnic group had just fought abroad (Powledge 1991).

Just prior to the end of the war, this “American Dilemma” was chronicled in an influential study, with that title, by the Swedish social scientist (and later Nobel laureate) Gunnar Myrdal (1944). Citing Myrdal’s study, the Brown decision declared that officially sanctioned, state- authorized discrimination against “Negroes” was incompatible with the U.S. Constitution.

In one respect, this was simply the latest stage in a movement that had begun with the first slave revolt hundreds of years earlier (Bergman 1969; Lomax 1962; Moore 1981). But it was also a new beginning. It set a precedent of challenging the established, but morally wrong and now declared illegal, norms, values, and practices of intergroup relations in the country.

During the succeeding fifteen years, U.S. society and culture underwent a deep and lasting transformation (Morris 1984, 1999). In an atmosphere that was already politically charged as a result of the tragic and divisive war in Vietnam, the movement for equal treatment of African Americans expanded far beyond its previous scale. It spread from the southern states, where the 1955 arrest of Rosa Parks in Alabama set off the famous Montgomery bus boycott (Gibson- Robinson 1987), to Chicago and other northern cities. Participation rates in formal organizations increased, as did the number and size of informal demonstrations and organized protest marches (Branch 2006; Morris 1981, 1993).

Box 1.2 BROWN VERSUS BOARD OF EDUCATION DECISION

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954) (USSC+)

347 u.s. 483 Argued December 9, 1952

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Reargued December 8, 1953 Decided May 17, 1954

APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF KANSAS*

Syllabus

Segregation of white and Negro children in the public schools of a State solely on the basis of race, pursuant to state laws permitting or requiring such segregation, denies to Negro children the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment—even though the physical facilities and other “tangible” factors of white and Negro schools may be equal.

(a) The history of the Fourteenth Amendment is inconclusive as to its intended effect on public education.

(b) The question presented in these cases must be determined not on the basis of conditions existing when the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted, but in the light of the full development of public education and its present place in American life throughout the Nation.

(c) Where a State has undertaken to provide an opportunity for an education in its public schools, such an opportunity is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms.

(d) Segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race deprives children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities, even though the physical facilities and other “tangible” factors may be equal.

(e) The “separate but equal” doctrine adopted in Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537, has no place in the field of public education.

(f) The cases are restored to the docket for further argument on specified questions relating to the forms of the decrees.

MR. CHIEF JUSTICE WARREN delivered the opinion of the Court.

We conclude that, in the field of public education, the doctrine of “separate but equal” has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. Therefore, we hold that the plaintiffs and others similarly situated for whom the actions have been brought are, by reason of the segregation complained of, deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. This disposition makes unnecessary any discussion whether such segregation also violates the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Source: U.S. National Park Service, www.nps.gov/archive/brvb/pages/decision54.htm.

The African American churches played a historically central role in the movement. At the head of many of these marches was a Protestant minister from Atlanta who had studied the anticolonial strategies of Gandhi: Martin Luther King Jr. Another man inspired by the Third World independence movement was a Muslim minister from Michigan, Al Haj Malik al

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Shabbaz (Malcolm X), who served as spiritual leader and political spokesman for millions. Violence and confrontation, often initiated by officially sanctioned attacks on participants,

were very much part of the movement. But there were also comradeship and a spirit of liberation. As with the rise of the Third World, the ideals and the impact of the events continue to this day. The civil rights movement has contributed significantly to the culture and strategies of the movements for equal treatment of women and other minority groups, and to other challenges to existing u.s. (and world) standards of appropriate interpersonal relations.

In 1964, ten years after the Brown decision, congress passed and President lyndon Johnson signed the civil rights Act. It represented an answer, albeit not a complete answer, to the challenge of reverends King and shabbaz, other leaders, and the masses for whom they spoke. The movement continued to seek other legal, economic, and social reforms years after the act was signed. Increasingly, the issues of civil rights and protest against the vietnam War were joined. Shabbaz and King began stressing the connection between the battlefronts in southeast Asia and the confrontations on the streets in the united states, thus radicalizing their respective branches of the movement. And, like gandhi before them, both were assassinated: shabbaz on february 21, 1964, and King on April 4, 1968.

After 1969, in the wake of the bloodshed (recall that John f. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963 and robert Kennedy in 1968), the movement shifted direction. New, younger leaders, such as stokely carmichael, rap Brown, and eldridge cleaver, came to the fore, promoting programs of black community self-development, political power, and self-defense (lockwood 1970). With increasingly militant responses from authorities, the hopeful insurgent spirit began to recede. It is not finished by any means, although unfortunately much of the literature on the effects of the Brown decision is about the limits of such change (e.g., olzak, shanahan, and West 1994). That key episode between the Brown decision and the death of the two leaders forms a boundary between that time and ours. The movement shook the united states and the rest of the world, and they continue to shake.

