Search

The article presents the study conducted by the Club of Rome, with the help of a computer, to examine the five kinds of future growth under various assumptions such as population, food supply, industrial production, resource use, and pollution. The Club of Rome was formed by Italian industrialist Aurelio Peccei in 1968 in cooperation with the Fiat and Olivetti companies to make a serious study on the predicament of mankind in the face of technology growing at an exponential rate. Jay Forrester was engaged as a consultant for the study.

The article discusses the problems inherent in attempting to adapt American and Western European managerial practices and knowledge into companies in developing countries. One problem is that many companies in developing nations have a short-term profit view, which interferes with long-term planning and the overall health of such companies. Another problem is an overabundance of technocrats that put self-interest above company goals. Additionally, many developing countries have government policies in place that limit free enterprise and free trade.

The article focuses on issues related to the political economy of the Brazilian technocracy. The decade of the 1960's ushered in developmental programs bolstered by much rhetoric proclaiming an era of economic and social progress for Third World peoples. This bleak picture has forced the technocratic authors of these programs to grope for developmental ideology, which places a premium on market expansion and reserves a central role for international capital. The growing presence of the state in the economy, the reform of public administration and an increase in salary for the military have multiplied the financial burdens of the treasury. In Brazil, the rapid industrialization of the last two decades had diminished the percentage of workers employed in industry in comparison with the total labor market. Statistics on education are as revealing as health they indicate that public investments have where they would produce maximum and swift results those on public been concentrated.

Copyright of Zeitschrift für Soziologie is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The need to identify gifted children through careful and complete individual tests and case studies somehow has not been accepted. Four general categories of concern appear to inhibit such identification procedures: (a) inadequacy of existing measures, (b) variability of intelligence, (c) cost of identification and special programs, and (d) establishment of a meritocracy, identification of gifted children and provision of appropriate programs for them would maximize each child's potential for intellectual development, and untold benefits would accrue to both the individuals and society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The thesis according to which modern governments increasingly tend to transform themselves into technocratic forms of government has been propounded with growing insistence in contemporary political literature. Naturally, there are some who oppose technocracy and some who defend it. This very rarely indicates that any disagreements exist as to the advent, the expansive power and the very inevitability of the phenomenon. The principal objective of this article is to reopen questions which may disrupt this apparent point of agreement. There are those who feel that it is virtually impossible to construct an of the technocratic theory. In general, it is very difficult to discover what type of situation social scientists are referring to when they use the term "technocracy." Dictionaries provide an apparently satisfactory definition, merely mentioning the existence of a "situation in which effective power pertains to experts called technocrats." Meanwhile, in everyday language, as well as in specialized literature, a good part of the term's notoriety arises directly from the lack of precision with which it is ordinarily used.

The article presents information on the society of classical antiquity. The question of the possibility of recurrence in history and of the validity of historical analogies is intimately associated with the entire problem of the course of the process of world history. Marxism, while recognizing the progressive and forward-moving character of social development, at the same time does not accept the conception of interrupted evolution ascending in a straight line. At the same time, western specialists in the history of the ancient world working on concrete historical themes act as though all the disputed questions of historical recurrence either do not exist at all or have already been solved unambiguously and in a universally recognized fashion. As in the past, authors of works on the world of classical antiquity continue to seek in the history of the Greeks and Romans formulas and lessons capable of serving modern political figures, to analyze modern times by analogy to that period, and vice versa. True, today there are no longer any adherents of the school of Edward Meyer, who totally identified Hellenistic and Roman society with capitalist, but such trends are nonetheless very powerful.

This article focuses on the Velban's thought on social phenomenon of capitalism. Many differences can be resolves upon the ground that those economists following divergent approaches are interested in different aspects of the economic problem. Those following the classical pattern of analysis approach the economy through the conditions of choice in a market enterprise economy. Essentially they are interested in private economics where the value issue is nothing more than preference or desire. Economist are concerned with the general public or social questions-concerned with the structure and proportioning of opportunities and with public policies where the objects of valuation are the working rules, which are the very structure of social organization. The best practice among model theorists of the classical persuasion is to separate strictly the means from the ends; and to hold the ideal pure even if unattainable. On the other hand, Veblen's thinking has a strongly positivistic bias-a line of thought, which holds approximately to the view that nothing significant can be said about value and valuation except as they may be observed like other natural phenomena.

A comparative analysis of the sociological theories of religion of Saint-Simon, Comte, Proud lion, and Marx reveals that, although they agreed that the traditional institutions of Christianity had out- lived their utility to society, their writings differ radically in the delineation of the specific role of religion in industrial society. Saint-Simon and Comte attempted to create a secular religion of humanity, based in the case of Saint-Simon on fraternity and technocracy; in the writings of Comte, on positivism and industry. Proudhon and Marx discarded both religion and humanism as false ideologies; Proudhon substituted the gospel of anarchism, Marx that of socialism. These diverse positions mask a common recognition of the social nature of religion. Implications of their ideas for contemporary research are examined with reference to the underlying postulates of representation, unity and integration, social control, alienation, relativism, and social change. Their recognition of the need to develop viable alternatives to the traditional religions 1. highly pertinent to the contemporary quest for solutions to the problem of secularization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New insights into learning processes and into the unconscious springs of behavior make inescapable a recognition of the need to educate for responsibility. Young people need to learn to understand and to share the responsibilities of adult living—not suddenly at 21, but gradually throughout the years of growing up. Reading statistics backwards is recommended, as is recognition of the potential law breaker within human beings. A solemn meritocracy which undervalues the less able and leaves no room for gaiety and nonsense in the tidy plans will inevitably breed the rebellious young people it deserves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Commentary is provided for the article "An Overview of Management Science and Information Systems," by Aharon G. Beged-Dov, published in the August 1, 1967 issue of the periodical "Management Science." The author's criticism of the article includes commentary on three main issues: the first being a recognition of the need for technological hierarchy in business, the second deals with the role of system planners in this hierarchy, the third presents the author's opinions surrounding the technocracy of the future at the time of publication.

The article discusses the impact of National Health Service reorganization to public social service. The new organization aims to improve the weak machinery for transmitting decisions taken at the center regarding the policies and priorities to the local level. However, the conflict between professional technocracy and social considerations are also mentioned.

A letter to the editor is presented in response to the article of Stuart Chase on technocracy in the March 1973 issue.

This article discusses the duality of career training and general education in universities. The university is not separated from society. The University of Southern Mississippi is somewhere between rarified academic isolationism and militant societal activism. The complexities of a technocratic age, knowledge explosion, recommendations of influential commissions and the discovery that accountability is applicable to education have put pressures on colleges, making liberal studies luxuries to be enjoyed. It is not enough to concentrate on courses that are relevant to a particular course. Customary Liberal Arts programs should be shaken down to rid them of irrelevancies, inflexibilities and esoteric specialties. They should be replaced with programs that reflect realistic attitudes about the uses to which the students will put their preparation.

This article informs that unexpected incidents often serve as signals for the rise of new forces and movements in the social scene. In many ways California in general, and Los Angeles in particular, provide with some of the dimensions for a model of the Great Society which is taking shape in the U.S. All of the modern material comforts and "goodies" which form a part of the California style of life are regularly featured for national emulation in the Sunday supplements. California has set the pace in many facets of American life. The penultimate in progressive administration is vigorously cultivated by California's professional meritocracy. The function of administration is essential in putting the pieces together and in sustaining a great university or a great society. The University of California's commitment to a Jacksonian tradition in staffing its middle and lower echelons of academic administration has tended to produce an administrative vacuum at the point where the interests of students and faculty come into most immediate juxtaposition.