The Behavioral and Social Sciences Achievements and Opportunities (1988) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
4. Institutions and Cultures
4. Institutions and Cultures
Pages 127-164
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 127... ...
4 Tnstitut:ions and CuTt:ures
|
From page 129... ...
Chapter 2 focused on motivational determinants and mechanisms in individual behavior, as well as research on the constraining and determining effects of social interaction and social arrangements with respect to behavior. Chapter 3 took up organizational arrangements, especially markets and political and occupational systems, and examined how information, incentives, and other features shape these arrangements.
|
From page 130... ...
These questions are studied both by historians of science and by other social scientists. The chapter also takes a look at the behavioral and social sciences themselves also the children of modernization- and on the relations between social science knowledge and public policy.
|
From page 131... ...
Social Organization in Prebistoric limes Direct evidence on the social organization of early human groups ~ limbed, but some tentative conclusions can be drawn. Many archaeological shes dadug
|
From page 132... ...
In line with that model, the societies of human ancestors were depicted as hierarchial, with males being competitive and aggressive and females being passive and nurturers of the young. Subsequent primate field research has dispelled a number of these inferences: it has shown that primate behavior varies enormously, both within and among species, and that simple generalizations about sex differences in nurturance, social competitiveness, and passivity in females cannot be sustained.
|
From page 133... ...
Homebase behavior does not occur among nonhuman primates and is rare among mammals. It is unclear when humans began to use home bases, what kind of communications and social relations were involved, and what the ecological and food choice contexts of the shift were.
|
From page 134... ...
But there is also some evidence of a relatively recent change in the structure of the human vocal tract. This change coincides with the loss of muscularity that distinguishes anatomically modern humans, with modern-size brains, from the Neanderthals whom they replaced about 30,000 years ago.
|
From page 135... ...
In this empirical work it has been important to compare detailed data from surveys with theoretical and mathematical work and to compare cross-sectional information from such surveys with personal and institutional longitudinal data. Future understanding will depend largely on multifaceted and sustained research efforts, especially in regions of Africa and Asia where cultures and institutions very different from those in the United States present the greatest challenges to understanding the dynamics of demography.
|
From page 136... ...
Population Change in Developing Countries Fertility in developing countries has become and will remain a major focus in demographic research because of policy concerns with rapid population growth. However, scientific interest in the relationship between population change (especially growth)
|
From page 137... ...
The recent work of the World Fertility Survey and the European Fertility Project lends some support to the diffusion theory, but the search to uncover the combination of factors underlying fertility decline continues. An impediment to research on fertility in developing countries is the inadequate registration of births, marriages, and deaths.
|
From page 138... ...
Countries experiencing low fertility must rely on immigration to expand or maintain their labor force and so must face the social and economic challenges of accommodating immigration. In addition, the new small cohorts face the costly prospect of supporting earlier large cohorts, who will be retired when the former are in their prime working years.
|
From page 139... ...
In addition, there are scant longitudinal data on the movements of individuals and households within the United States; such data could reveal much about how internal migration decisions are made and how these movements affect regional and community social systems. The greatest improvements in detailed knowledge about both external and internal migration patterns can come from present data bases such as the Panel Study on Income Dynamics, the Survey of Income and Program Participation, and records of the Internal Revenue Service and the Social Security Administration.
|
From page 140... ...
The Nuclear Family and Social Change Modernization theory once viewed the family before the commercial and industrial revolutions as patriarchal, based on arranged marriage, extending beyond the procreative couple to include grandparents as well as lateral kin, and gaining legitimacy from the traditions of religion, community, and property. Then, under the demands of geographical and social mobility resulting from commercialization and industrialization, this kind of family was thought to have been replaced by one that was mainly isolated from extended kin, based on romantic love, possessed of greater equality between the sexes and between parents and children, and authorized by a civil, secular contract.
|
From page 141... ...
The nuclear tendency of western European families as they emerged from the medieval period a tendency discovered as historians and other social scientists applied new analyses and theories to previously unused or recently reconstructed historical archives provided an environment in which many children were raised in an emotionally supportive atmosphere to be relatively independent, mobile, risk-taking, and nontraditional. These kinds of families played an active part in originating just those economic revolutions that were previously thought to have spawned the nuclear family.
|
From page 142... ...