The Fall of Soviet Communism, 1989–1991 The reverberations of the u.s. Civil rights movement contributed, in direct and indirect ways, to the collapse of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989 (Borrell 1989; Hamilton 1989).12 the wall had come to symbolize the great divide between the first and second Worlds at the end of World War II. Germany, and its wartime capital in particular, were split into two parts that corresponded to the conflicting claims of the Allies: the united states, england, and france on one side, and the soviet union on the other. The original dispute centered in large part on strategies for dealing with the new phenomenon of a pariah nation (Philipsen 1993).

The destruction of the wall by german citizens from both sides was a climactic (though not final) act in a social movement that had been sweeping central and eastern europe since the Hungarian uprising in october 1956 (Adelman 1986; opp and gern 1993). It symbolized the end of a massive experiment in social planning and coordination, begun during World War i. It demonstrated that the cold War and nuclear confrontation had come to an end and with it the serious risk of another kind of holocaust. And it symbolized the collapse of yet another empire,

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this one ruled from Moscow and encompassing central and eastern europe. There are many lessons yet to be learned about what went on in these largely closed

countries between World War ii and the late 1980s. We do know that they were autocratic to the core, that is, the political systems were designed primarily to maintain the power and privileges of the elite officeholders (Brzezinski 1989; Daswisha 1988). The systems were command states (rose 1993), dependent on secret police forces, networks of agents provocateurs, and informers to maintain social control and ensure the stability of the regimes. The central governments had been largely absorbed by small groups of communist Party elites who had a monopoly over the means of violence and control of an extensive penal system. Reflecting the height of cynicism, the rulers preached sacrifice and sharing, while they enriched themselves, families, and friends with stolen resources—all of this, it should be recalled, in the name of realizing Marx’s classic utopian vision of a truly just society.

What is occurring now in the former soviet republics and the old Warsaw Pact countries (plus the unique nonaligned former communist country of Albania) could not have been conceived a few years ago. Indeed, on May 1, 1998, the unimaginable happened.

Following World War ii, the united states and countries of Western europe created the North Atlantic treaty organization (NAto) to combat the Warsaw Pact, as the two blocs faced off as the main cold War alliances. In May 1998, NAto members voted unanimously to admit three of the former Warsaw Pact stalwarts, the czech republic, Hungary, and Poland.

The Bolshevist system seemed so durable (Kecskemeti 1991), and, with the help of soviet nuclear technology, it appeared to pose a mortal threat to the very existence of humanity. As it has turned out, it had fatal flaws, of course. But was there anything good about it? Was the great communist experiment the grotesque disaster that it now appears to have been, or are there things about it that should be preserved? certainly there were, and still are, many people in these countries who sincerely believed in the ideals of Karl Marx. And some believe(d) that the ruling party—and only party—was capable of implementing these ideals. As the system has unraveled, these and related political, economic, and social problems continue to surface (rona-tas 1994). Especially intense are the old ethnic rivalries that had been submerged or suppressed during communist rule (cviic 1991; Malis 1992).

Box 1.3 TIMELINE OF THE FALL OF COMMUNISM IN EASTERN EUROPE, 1989

U.S. Department of State, Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy and public Affairs

On the night of November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall, the most potent symbol of the cold-war division of europe, came down. Earlier that day, the communist authorities of the german Democratic republic had announced the removal of travel restrictions to democratic West Berlin. Thousands of east germans streamed into the West, and in the course of the night, celebrants on both sides of the wall began to tear it down.

The collapse of the Berlin Wall was the culminating point of the revolutionary changes sweeping east central europe in 1989. Throughout the soviet bloc, reformers assumed power

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and ended over 40 years of dictatorial communist rule. The reform movement that ended communism in east central europe began in Poland. Solidarity, an anti-communist trade union and social movement, had forced Poland’s communist government to recognize it in 1980 through a wave of strikes that gained international attention. In 1981, Poland’s communist authorities, under pressure from Moscow, declared martial law, arrested solidarity’s leaders, and banned the democratic trade union. The ban did not bring an end to solidarity. The movement simply went underground, and the rebellious Poles organized their own civil society, separate from the communist government and its edicts.

