17、社會進步指標
Theorists usually measured progression （that is, the difference between one stage and the next） in terms of increasing social complexity （including class differentiation and a complex division of labor）, or an increase in intellectual, theological, and aesthetic sophistication. Those 19th-century ethnologists used these principles primarily to explain differences in religious beliefs and kinship terminologies among various societies.
18、社會進步與政府幹預以及兩大社會類型
Society was evolving toward increasing freedom for individuals; and so that government intervention ought to be minimal in social and political life, differentiated between two phases of development, focusing on the type of internal regulation within societies.
Military and industrial societies are differentiated. （The earlier, more primitive military society has a goal of conquest and defense, is centralized, economically self-sufficient, collectivistic, puts the good of a group over the good of an individual, uses compulsion, force and repression, and rewards loyalty, obedience and discipline. The industrial society has a goal of production and trade, is decentralized, interconnected with other societies via economic relations, achieves its goals through voluntary cooperation and individual self-restraint, treats the good of individual as the highest value, regulates the social life via and voluntary relations, values initiative, independence and innovation.）
19、技術進步有賴於其他社會組織
The development of technology is dependent on the presence of other types of social organizations. Nobel laureate economist Arthur Lewis observed that the mechanization of factory production in England which became known as the Industrial Revolution was a direct result of the reorganization of English agriculture. The enclosure of common lands in England generated surplus income for the farmers. That extra income generated additional raw materials for industrial processing along with greater demand for industrial products which was difficult to meet by traditional manufacturing processes. The opening of sea trade gave an added boost in demand for industrial production for export. Factory production increased many times when production was reorganized using steam energy combined with moving assembly lines, specialization and division of labor. Thus, technological development was both a result of and a contributing factor to the overall development of society.
20、社會進步與技術革新
Though technological inventions have markedly increased the pace of development, the tendency to view developmental accomplishments as mainly powered by technology is a partial view that misses the bigger picture. Technological innovation was spurred by the general advance in the social organization of knowledge. In the Middle Ages, efforts at scientific creativity were few and isolated from one another, mainly because there were no effective arrangements for the preservation and dissemination of knowledge. Since there was no organized protection for patent rights, scientists and inventors were very secretive about their activities and operations. The establishment of scientific associations and the publication of scientific journals spurred the exchange of knowledge among scientists and created a written record that could be examined by posterity.
21、社會進步的限製因素
The concept of inherent limits to development arose mainly because development in the past was determined largely by the availability of physical resources. Humanity relied more on muscle-power than thought-power to accomplish work. That is no longer the case. Today mental resources are the primary determinant of development. He who drove a simple bullock cart has now designed ships and aircraft that carry huge loads across immense distances. He has tamed rivers, cleared jungles and even turned arid desert lands into cultivable lands through irrigation. By using his brains he has turned worthless sand into powerful silicon chips that carry huge amounts of information and form the basis of computers. Since there is no inherent limit to the expansion of man’s mental resources, the notion of limits to growth cannot be ultimately binding.
22、資源對社會進步的製約及四大資源
It has been thought that the capacity for development is severely limited due to the inherent limitation in the availability of natural resources. Resources can be divided into four major categories: physical, social, mental and human resources. Land, water, mineral and oil, etc. constitute physical resources. Social resources consist of society’s capacity to manage and direct complex systems and activities. Knowledge, information and technology are mental resources. The energy, skill and capacities of people constitute human resources.
Though physical resources are limited in their availability, the same cannot be said about social, mental and human resources which are not subject to any inherent limits. Even if these appear to be limited at present, there is no fixity about the limitation and these resources can and will continue to expand over time and that expansion can be accelerated if appropriate strategies are adopted. In recent decades the rate of growth has accelerated dramatically.
23、物質資源和非物質資源在社會發展中的作用
The role of physical resources tends to diminish as society moves to higher levels in the scale of development. Correspondingly the role of non-material resources keeps increasing as development advances. One of the most important non-material resources is information, which has become a key input in modern times. Information is a non-material resource that does not get exhausted by distribution or sharing. Greater access to information helps increase the pace of its development. Ready access to information about economic factors helps investors to immediately transfer capital to those sectors and areas where it will fetch a higher return. The greater input of non-material resources helps explain the rising productivity of societies in spite of a limited physical resource base.
24、非物質資源可以提高物質資源的生產力
The application of higher non-material inputs also raises the productivity of physical inputs. Modern technology has helped increase the proven sources of oil by 50%in recent years and at the same time reduced the cost of search operations by 75%. Moreover, technology has shown that it is possible to reduce the amount of physical inputs in a wide range of activities. Scientific agricultural methods demonstrated that soil productivity could be raised by application of synthetic fertilizers. Dutch farm scientists have demonstrated that a minimal water consumption of 1.4 liters is enough to raise a kilogram of vegetables compared to the thousand liters that traditional irrigation methods normally require. Henry Ford’s assembly line techniques brought down the man-hours of labor required to deliver a car from 783minutes to 93minutes. These examples show that the greater input of higher non-material resources can raise the productivity of physical resources and thereby extend their limits.
