Cyclic Change

Cyclic Change

In the ancient world, the Greeks, Romans, and Chinese all thought of human life in terms of historical cycles in which there is no qualitative differance between past and present.

Some kinds of change are cyclic, but most of social scientists do not see the whole of human history in terms of cyclic change.

An exception was Pitirim Sorokin, who analyzed change in Western civilization from 600 B.C. to about 1935 A.D. Sorokin concluded that history is a cyclic variation between three "supersystems" that represent fairly homogeneous cultures.

One system is the ideational, with its central principle of God as the true reality and value.

The second system is the sensate, which affirms the sensory world as the true reality and value as the central principle.

The third system is the idealistic, which is the combination of the other two--that is, reality and values are partly sensory and partly transcendent.

Diffusion and Adoption of Innovations

Innovations may be inventions--something new in the world--but they also include those thingswhich are new to a particular population.

At first, the innovation is adopted by a few people, then it diffuses rapidly through the population, and eventually levels off at some point short of the total population. The period of rapid diffusion is not merely the result of marketing; rather, it is a combination of marketing and word-of-mouth influence, of becoming aware of an innovation, and of interacting with people who have adopted it.

Diffusion occurs between as well as within societies. In fact, diffusion is so common in the world that anthropologists claim that as much as 90% of any culture is the result of diffusion from other cultures.

Modernization

With regard to conditions, the developing nations today face a number of dilemmas.

One is the dilemma of self-reliance versus interdependance. Nations like China and India have tried to forge a course of development based on self-reliance. Such a course aviods indebtedness to foreign nations and exploitation by foreign nations. Exploitation, as world systems theorists point out, means that the developed nations benefit far more from efforts at modernization than the developing nations themselves.

Another dilemma is the tension between economic growth and equitable distribution. A third dilemma is whether to try centralized planning or allow the free market to guide the development. Finally, there is the dilemma of the impact of industrialization on the environment.

The situation of the developing nations is compounded by the fact that they face a far different international environment