In 1985, the assumption of power in the soviet union by a reformer, Mikhail gorbachev, paved the way for political and economic reforms in east central europe. Gorbachev abandoned the “Brezhnev Doctrine” the soviet union’s policy of intervening with military force, if necessary, to preserve communist rule in the region. Instead, he encouraged the local communist leaders to seek new ways of gaining popular support for their rule. In Hungary, the communist government initiated reforms in 1989 that led to the sanctioning of a multiparty system and competitive elections. In Poland, the communists entered into round-table talks with a reinvigorated solidarity. As a result, Poland held its first competitive elections since before World War ii, and in 1989, solidarity formed the first non-communist government within the soviet bloc since 1948. Inspired by their neighbors’ reforms, east germans took to the streets in the summer and fall of 1989 to call for reforms, including freedom to visit West Berlin and West germany. Moscow’s refusal to use military force to buoy the regime of east german leader erich Honecker led to his replacement and the initiation of political reforms, leading up to the fateful decision to open the border crossings on the night of November 9, 1989.

In the wake of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, czechs and slovaks took to the streets to demand political reforms in czechoslovakia. Leading the demonstrations in Prague was dissident playwright vaclav Havel, co-founder of the reform group charter 77. The communist Party of czechoslovakia quietly and peacefully transferred rule to Havel and the czechoslovak reformers in what was later dubbed the “velvet revolution.” in romania, the communist regime of hardliner Nicolae ceausescu was overthrown by popular protest and force of arms in December 1989. Soon, the communist parties of Bulgaria and Albania also ceded power.

The revolutions of 1989 marked the death knell of communism in europe. As a result, not only was germany reunified in 1990, but soon, revolution spread to the soviet union itself. After surviving a hard line coup attempt in 1991, gorbachev was forced to cede power in russia to Boris Yeltsin, who oversaw the dissolution of the soviet union.

The collapse of communism in east central europe and the soviet union marked the end of the cold war. The U.S. long-term policy of containing soviet expansion while encouraging democratic reform in central and eastern europe through scientific and cultural exchanges, information policy (e.g., radio free europe and radio liberty), and the united states’ own example, provided invaluable support to the peoples of east central europe in their struggle for freedom.

Source: u.s. Department of state, www.state.gov/r/pa/ho/time/rd/17672.htm Weinstein, Jay. Social Change, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/capella/detail.action?docID=616416. Created from capella on 2018-10-07 17:18:35.

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For seventy years in the former ussr and forty years elsewhere in the region, ethnic identity was officially treated as a secondary or even lesser form of identification in relation to political definitions (whether or not one was a communist). Indeed, from a Marxist-leninist perspective, ethnic identity was an archaic form of social diversity that communism would eliminate. Meanwhile, “back in the ussr” and elsewhere, implicit policies ensuring the domination of ethnic majorities, such as the russians, were the rule.

With the fall of soviet communism, third World–type claims of ethnic sovereignty have already created more than twenty new post–cold War nations (Przewowski 1991). Civil war in Kosovo-serbia and Macedonia, both parts of former Yugoslavia, concluded only at the very end of the twentieth century, and it continued well into the twenty-first century with the independence movement in Montenegro (a former serbian republic) and in the russian republic of chechnya (see codrescu 1991, 2000). Yet there is no turning back. Although a few people (openly) admit to wanting to restore the old system, it has essentially been delegitimated.

The end of communist rule in central and eastern europe represents a crushing defeat for autocracy. The command state, as a huge social change experiment to develop an alternative to capitalist democracy, was a major failure. Moreover, it is a path that seems unlikely to be pursued again in the near future. Whether it is simply a defeat for only one kind of autocracy, namely, the communist kind, remains to be seen, for it is also possible that the conditions still exist that were so conducive to antidemocratic sentiment and behavior in 1917, 1933, and 1946 (Habermas and Michnik 1994; Michnik 2009). Thus, the end of autocracy, in this case, is not necessarily a prelude to democracy. That, too, remains to be worked out (Kolakowski 1990; lipset 1994; Marsh 1991; rose 1993; szelenyi 1994).

Like the other three episodes, the fall of communism is a complex matter. But it has clearly altered human relations throughout the world and for a very long time. The fact that it did so in a sudden, unexpected, and relatively peaceful way means that we still have much to understand about it. Few, however, would doubt that it represents a ray of light (though perhaps a thin one) where there had been decades of darkness.

Oceania, 1984: A Fictional Account of a Changeless World Most of you have read or are familiar with the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four ([1949] 1984) by george orwell, born eric Blair (1903–1950). A brief review of the book is presented here, and at several other points the text turns to orwell’s powerful understanding of post–World War ii europe.

