Hichem Karoui

The High Growth Economy and Why it is Sustainable.

Mr. Sunil Bharti Mittal

Founder, Chairman, and Group Managing,  Director, Bharti Enterprises /// Center for the Advanced Study of India- Occasional Paper No. 25, February 2006.

Introduction by Dr. Francine R. Frankel
(Director, Center for the Advanced Study of India)
I am Francine Frankel, director of the Center for the Advanced Study of India, and it is my great pleasure this evening to introduce our speaker for CASI’s Annual Lecture, Sunil Bharti Mittal, the founder, chairman, and group managing director, Bharti Enterprises. I hardly need tell this audience that Bharti Tele-Ventures is India’s leading telecom conglomerate and its largest mobile service operator. Continue reading India’s New Entrepreneurial Classes:

A Treatise ON THE ORIGIN AND SPONTANEOUS DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIETY

Lester F. Ward

From the PREFACE
I make no claim to priority in the use of the term pure sociology. It is but natural that those who regard sociology as a science should divide the science, as other sciences are divided, into the two natural departments, pure and applied. But as the term „pure sociology“ has been freely used for several years by certain European sociologists, it seems proper to explain that the matter for this work has been accumulating in my hands for many years. I should perhaps rather say that sociological material has been long pouring in upon me, and that the first classification that was made of it was into such as related to the origin, nature, and genetic or spontaneous development of society, and such as related to means and methods for the artificial improvement of social conditions on the part of man and society as conscious and intelligent agents. The first of these classes I naturally called pure sociology, the second, applied sociology. Continue reading PURE SOCIOLOGY

BY: JAMES QUAYLE DEALEY,
AND LESTER FRANK WARD,
THIS work is the outcome of a demand for a short text-book that would contain in essence a clear and concise statement of the field of sociology, its scientific basis, its principles as far as these are at present known, and its purposes. In the preparation of this book emphasis has been placed on three points: first, on the social forces as the dynamic agent working unconsciously toward natural individual ends and consciously toward collective achievement under the direction of the intellect; second, on the importance of material achievement as the basis of psychical development, and on the necessity of systematic general instruction in the fundamental principles of knowledge as a basis for right social life; and third, on the arrangement of the material so as to facilitate its use for purposes of reading clubs and classes. Continue reading A TEXT-BOOK OF SOCIOLOGY

David Rosnick

June 2010: CEPR

Unlike a century ago, people expect their children to live past the age of retirement. This fact has important implications for how workers save for retirement, but has no specific implications for the retirement portion of Social Security. In addition, the increase in life expectancy is not nearly as important as it might first appear. A significant part of the increase in life is between birth and age 20. Including declines in child and teen mortality exaggerate the increase in retirement length. Furthermore, much of the gains in life expectancy come during working years—between age 20 and retirement. This means that workers are not only experiencing longer retirements, but longer working lives as well. Finally, each succeeding generation has been vastly more productive than prior generations—a trend that will continue. Thus, not only have workers on average more years of work over their lifetime, they are better able to save for their retirements. Continue reading Social Security and the Age of Retirement

Edited by George Ritzer

The magnitude and the diversity of the sociological literature represent a challenge to a wide range of people scholars and students in sociology and closely related disciplines (some of which were at one time part of sociology) such as criminology, social work, and urban studies; in all of the other social sciences; and in many other disciplines. More generally, many others, including secondary school students and interested laypeople, often need to gain a sense not only of the discipline in general, but also of a wide range of specific topics and issues in the domain of sociology. Journalists and documentary filmmakers are others who frequently seekout ideas and insights from sociology. This encyclopedia gathers together in one place state of the art information on, and analyses of, much of what constitutes contemporary sociology…

Continue reading The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology

Case studies and possible avenues for future research.

