The Time Horizon of Planned Social Change: I. Why Utopian Movements Always Promise Amelioration in the Future

Richard Noyes

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 1980, vol. 39, issue 1, 65-77

Abstract: Abstract. Why have worthy social reforms in general, and Henry George's 100‐year‐old proposal to end land speculation and land monopoly, in particular, taken so long to win acceptance? The sociology of knowledge, framed by Mannheim and others, offers fresh insight into the question. The newer concepts of time horizon and its variants‐time frame and temporal calibration‐examined by Edward Banfield, Paul Fraisse and others, take it further. Seen and discussed by Locke, Hobbes and Hume without being given names, the new concepts have only recently been singled out for closer study. Time horizon, as a human variable, clarifies why Utopian ideas are originally acceptable to few, and isolates factors that determine the rate at which those ideas become realistic. Thus it helps establish how best to speed that transition.

Date: 1980
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