1. Tradition and Modernity: Conflict and Congruence.
- Author
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Gusfield, Joseph
- Subjects
SOCIAL change ,MODERNITY ,WORLD War II ,SOCIAL movements ,SOCIAL history ,SOCIAL institutions ,SOCIOLOGY - Abstract
The article discusses conflict and congruence related to tradition and modernity. In the decades following World War II, Social Science has recaptured an interest in the study of social changes affecting total societies. The emergence of new nations and their quickened aspirations toward economic betterment and equality of citizenship have confronted scholars with the task of understanding the past and the present and foretelling the future of the non- European countries. The study of social change cannot avoid some variant of a before and after sequence in which institutions and cultural attributes characterizing a past are seen as being replaced or modified during the present and in motion toward new relationships and values that will be realized in the future. A distinction between tradition and modernity has been at the center of the analytical models that have attempted to describe and understand these changes. This distinction represents an old stream of thinking in social science. It was influential in the nineteenth century and has left its residue in the perspectives of many social analysts.
- Published
- 1968
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