Another major focus of research is on the consequences of three contemporary trends: the proportion of women in the labor force, which has reached new heights in the United States and other industrial countries; the persistence of wage levels for women that are consistently and significantly lower than those for men; and divorce rates in the United States and other industrialized countries, which are at unprecedented high levels. One consequence is that the majority of people in the United States whose incomes are below the poverty line are now living in households consisting of or headed by females who are single parents, often receiving welfare benefits.
|
From page 143... ...
This shift was a response not only to intellectual developments within the scholarly study of religion, but also to the recent dramatic surge of politically oriented religious movements in the Middle East, Latin America, and the United States. Some of these movements have been radical in ideology and some have been conservative, but in either case they have been highly activist.
|
From page 144... ...
Much of the current study of religious movements in Latin America, for example, takes into account the interplay between the established Catholic church and liberation theology movements, considering how the church limits these movements, and how they bring about profound revisions in church policy, practice, and theology. Other contemporary studies of movements in the Philippines, Africa, the Middle East, and the United States emphasize the ongoing and enduring mutual impact of religion and politics on one another.
|
From page 145... ...
An accumulation of historical studies have now analyzed the way that dominant forces in society, including cultural settings, values, ideologies, and political and economic structures conditioned the development and introduction of new technology and the emergence of entire industrial systems. A useful early (1960s)
|
From page 146... ...
American physicists at the time were claiming that poor funding accounted for their relatively low international standing, but clearly that was only part of the story. Subsequent research suggests that while a supportive base of resource support is essential, the intellectual and social environment sustaining scientific discovery also depends heavily on who designs and controls teaching institutions, specialized research centers, and professional societies and journals.
|
From page 147... ...
This research, which benefits from cross-national comparisons among the United States, France, Great Britain, and other countries, has been stimulated by an interest in the relations between behavioral and social sciences knowledge and the wider cultural, socioeconomic, and political contexts. Early studies of the application of behavioral and social sciences knowledge to public policy making proceeded on the model that knowledge use was "instrumental/decisional," in other words, that empirical research findings could be applied to the straightforward solution of well-defined policy problems.
|
From page 148... ...
In addition to questions concerning the application of social and behavioral sciences to policy, other questions surrounding the development and role of these sciences are drawing increased attention. Research is needed on the history of the social science professions, both in the United States and in other countries, with a concentration on the periods in which the major disciplines were founded, the processes that forged new university-based career patterns and new definitions of professional conduct for producers of knowledge about society, and the mobilization of behavioral and social scientists for particular national efforts, such as World War II.
|
From page 149... ...
The international diffusion of prestigious ideas- for example, economic theories such as mercantilism, free trade, Keynesianism, Chicago school monetarism, and various models of modernization, as well as the use of analytic techniques, such as cost-benefit accounting, by the World Bank and other international bodies has created broad international linkage between intellectuals and social-science-trained "technocrats" in the West and governments in developing nations. Comparative-international studies that track and lead to understanding such intellectual transfers on a global level promise to enrich understanding of national singularities and crossnational regularities in the processes and people that link social science knowledge and policy makers.
|
From page 150... ...
The perceived inability of nations to regulate the Eurocurrency market has meant a partial loss of their control over monetary policy, as has the international debt crisis resulting from loans to developing countries during the 1970s. The breakdown of the Bretton Woods system and the introduction of floating exchange rates has meant greater volatility and increased the impact of international investors on domestic economies.
|
From page 151... ...
Cultural and Political Diffusion Recent research suggests that some developing countries may actively attempt to reorganize their social arrangements around world models as they enter the international system. This possibility challenges theoretical models that have emphasized national uniqueness and the intrasocietal coupling of institutions and models that view the evolution of societal institutions as produced primarily by uniform adaptive responses to the political and economic environment.
|
From page 152... ...
Explanations of the institutional bases of change in the international division of labor are central to theories both of national development and of the international economic system. Fifteen years ago it was assumed that core countries that were "home" to transnational corporations (for example, the United States)
|
From page 153... ...
