Defining and Articulating Social Change through the Social Fabric Matrix and System Digraph

F. Gregory Hayden

Journal of Economic Issues, 1986, vol. 20, issue 2, 383-392

Abstract: This article is in the tradition of Thorstein Veblen’s organized-intelligence-in-action definition of technology1. It intends to identify the social technology necessary for organizing knowledge in order to get a grip on social change. Social change is seldom directed by discretionary policy; its rate is too fast for most to comprehend, and it has consequences that too often are neither desirable nor just. Since the last century scholars have “accepted the idea that the circumstances of existence were continually changing, that society was necessarily in the process of making adaptions to the changing circumstances, and that intelligent adaptation would result in human progress.“2 Yet most of our social science models have yet to incorporate these dynamics. To further our understanding, scientific modeling must be developed to reflect social change as the norm, not as the exception to equilibrium.

Date: 1986
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DOI: 10.1080/00213624.1986.11504509

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