Social Technology - Related To "social Engineering"

Related To "social Engineering"

The term "social technology" was first used at the University of Chicago by Albion Woodbury Small and Charles Richmond Henderson around the end of the 19th century. At a seminar in 1898, Small spoke of social technology as being the use of knowledge of the facts and laws of social life to bring about rational social aims. In 1895 Henderson had coined the term "social art" for the methods by which improvements to society are and may be introduced. Social science makes predictions and social art gives directions.

In 1901 Henderson published an article titled "The Scope of Social Technology" in which he renamed this social art as 'social technology', and described it as 'a system of conscious and purposeful organization of persons in which every actual, natural social organization finds its true place, and all factors in harmony cooperate to realize an increasing aggregate and better proportions of the "health, wealth, beauty, knowledge, sociability, and rightness" desires.' In 1923, the term social technology was given a wider meaning in the works of Ernest Burgess and Thomas D. Eliot, who defined social technology to include the application, particularly in social work, of techniques developed by psychology and other social sciences.

In 1928, Luther Lee Bernard defines "applied" science as the "collection of norms or standards, built up on the basis of observation and experiment and measurement, which is capable of serving as a means to the control of our relationships to our world or universe". He then tries to separate this from social technology saying that social technology also "includes administration as well as the determination of the norms which are to be applied in the administration". In 1935 he wrote an article called "The Place of Social Sciences in Modern Education". In this article, he writes about the nature of an effective education in the social sciences to reach effective education by the willing masses. It would be of three types: Firstly, "a description of present conditions and trends in society". Secondly, "the teaching of desirable social ends and ideals necessary to correct such social maladjustments as we now have". Thirdly, "a system of social technology which, if applied, might be expected to remedy existing maladjustments and realize valid social ends". The aspects of social technology which lags behind are the technologies involved in the "less material forms of human welfare". These are the applied sciences of "the control of crime, abolition of poverty, the raising of every normal person to economic, political, and personal competency, the art of good government, or city, rural, and national planning". On the other hand, "the best developed social technologies, such as advertising, finance, and 'practical' politics, are used in the main for antisocial rather than for proper humanitarian ends".

Closely related to social technology is the term social engineering. Thorstein Veblen used 'social engineering' in 1891, but appeared to take its meaning for granted, suggesting it was used earlier. In the 1930s both 'social engineering' and 'social technology' became associated with the large scale socio-economic policies of the Soviet Union. The Soviet economist Yevgeni Preobrazhensky wrote a book Preobrazhensky, E. A. (1926). Novaya Ekonomika. Moscow. in which he defined social technology as "the science of organized production, organized labour, of organized systems of production relations, where the legality of economic existence is expressed in new forms." (p. 55 in the translation of 1963)

Karl Popper discusses social technology and social engineering in his book The Open Society and Its Enemies and in the article "The Poverty of Historicism", in which he criticized the Soviet political system and the marxist theory (Marxism) on which it was based. Eventually he combined "The Povery of Historicism" series in a book "The Poverty of Historicism" which he wrote "in memory of the countless men and women of all creeds or nations or races who fell victim to the fascist and communist belief in Inexorable Laws of Historical Destiny". In his book "The Open Society and Its Enemies", Popper distinguished two kinds of social engineering, and the corresponding social technology. Utopian engineering strives to reach "an ideal state, using a blueprint of society as a whole, is one which demands a strong centralized rule of a few, and which therefore is likely to lead to a dictatorship" (p. 159). Communism is an example of utopian social Technology. On the other hand, there is the piecemeal engineer with its corresponding social technology, which adopts "the method of searching for, and fighting against, the greatest and most urgent evils of society, rather than searching for, and fighting for, its greatest ultimate good" (p. 158). The use of piecemeal social technology is crucial for democratic social reconstruction.

After the Second World War, the term 'social technology' continued to be used intermittently, for example by the social psychologist Dorwin Cartwright for techniques developed in the science of group dynamics such as 'buzz groups' and role playing and by Olaf Helmer to refer to the Delphi technique for creating a consensus opinion in a panel of experts More recent examples are Human rights & social technology by Rainer Knopff and Tom Flanagan which addresses both human rights and government policies which ensure them and Theodore Caplow's Perverse incentives: the neglect of social technology in the public sector which discusses a wide range of topics, including use of the death penalty to discourage crime and the welfare system to provide for the needy.

'Social technology' is also used to refer to the organization and management of private companies, and is sometimes taught under the auspices of university business schools. One book with this orientation is The social technology of organization development, by Warner and Hornstein.