Chinese Society: An Historical Survey

1957 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 343-364 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karl A. Wittfogel

Traditional China was an agrarian society which experienced a significant development of handicraft and commerce. In this respect, China was similar to medieval Europe and to certain pre-Hellenistic civilizations of the northern and western Mediterranean. However, while these Western agrarian civilizations ultimately lost their societal identity, Chinese society perpetuated its basic features for millennia. And while medieval Europe saw a commercial and industrial revolution that led to the rise of an industrial society, traditional China never underwent such changes.Obviously, when characterizing societal structures, it is not enough to speak of agriculture, handicraft, and trade in general. We must consider their ecological and institutional setting and the specific human relations involved in their operation.

Author(s):  
Andrey V. Shipilov

The article examines  the problem of the changing nature of labor and attitudes towards it. The relevance of this topic continues to grow due to current trends in socio-economic development. The author draws attention to the fact that only in the industrial society, which was formed in Europe of the XIX century as result of the industrial revolution, labor was seen as the ability, need and duty of a person, as something that did and makes him a person. The positive value status of labor persists to some extent even today, but the industrial society has ceased to exist due to the overflow of labor force from industry to service. This overflow happened because of the increase in working efficiency. In the postindustrial society the process of a general reduction in labor in favor of leisure is unfolding as the value of the latter increases and the value of the former decreases. In this regard, it is useful to remember that in the agrarian society, as well as in the era of Antiquity and the Middle Ages labor was viewed as an anti-value and was the occupation of the lower classes and estates. The attitude towards labor in the post-industrial era approaches the attitude of the pre-industrial period, turning from positive to negative, while leisure becomes self-valuable and self-sufficient. Thus, one can agree with the opinion that the civilization of labor is being replaced today by the civilization of leisure.


Author(s):  
Luigi Capogrossi Colognesi

This chapter gives a rapid overview of the history of Roman public and private institutions, from their early beginning in the semi-legendary age of the kings to the later developments of the Imperial age. A turning point has been the passage from the kingdom to the republic and the new foundation of citizenship on family wealth, instead of the exclusiveness of clan and lineages. But still more important has been the approval of the written legislation of the XII Tables giving to all citizens a sufficient knowledge of the Roman legal body of consuetudinary laws. From that moment, Roman citizenship was identified with personal freedom and the rule of law. Following political and military success, between the end of IV and the first half of III century bce Rome was capable of imposing herself as the central power in Italy and the western Mediterranean. From that moment Roman hegemony was exercised on a growing number of cities and local populations, organized in the form of Roman of Latin colonies or as Roman municipia. Only in the last century bce were these different statutes unified with the grant of Roman citizenship to all Italians. In this same period the Roman civil law, which was applied to private litigants by the Roman praetors, had become a very complex and sophisticated system of rules. With the empire the system did not change abruptly, although the Princeps did concentrate in his hands the last power of the judiciary and became the unique source of new legislation. In that way, for the first time, the Roman legal system was founded on rational and coherent schemes, becoming a model, which Antiquity transmitted to the late medieval Europe.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anis Ahmad

In the post-industrial revolution world, social change is often studied and understood in the context of change in means of production, mobility, urbanization and change in the constitution of workforce. Role of ethical values is generally confined to personal conduct and manners. Industrial society is supposed to have its own work ethics which may or may not agree with personal ethics and morality. Ethics and morality are generally considered, in the Western thought, as a social construct. Therefore, with the change in means of production or political system, values and morality are also expected to be re-adjusted in order to cope with the changed environment. Sometimes a totally new set of values emerges as a consequence of the change in economic, political, or legal set up. The present research tries to understand the meaning and place of these values in a global socio-cultural framework. Relying essentially on the divine principles of the Qur'ān it makes an effort to understand relevance of these universal and ultimate principles with human conduct and behavior in society.  It indicates that essentially it is the core values, principles, or norms which guide human beings in their interpersonal, social, economic and political matters. Islam being a major civilizing force, culture, and the way of life, provides values which guide both in individual and social matters. The values given by the Qur’ān and the Sunnah are not monopoly of the Muslim. These values are universal and are relevant in a technological society.


2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (12) ◽  
pp. 455
Author(s):  
Hongyun Han ◽  
Sheng Xia

Since the Industrial Revolution, a new era has arisen called the Anthropocene, in which human actions have become the main driver of global environmental change outside the stable environmental state of the Holocene. During the Holocene, environmental change occurred naturally, and the Earth’s regulatory capacity maintained the conditions that enabled human development. Resource overexploitation of the industrial “Anthropocene”, under the principle of profit maximization, has led to planetary ecological crises, such as overloaded carbon sinks and climate changes, vanishing species, degraded ecosystems, and insufficient natural resources. Agro-based society, in which almost all demands of humans can be supported by agriculture, is characterized by life production. The substitution of Agro-based society for a post-industrial society is an evolutionary result of social movement, it is an internal requirement of a sustainable society for breaking through the resource constraint of economic growth. The core feature of agriculture is to use organisms as production objects and rely on life processes to achieve production goals. The substitution of Agro-based society for a post-industrial society is the precondition for a sustainable carbon cycle, breaking through the resource limits of the industrial “Anthropocene”, alleviating the environmental pressure of economic development, and promoting society from increasing disorderly entropy to orderly decreasing entropy. Meanwhile, technological advancements and growing environmental awareness of society make it feasible for the substitution of an agro-based society for a post-industrial society.