You will recall that the main character of the novel is someone we never actually meet. Indeed, orwell gives us reason to believe that, like the Wizard of oz, there may not be such a person beyond the huge images that are projected on the two-way television sets that are always turned on: this is Big Brother (affectionately referred to as “BB”). BB is the absolute ruler of an empire known as oceania, a place in which the autocratic principles of Nazism and communism have been realized in a perfect form. It is a world of state-authorized terror, secret police, and informers, in which social movements for political independence and civil rights

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are impossible—a world in which a revolution to topple “the Wall” can never occur. Oceania, orwell warns prophetically, is a nightmare that could come true.

Orwell’s book is an antiutopian account of change and stability. It was among the first of what is now a familiar kind of fantasy literature, although, as orwell noted, it draws much from Yvgenii Zamiatin’s We ([1924] 1993) and Jack london’s ([1910] 1980) novel The Iron Heel (orwell 1988, chap. 9). As a work of fiction, its style, method, and purpose differ from those of technical social science. But, as extremely well-written fiction, the book also contains much that aspiring researchers might wish to emulate.

Contemporary social scientists have frequently discussed orwell and Nineteen Eighty- Four in this light (Aron 1967, 75; calhoun, light, and Keller 1994, 81, 574; fromm 1961; Harper 1993, 202; Hyams 1973, 256–57; robertson 1987, 98). The much-cited essay by ralf Dahrendorf (1968) is especially relevant (see also turner 1973; Weinstein 2001). Dahrendorf, in particular, focuses on the issue of “closure,” the premise that society and culture in orwell’s fictional world cannot be affected by uncontrolled or external factors. He criticizes this assumption and applies the critique to the concepts of intention and purpose and to the major theories of change, Marxism and modernization theory.

According to Dahrendorf, in real human systems, goal-directed behavior and associated unintended consequences make orwellian closure impossible. Similarly, the actual world system that has emerged since orwell’s death is far more open and has been so for a far longer time than Nineteen Eighty-Four would suggest.

Orwell’s novel is a parable on democracy and autocracy. It was certainly intended as such, and for this reason orwell and the book need to be placed in historical and political context. Most important, it was written immediately after the Holocaust and Nuremberg, in post–World War ii london. English socialism (“iNgsoc” in the book) was an important factor in the country and in orwell’s personal life. Communist regimes were being established throughout central and eastern europe.

The text and context of Nineteen Eighty-Four relate closely to the four critical episodes discussed earlier in this chapter. There are numerous parallels between these real instances of change and orwell’s frozen portrayal of oceania and its capital city Airstrip one. There is the Party, whose unchallenged leader is and always will be BB. We have its system of total control and the (ultimately futile) social movement to overthrow the system: the Brotherhood. Orwell also reminds us of the rule allowing only members of the inner Party to turn off their television sets. Vividly portrayed are the state’s use of terror and torture, the division of the world into three regional alliances, the fact that the enemy of BB (and object of the two-minute hate) is named goldstein, and more.

Orwell was a keen observer of major social trends and a prolific writer of novels, short stories, and essays (see orwell and Angus 1978). He chose to communicate some, but by no means all, of his most astute commentary in fictional form: in addition to Nineteen Eighty- Four, there is the closely related, brilliant parable Animal Farm (1946). He wrote much nonfiction as well, especially the highly sociological studies The Road to Wigan Pier (1958) and Down and Out in Paris and London ([1933] 1950). In so doing, he provided future researchers with a powerful source of insights and “thought experiments” that have enriched

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and extended the heritage of more conventional, scientific approaches.

The Question of Progress The four critical episodes plus Nineteen Eighty-Four, individually and considered as a group, have much to tell us about where human society has been headed—recently and, on reflection, since the beginning of human existence. In particular, they vividly underscore the central, but ambiguous, concept of progress. When change is viewed over extended periods, over decades, generations, and centuries, can we discern an endpoint or, in greek, a telos toward which we are bound? can we say that, during a particular period for a specific group of people, things are improving? or is it possible that social conditions generally deteriorate over time?

To take this line of questions to its extreme, can we understand the history and the prehistory of the largest of all groups, the human species, from this perspective? is humanity as a whole progressing? or is it regressing? Do contemporary society and culture provide people with a significantly better quality of life than that of our stone Age ancestors or that of our grandparents? or are we in some important ways worse off than in the past? As bold as such questions may appear, they actually reflect common and abiding concerns of scholars from a wide range of disciplines, nationalities, and eras.

“Progress” as a Value Judgment Great care must be taken in defining words such as improving or deteriorating when we pose questions about social progress or its opposite. Social and cultural phenomena are highly complex, the more so when the size of groups is large and time spans for observing change are long, as in the four critical episodes. This makes it possible to select evidence, intentionally or unconsciously, in such a way that it will “prove” almost any point one wishes to make: that things are improving, that things are getting worse, or something in between. Indeed, political leaders, journalists, and other public figures do this as a matter of course.