OR APPLIED SOCIAL SCIENCE AS BASED UPON STATICAL SOCIOLOGY  AND THE LESS COMPLEX SCIENCES

BY LESTER F. WARD

IN TWO VOLUMES

At the time of the appearance of the first edition of this work, in 1883, the word sociology was rarely spoken, and when spoken was often condemned – not merely as a word improperly formed, but also as embodying a conception, if not wholly false, at least more or less confused and imaginary. In the course of a long correspondence with Dr. Edward L. Youmans relative to the publication of the work, he frequently said that its title was against it, and in a letter dated March 18, 1886, or nearly three years after its appearance, and less than a year before his death, speaking of the moderate sales, he said: “It had two intrinsic drawbacks – its high price and its most unfortunate title. Spencer’s title, ‘Descriptive Sociology,’ killed the work to which it was applied. Your title embodies a theory in popularly repulsive terms, which both volumes must be read to understand, and this is the more unfortunate as the work itself is so essentially popular.” Continue reading DYNAMIC SOCIOLOGY

Edited by Jan E. Stets University of California Riverside, California
and
Jonathan H. Turner University of California Riverside, California

Contributors
David Boyns, Department of Sociology, California State University, Northridge, CA 91330
Kathy Charmaz. Department of Sociology, Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park, CA 94928
Gordon Clanton. Department of Sociology, San Diego State University, San Diego, CA 92182 Continue reading Handbook of the Sociology of Emotions

Lester Frank Ward

from: The American Journal of Sociology (Chicago)

To give anything approaching an adequate account of contemporary sociology would be a difficult task. Just at present we are in that initial stage of the science in which a great army of really honest and earnest workers is wholly without organization – an army, it might be called, all the members of which are officers having the same rank, and none subject to the orders of any other. Each one is pursuing the one particular line that he has chosen. Nearly everyone has some one single thought, which he believes to embrace, when seen as he sees it, the whole field of sociology, and he is
elaborating that idea to the utmost. Now, it is clear that he will make much more of that idea than anyone else could make. He will get all the truth out of it that it contains. It is true that he will carry it too far and weight it down with implications that it will not bear, but these are, like the errors of all scientific investigators, subject to universal criticism and ultimate rejection by putting the real truth in their place. Continue reading CONTEMPORARY SOCIOLOGY

A TREATISE ON THE CONSCIOUS IMPROVEMENT OF SOCIETY BY SOCIETY

BY LESTER F. WARD

This work and its predecessor, Pure Sociology, constitute together a system of sociology, and these, with Dynamic Sociology, The Psychic Factors of Civilization, and the Outlines of Sociology, make up a more comprehensive system of social philosophy. Should any reader acquaint himself with the whole, he will find it not only consistent with itself, but progressive in the sense that each successive volume carries the subject a step farther with a minimum of repetition or duplicate treatment.
The central thought is that of a true science of society, capable, in the measure that it approaches completeness, of being turned to the profit of mankind. If there is one respect in which it differs more than in others from rival systems of philosophy it is in its practical character of never losing sight of the end or purpose, nor of the possibilities of conscious effort. It is a reaction against the philosophy of despair that has come to dominate even the most enlightened scientific thought. It aims to point out a remedy for the general paralysis that is creeping over the world, and which a too narrow conception of the law of cosmic evolution serves rather to increase than to diminish. It proclaims the efficacy of effort, provided it is guided by intelligence. It would remove the embargo laid upon human activity by a
false interpretation of scientific determinism, and, without having recourse to the equally false conception of a power to will, it insists upon the power to act… Continue reading APPLIED SOCIOLOGY

A Study in the Methodology of the Social Sciences

Albion W. Small

This book is a fragment which I hope will some time find its place in a more complete study of the relations between nineteenth-century social sciences and sociology. The larger investigation is in progress in my seminar, and results are already in sight which justify belief that the work will not be without value.
On the purely methodological side, this investigation was stimulated, if not originally suggested, by experiences in connection with the St. Louis Congress of Arts and Science. In all departments of progressive knowledge, the second half of the nineteenth century was unique in its intensive development of scientific analysis. It is not probable that scholars will ever permanently appraise the importance of analysis below their present estimates, but it is certain that we are entering an era of relatively higher appreciation of synthesis. Continue reading Adam Smith and Modern Sociology