Society

What is the nature of our current societies? Do we see a clash of civilizations, or the end of history? The advent of globalization, or the birth of the network society? Are we witnessing the emergence of a risk society, or the advent of the knowledge society? More fundamentally, is ‘society’ an ideological construct that should be abandoned? Coming into English from the Latin term ‘societas’ via Old French ‘société’, the etymology of ‘society,’ in the sense of a system adopted by a group of co-existing individuals for mutually beneficial purposes, can be traced back at least to the mid-sixteenth century. By the Age of Enlightenment, ‘society’ was increasingly used in intellectual discourse to characterize human relations, often in contrast to notions of ‘the state’. During the nineteenth century, the concept was subject to highly elaborate treatment in various intellectual fields, such as political economy, philosophy, and legal thought; and ‘society’ continues to be a central conceptual tool, not only for sociology, but also for many other social-science disciplines, such as anthropology, economics, political sciences, and law. The notion resonates beyond the social sciences into the humanities; it is a fundamental concept, like nature, the universe, or the economy. Moreover, ‘society’ remains a highly contested concept, as was demonstrated, for example, by the controversy surrounding the former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher’s pithy assertion of the neoliberal economic wisdom that ‘there is no such thing as society’ (Woman’s Own, 31 October 1987); and by the term’s rehabilitation at the turn of the twenty-first century, not least with the ascendancy of the notion of ‘civil society’. This four-volume collection, a new title in the Routledge Critical Concepts in Sociology series, brings together both canonical and the best cutting-edge research to document the intellectual origins and development of what remains a key framework within which contemporary work in the social sciences in general, and sociology in particular, proceeds. Edited by Reiner Grundmann and Nico Stehr, two leading scholars in the field, this Routledge Major Work makes available the most useful, important and representative treatments of the subject matter, and helps to make sense of the great variety of perspectives and approaches in which social scientists and other thinkers have understood, and continue to understand, society. Fully indexed and with a comprehensive introduction newly written by the editors, which places the collected material in its historical and intellectual context, Society is an essential reference work, destined to be valued by scholars and students as a vital research resource.

The genius of Erasmus Darwin

The Genius of Erasmus Darwin provides insight into the full extent of Erasmus Darwin's exceptional intellect. He is shown to be a major creative thinker and innovator, one of the minds behind the late eighteenth-century industrial revolution, and one of the first, if not the first, to perceive the living world (including humans) as part of a unified evolutionary scenario. The contributions here provide contextual understandings of Erasmus Darwin's thought, as well as studies of particular works and accounts of the later reception of his writings. In this way it is possible to see why the young Samuel Taylor Coleridge was moved to describe Darwin as 'the first literary character in Europe, and the most original-minded man'. Erasmus Darwin, Charles Darwin's grandfather, was one of the leading intellectuals of eighteenth-century England. He was a man with an extraordinary range of interests and activities: he was a doctor, biologist, inventor, poet, linguist, and botanist. He was also a founding member of the Lunar Society, an intellectual community that included such eminent men as James Watt and Josiah Wedgwood. Contents: Introduction; Setting the scene, Jonathan Powers; Prologue 'Catching up with Erasmus Darwin in the New Century', Desmond King-Hele. Section 1: Medicine: Physicians and physic in 17th and 18th century Lichfield, Dennis Gibbs; Dr Erasmus Darwin MD FRS (1731–1802): England's greatest physician?, Gordon Cook; William Pale (1743–1805) and James Parkinson (1755–1824): two peri-Erasmatic thinkers (and several others), Christopher Gardner-Thorpe; The vertiginous philosophers: Erasmus Darwin and William Charles Wells on vertigo, Nicholas Wade. Section 2: Biology: The Antipodes and Erasmus Darwin: the place of Erasmus Darwin in the heritage of Australian literature and biology, John Pearn; Erasmus Darwin on human reproductive generation: placing heredity within historical and Zoonomian contexts, Philip Wilson; All from fibres: Erasmus Darwin's evolutionary psychobiology, C.U.M. Smith; Two special doctors: Erasmus Darwin and Luigi Galvani, Rafaella Simili. Section 3: Education: But what about the women? The lunar society's attitude to women and science and to the education of girls, Jenny Uglow; The Derbyshire 'Darwinians': the persistence of Erasmus Darwin's influence on a British provincial literary and scientific community, c.1780–1850, Paul Elliot. Section 4: Technology: Designing better steering for carriages (and cars); with a glance at other inventions, Desmond King-Hele; Mama and papa: the ancestors of modern-day speech science, Philip Jackson; Negative and positive images: Erasmus Darwin, Tom Wedgwood and the origins of photography, Alan Barnes; Section 5: Environment: Erasmus Darwin's contributions to the geological sciences, Hugh Torrens; The air man, Desmond King-Hele; Erasmus Darwin, work and health, Tim Carter; Section 6: Literature: The progress of society: Darwin's early drafts for the temple of nature, Martin Priestman; The poet as pathologist: myth and medicine in Erasmus Darwin's epic poetry, Stuart Harris; 'Another and the same': nature and human beings in Erasmus Darwin's doctrines of love and imagination, Maurizio Valsania. Epilogue: 'One great slaughter-house the warring world': living in revolutionary times, David Knight; Coda: Midlands memorabilia, Nick Redman; Appendix: The Creation of the Erasmus Darwin Foundation and Erasmus Darwin House, Tony Barnard; Index.