Throughout, this book looks closely at the issue of progressive change and at the crucial value judgments that underlie our perceptions of progress. For example, as you are well aware, the number of personal computers in use in the united states has changed dramatically and in an ever-increasing fashion since the 1970s. This is evident, but is it good? is it progress? the answers depend, of course, on one’s values and interests.

Some see computerization as very positive, as another great step toward freeing people from drudgery and making it possible to perform previously unimaginable feats. Others see it as Big Brother’s ultimate tool of oppression, a method for the powerful to intrude into the lives of ordinary people that is more effective than even orwell could have imagined (Hourani 1987, 1994).

Progress for Whom? Progress also depends on the institutional status of affected persons. Is a change, such as the recent replacement of automobile workers by computerized robots, bad? Does it reflect

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deterioration of conditions? the workers and their families probably would think so. But what about their employers, who might be quite pleased about the improvement in their cash flows? And how would the computer manufacturer, tax collector, or buyer of a new automobile evaluate such a decrease? in these cases, it appears that progress is in the eye of the status holder, depending on whether the status is worker, employer, tax collector, or consumer.

The four critical episodes all occurred during the past seventy years, during the lifetimes of ourselves, our parents, or our grandparents. They range from what most (but not all) people would agree is a clear case of progress, the u.s. Civil rights movement, to a case widely (but, still, not universally—see box 1.1 above) viewed as a regression, the Holocaust. The other two events appear, on first examination, to be more ambiguous. If we think of all four together, remembering that the earlier ones did affect the later ones, it is difficult to come to a quick and definite conclusion about whether they indicate a generally progressive or regressive trend.

When one carefully analyzes the events, one sees deeply ingrained ambiguity, even in the seemingly clear-cut cases. In some of the higher ironies of history, the Holocaust included a kind of moral progress, the achievement of unprecedented levels of heroism and sacrifice by thousands of people (gross 1994; oliner and oliner 1992; rittner and Meyers 1986). The civil rights movement had its share of regressive outcomes, including the assassination of its leaders with at least some of the murderers never brought to justice. Can we say, definitively, that these, or the rise of the third World nations, or the fall of communism, were signs of definite progress (or regress)? for whom? Progress in what regard?

The point is that social and cultural change, at least of the magnitude we are considering, is typically characterized by both progress and deterioration, depending on one’s value judgments. Change “takes” from the past and is painful to those who are attached to it; it “gives” to the future and is pleasurable to those lacking a positive stake in the past.

But, one might wonder, has there not been objective progress, sociocultural advancement, since World War ii, since the mid-nineteenth century, or since Paleolithic times? for most social scientists, this question leads to an analysis of the concept of evolution, which chapter 2 explores.

Relevant Websites At the end of each chapter is a list of website addresses (urls) where you will find information, references, and other material related to the topics discussed in the text. Along with each address is a brief overview of what one can expect to find. As this edition went to press, the sites were all active and contained the specific features described. However, because of the dynamic nature of the internet today, sites are quickly outdated, changed, relocated, or shut down. Because of this, you may find it difficult to locate some of the items listed in this and later chapters. We regret the inconvenience and recommend that you continue your explorations with the help of google or another search engine. We can assure you that relevant sites, at times very many of them, can be found on virtually any topic discussed in this book.

http://gsociology.icaap.org/ The international consortium for the Advancement of Academic Publication (icAAP) maintains

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http://gsociology.icaap.org/

this site. It includes numerous links to resources on social and cultural change, especially—but not exclusively—in the discipline of sociology. It is listed at the websites of four American sociological Association sections, the British sociological Association, the european sociological Association, and the international social science council.

www.mcdonaldization.com/ This site is a spin-off from george ritzer’s influential book, The McDonaldization of Society. It pursues many of the issues discussed in the book, includes an interactive posting, and has comments from several social researchers, including ritzer.

www.southendpress.org/about/institute Here is a social change advocacy site sponsored by south end Press. Students interested in activism to create progressive change in the united states and the world will find much of interest here.

www.nizkor.org/ www.fpp.co.uk/ These two websites contain material on the Holocaust and Holocaust denial. The first is the site of the Nizkor project, an organization dedicated to keeping an accurate record of the episode. The second is the official site of David irving, leading Holocaust denier.

www.brownvboard.org/ This is the official website for information on the 1954 supreme court decision Brown et al. v. Board of Education of Topeka et al. The entire decision, transcripts of the trial, and background information can be found here.

www.iccnow.org/ Here one can find background on the international criminal court. The court itself maintains this site.

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