2006 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 600-617 ◽  
Author(s):  
Odalia Wong ◽  
Beatrice Chau

AbstractIn our study, we examine how prevalent the notion of filial piety remains in a modern Chinese society like Hong Kong as an initiative for individuals to become caregivers for their parents, and how it is practiced in actual caregiving scenarios. From the experiences of the caregivers analyzed in our paper, it can be seen that the Confucian notion of filial piety as a cultural norm still runs deep even in a post-industrial society like Hong Kong. However, the respondents in our study have adopted aspects of this filial norm to suit their own experiences and actual circumstances in their everyday caregiving practices. We also found that a relational approach to filial behavior with its emphasis on 'felt obligation' seemed to offer an apt interpretation of the respondents' motivations while engaging in caregiving for their parents. Specifically, caregiver obligations are negotiated commitments that can perhaps only be accurately interpreted in their highly personal family contexts. In addition, the notion of reciprocity, or giving back to one's parents, was also a prevalent factor, which reflected that emotional bonds binding the parents and children remained important, as was the empathy for elderly parents.


Author(s):  
N. Rogozhina

This article deals with the role of developing countries in strengthening the global ecological security, because the focus of environmental crisis has been shifting towards them. Taking into consideration the dynamics of their socio-economic and demographic changes, these countries will determine environmental situation in the world. Ecological crisis in developing countries is subjected to the industrial society formation that is accompanied by heavy demand on natural resources and pollution of environment. The author concludes that inevitable environmental costs of extensive economic growth are multiplied by continuing population growth and poverty increase. Today the developing countries are in extremely hard situation: they won’t overcome economic gap which is the main cause of ecological disruption without accelerating the development. But at the same time, the uncontrolled increase of economic production results in intensification of environmental crisis. It determines the urgent need to shift from the traditional model of industrial development relying on the postulate "growth first clean up later" to the model of "green" development. This economic concept is defined as eco-industrial revolution. In order to carry this task these states have to include the elements of post-industrial "green" development into the model of the industrial type development catch up. In its practical realization this model may cause further differentiation of developing countries and inequality on the global level. The emerging economics of the Asia Pacific region possess enough technological, financial resources and political will to join the "green world". But scarcely the poor countries of Africa or South Asia will demonstrate the same high interest in providing secure ecological development. Sustainable economics will probably facilitate entering the "green world".


Author(s):  
Murat Ertan Dogan

Rapid changes and developments in the information and communication technologies have led to societal transformation and emergence of new social structures. In consequence of these, information has become a vital necessity for every individual in the 21st century, and the social structures have been shaped within the framework of processes for diffusion of information. Moreover, technological and societal changes gave rise to the changes in the nature of information (formation and diffusion) and in the process of having access to the information. In this study, changes in the nature of information and knowing are being discussed on the basis of the theories explaining societal change after the industrial revolution. The study will refer to the characteristics of the learning theories and theoretically assess Connectivisim, which is suggested to be a theory for the contemporary era. This paper discusses Connectivism as an approach which explains learning within the social structures of the Network Society and the Post-Industrial Society based on the review of the theories.


Curationis ◽  
1984 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
O.H. Muller

A quarter of a century ago Mr Harold MacMillan delivered his famous Winds o f Change speech in Cape Town. In 1975 Dr. Wolff Bodenstein, in delivering a paper on primary health care, referred to the storms o f change. Now, a decade later, John Naisbitt speaks of megatrends when elaborating on change on a worldwide scale from an industrial society to an informational society. Alvin Toffler’s widely read The Third Wave speaks of similar trends on a scale comparable to the agricultural revolution and the industrial revolution.


2018 ◽  
Vol 44 ◽  
pp. 00010
Author(s):  
Julia Asaturova ◽  
Anna Mikhailova

At present, the world economy is at the stage of formation of the fourth industrial revolution, which is called to raise the industry to a new qualitative level. In this article we contemplated the history and prerequisites of the industrial revolution, defined its basic features and the most progressive technologies. We analyzed the particular features of development of the industrial revolution in Russia and abroad. We inspected the experience of foreign countries in implementing state programs in the sphere “Industry 4.0”. We investigated the concept of the Industrial Internet as a basis for developing of a new wave of the industrial revolution. We studied its main advantages, its influence on the world economy and the anticipated consequences. We investigated the factors hindering the implementation of the project related to the Industrial Internet in Russia. We formulated the primary tasks and evaluated the perspectives for development of the industrial Internet in the Russian economy.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document