The role of the English language in the context of national development vision 2025 with specific reference to agriculture in Tanzania

After thirty years of vacillation, the Tanzanian government has made a firm decision to Swahilize its secondary education system. It has also embarked on an ambitious economic and social development programme (Vision 2025) to transform its peasant society into a modern agricultural community. However, there is a faction in Tanzania opposed to Kiswahili as the medium of education. Already many members of the middle and upper class their children to English medium primary schools to avoid the Kiswahili medium public schools and to prepare their children for the English medium secondary system presently in place. Within the education system, particularly at university level, there is a desire to maintain English as the medium of education. English is seen to provide access to the international scientific community, to cutting edge technology and to the global economy. My interest in this conflict of interests stems from several years' experience teaching English to students at Sokoine University of Agriculture. Students specialise in agriculture and are expected to work with the peasant population on graduation. The students experience difficulties studying in English and then find their Kiswahili skills insufficient to explain to farmers the new techniques and technologies that they have studied in English. They are hampered by a complex triglossic situation in which they use their mother tongue with family and friends, Kiswahili, the national language for early education and most public communication within Tanzania, and English for advanced studies. My aim in this thesis was - to study the language policy in Tanzania and see how it is understood and implemented; - to examine the attitudes towards the various languages and their various roles; - to investigate actual language behaviour in Tanzanian higher education. My conclusion is that the dysfunctionality of the present study has to be addressed. Diglossic public life in Tanzania has to be accommodated. The only solution appears to be a compromise, namely a bilingual education system which supports from all cases of society by using Kiswahili, together with an early introduction of English and its promotion as a privileged foreign language, so that Tanzania can continue to develop internally through Kiswahili and at the same time retain access to the globalising world through the medium of English.

The effect of social influence and curfews on civil violence

We investigate the policies of (1) restricting social influence and (2) imposing curfews upon interacting citizens in a community. We compare and contrast their effects on the social order and the emerging levels of civil violence. Influence models have been used in the past in the context of decision making in a variety of application domains. The policy of curfews has been utilised with the aim of curbing social violence but little research has been done on its effectiveness. We develop a multi-agent-based model that is used to simulate a community of citizens and the police force that guards it. We find that restricting social influence does indeed pacify rebellious societies, but has the opposite effect on peaceful ones. On the other hand, our simple model indicates that restricting mobility through curfews has a pacifying effect across all types of society.

CSR and the "underserving":a role for the state, civil society and business?

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how the conceptual lens of corporate social responsibility (CSR), business and civil society can be used to explore “less popular causes” (in this case, a community-based public sector empirical study of initiatives with offenders) and, in particular, respond to the question used by Walzer “In which society can lives be best led?” Design/methodology/approach – This is a formative and summative evaluation study of a National Offender Management “community payback” offender scheme based in the UK using a mixed method, predominantly qualitative approach that integrates theory and practice. Findings – The paper finds that citizenship actions of front-line public sector employees, working in partnership with other agencies in the community, embody the essence of Walzer's notion of CSR and civil society by going beyond the call of duty to provide additional training and moral support for the community offenders. Originality/value – The paper contributes towards an understanding of how CSR and civil society debates can inform wider aspects of public policy and business through its application to areas of society that are perceived to be “challenging” and “undeserving”.

Connecting a sociology of childhood perspective with the study of child health, illness and wellbeing:introduction

In the last decades we have seen a growing interest in research into children's own experiences and understandings of health and illness. This development, we would argue, is much stimulated by the sociology of childhood which has drawn our attention to how children as a social group are placed and perceived within the structure of society, and within inter-generational relations, as well as how children are social agents and co-constructors of their social world. Drawing on this tradition, we here address some cross-cutting themes that we think are important to further the study of child health: situating children within health policy, drawing attention to practices around children's health and well-being and a focus on children as health actors. The paper contributes to a critical analysis of child health policy and notions of child health and normality, pointing to theoretical and empirical research potential for the sociology of children's health and illness.