Allocation of new resources or modest reallocation of resources currently defined exclusively in terms of geographic or disciplinary categories- into organizational structures explicitly designed to facilitate work that moves across such boundaries would have a major stimulating effect on research on the international division of labor. Productivity Another active line of inquiry focuses on the measured slowdown in the growth of productivity, which has been a worldwide phenomenon since about 1970.
|
From page 154... ...
154 / The Behavioral and Social Sciences Productivity Growth: Output per Hour of Work in Selected Older Industrial Countries Since 1950 200 160 ID 120 100 80 40 o 300 280 240 200 x 160 120 100 80 40 o — Total Domestic Economy , _ 47 _ ~0 .....~.
|
From page 155... ...
This figure displays some important international trends in labor productivity, which is the value of product generated per hour of work, for the five major Western industrial countries. From the outset and throughout the period since 1950, the U.S.
|
From page 156... ...
presidents are torn between regarding nuclear weapons as extraordinary and divorced from international politics and seeing them as merely very powerful bombs. President Eisenhower, for example, seems to have begun his presidency with the latter perspective and shifted to the former by the time he left office.
|
From page 157... ...
The examination of such processes, both within a country and between countries, offers a way of clarifying how and how much international conflict and war can be explained by systemic factors, such as balances of power; by domestic factors, such as specific national capabilities, needs, and demands; by decision-making factors, such as beliefs- including ideologies and changes in leadership; or by interactions among the three. One very active research area is the impact of the domestic characteristics of a country on its security-related policies.
|
From page 158... ...
But the return from that strategy yields less benefit to every participant than would one of general cooperation. A formally comparable problem in international politics has been referred to as the security dilemma, in which efforts by one country to maximize its security by arming more heavily have the effect whether intended or desired—of decreasing the security of other states, which are likely to react by increasing their arms, yielding mutually damaging arms races.
|
From page 159... ...
Arms races have typically been defined as accelerating military expenditures in the face of a potential enemy who is doing likewise, but it has become increasingly clear that the domestic pressure for military expenditures can be a more important factor than imminent international conflict. Relative power, particularly between bordering nations, has also been shown to be a factor that influences the probability for war.
|
From page 160... ...
Despite this diversity, however, nearly all areas of research on cultures and institutions, including the areas cited in this chapter, call for historical and cross-national studies: the evolution of human characteristics, changes in family structure and in the major world religions, science and technological competition, nations and transnational corporations, and superpower conflict and cooperation. Federal and foundation support for historical and cross-national research has been particularly sparse for the past two decades.
|
From page 161... ...
In the area of international security, these mechanisms, in conjunction with expanded methods of rapid communication, are particularly important to make better use of quantitative and qualitative data resources and to coordinate research efforts. In the study of science and technology, a fundamental opportunity is emerging to develop the comparative study of public and private institutions through team efforts involving senior and postdoctoral researchers and graduate students.
|
From page 162... ...
A similar problem arises in the study of how human institutions and populations evolved: a full palette of continuously improving methods, from radiochemical assays to anatomical imaging and reconstruction to symbolic interpretation are used, but overriding all is the need for sustained access to the geographical locales where rich archaeologically accessible traces of the past and relevant ethological and ecological comparison sites can be systematically probed. First-hand geographic access is also needed for the study of fertility and migrational changes in the developing countries of Africa, the interaction between political change and religious movements in Latin America, and the development of state-based institutions for managing relations with transnational corporate enterprises and developing international market strategies in eastern Asia.
|
From page 163... ...
We recommend allocating $3 million annually to this effort. A related kind of data-oriented opportunity is expanded research access to microdata files held by government agencies, such as the Internal Revenue Service, the Social Security Administration, and the Bureau of the Census, and to university-based research files, such as the Panel Study of Income Dynamics.
|
From page 164... ...
international scientific centers are a major avenue for stabilizing access to overseas sites and enabling the continuous testing and upgrading of theories and methods in cross-national, historical, and longitudinal research. A new international center with a strong demographic emphasis, to complement those in Bangladesh and Guatemala, would be a valuable spur to research.
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.