Author: haroonkhan

Any invention exerts influences other than those originally perceived. Speaking of the introduction of the radio in the United States, Ogburn and Nimkoff identified as many as 150 different influences in the following fields: uniformity and diffusion, transportation, education, dissemination of information, religion, industry and business, occupations, and government and politics, to name a few.…

The above analysis of change related to cultural goals and means, and to the attendant changes in institutions or in attitudes and values. Western sociology, particularly American sociology, also paid attention to changes in demography and to other changes brought about in society by technological innovations. We shall briefly allude to them here. Demographic Change…

Of the several contributions to deviation and anomie, we shall summarize the seminal contribution made by Robert K. Merton, whose paper encouraged a good many studies. Anomie is not used by Merton to imply normlessness, the literal meaning of the word. Merton defined anomie as a condition in which an increasing number of members of…

At the time that sociology emerged as an academic discipline, the societies of the West were in the throes of change. What intrigued scholars was the remarkable continuity of basic social structures in the midst of change. Disintegrative tendencies were viewed as aberrations as they were brought back to normality by institutions of social control. Inspired…

We must, however, not minimize the importance of earlier studies. Proposing a functional theory of change, Talcott Parsons made it clear that any ‘ordinary system … is capable of description of, on the one hand a structure, a set of units or components with … stable properties, which of course may be relational, and on…

Prior to the advent of the social sciences, our understanding of society was guided by the perception of sages and savants, who mixed descriptions of ‘actually existing social situations’ with prescriptions regarding a desirable social structure, norms of behaviour, and cultural patterns. These native philosophers did not make a distinction between ‘what is’ and ‘what…