Social Development Theories

Answer 1:

Since the beginning of the concept of sociology, of one its tasks were to study the changes that are subject to the public. Initially, the problems regarding the changes was rather ambiguously determined, and hence the terms "social change", "social development", "social evolution" or the term "social progress" were formed (George & Bennett, pp 203).

As far as what I have learned, social development must be understood as the disappearance or emergence of a new social phenomenon (for example, the disintegration of tribal communities and the shaping of the nation), or conversion to a community in its basic elements of the structure. This is one of the most important aspects that the social theories address. However, to talk about a phenomenon, a developmental change must meet certain criteria, which means that it must be a unique change occurring over a stretch of historical time period. Social development is thus a long-term change, which covers the whole society (Pieterse, pp 202 - 205).

Similarly, I believe that change must also be structural in nature and must exist in the internal structure of a social phenomenon, which is the second important aspect of social theory and development. Apart from that, the change should also be a way or a transition of the phenomenon to a different status in comparison with the state before the occurrence of the change. The third important thing that I learned was that the change should specify not only the phenomenon but also have a wider social context, which should be at a larger scale changes. Sociologists from the beginning tried to figure out what greed regularity in the phenomena of social change, and what are the results of these changes. This is the reason as to why this subject appeared in quite a few theories of social development (Peet, Hartwick & Hartwick, pp 139 - 141).

Answer 2:

The theories of social development have tried to explain the fate of humanity and attempted to extract certain historical phases. The focal ideas of the concept of social theories in context to enlightenment have surely been unable to generate the desired and expected results. The prime reason behind this is that the subject of inquiry was usually some abstract society without taking into account the useful historical data (George & Bennett, pp 203). This is as to why the characteristic of virtually all theories have been baseless allegations of vagueness and abstractness.

A common feature is also a simplification of the structure and culture of the society and the introduction of various kinds of generalizations. These theories are practically devoid facts upon which it is almost impossible to generalize the idea. I believe that the community does not exist in this way, but there are similar groups or types of solidarity. Most of the very general theory treats social development with facts relevant to the validity of reasoning that makes little sense (Pieterse, pp 204 - 207). Perhaps this is due to the fact that most of these theories arose in ...