25、社會文化進化論
Sociocultural evolutionists agree that the evolution-like process leads to social progress. Sociocultural evolutionism represented an attempt to formalize social thinking along scientific lines, which was later influenced by the biological theory of evolution. If organisms could develop over time according to deterministic laws, then it seemed reasonable that societies could as well. They developed analogies between human society and the biological organism and introduced into sociological theory such biological concepts as variation, natural selection, and inheritance—evolutionary factors resulting in the progress of societies through stages of savagery and barbarism to civilization, by virtue of the survival of the fittest. Together with the idea of progress there grew the notion of fixed “stages” through which human societies progress, usually numbering three—savagery, barbarism, and civilization—but sometimes many more.
26、人口與社會相互影響
The size of the human population, its concentration in particular places, and its pattern of growth are influenced by the physical setting and by many aspects of culture: economics, politics, technology, history, and religion. In response to economic concerns, national governments set very different policies—some to reduce population growth, some to increase it. Some religious groups also take a strong stand on population issues. Leaders of the Roman Catholic church, for example, have long campaigned against birth control, whereas, in recent years, religious leaders of other major faiths have endorsed the use of birth control to restrict family size.
27、社會體係受到人口的影響
In turn, social systems are influenced by population—its size, its rate of change, and its proportions of people with different characteristics （such as age, sex, and language）. Great increase in the size of a population requires greater job specialization, new government responsibilities, new kinds of institutions, and the need to marshal a more complex distribution of resources. Population patterns, particularly when they are changing, are also influential in changing social priorities. The greater the variety of subcultures, the more diverse the provisions that have to be made for them. As the size of a social group increases, so may its influence on society. The influence may be through markets （such as young people who, as a group, buy more athletic equipment）, voting power （for example, old people are less likely to vote for school bond legislation）, or recognition of need by social planners （for example, more mothers who work outside the home will require child-care programs）.
28、三大概念：社會地位、階層權利、政治權力
Social Status: If you view someone as a social superior, that person will be able to have power over you because you believe that person has a higher status than you do.
Class Power: This refers to people having unequal access to resources. If you have access to something that someone else needs, that can make you more powerful than the person in need. The person with the resource thus has bargaining power over the other.
Political Power: Political power can influence the hierarchical system of power because those who can influence what laws are passed and how they are applied can exercise power over others.
29、社會機動性與社會地位
In sociology, social stratification is the hierarchical arrangement of social classes, castes and strata within a society. While these hierarchies are not universal to all societies, they are the norm among state-level cultures （as distinguished from hunter-gatherers or other social arrangements）.
Status can be changed through a process of Social Mobility. Social mobility is the change of position within the stratification system. A change in status can be done upwardly in status, upward mobility, or they can move down in status, downward mobility. Social mobility allows for a person to move to another social status other than the one they were born in. Social mobility is more frequent in societies where achievement rather than ascription is the primary basis for social status.
30、社會數字劃分的標準及其三大指標
The digital division of a society is usually measured in terms of citizen/population access to ICT. Among the indicators for measuring access are （1）telephone density （teledensity）; （2）personal computer （PC） deployment and penetration; and （3）number of Internet users.
Teledensity is the ratio of population to telephones （traditionally defined as fixed or wired telephone lines）. This indicator of the division must be redefined as to include cellular/mobile phone users since in a number of developing countries there are more mobile phones than wired phones.
Personal computer penetration and deployment has also been used to measure access, since it is the most common way of accessing the Internet. However, recently more and more ways of accessing the Internet have been devised.
The number of Internet users is also a way of looking at the digital division. Statistics show that only about 10%of the world’s population is online. Furthermore, most of these Internet users are in the developed Western countries: the US, Canada and Europe account for about 63%of the world’s Internet users. The Asia-Pacific’s share is about 30%. Africa and the Middle East combined account for less than 2%of the universe of Internet users.
31、工業化之前的社會
In history, many times people found themselves changing and tinting their true goals in life to suit the natural flow taken by main stream companies. They moved out of the city and started smaller businesses. Many had small coops in the middle of the country- side because this helped them produce a product that fit more of the consumers’ needs. The products became more intimate and things such as lace, wood carvings and other intricate home furnishings. These were sold throughout the countryside and the best selling items were shipped to larger cities for assured success.
Most pre-industrial economies had standards of living not much above subsistence, meaning that the majority of the population was focused on producing their means of survival. For example, in medieval Europe, 80%of the labor force was employed in subsistence agriculture.
32、工業化帶來的問題
Industrialization has spawned its own health problems. Modern stressors include noise, air, water pollution, poor nutrition, dangerous machinery, impersonal work, isolation, poverty, homelessness, and substance abuse. Health problems in industrial nations are as much caused by economic, social, political, and cultural factors as by pathogens. Industrialization has become a major medical issue world-wide.