NOTE: Free essay sample provided on this page should be used for references or sample purposes only. The sample essay is available to anyone, so any direct quoting without mentioning the source will be considered plagiarism by schools, colleges and universities that use plagiarism detection software. To get a completely brand-new, plagiarism-free essay, please use our essay writing service.
One click instant price quote
Long run economic data demonstrates three important development facts. First, countries experienced stagnation for long periods and subsequently enter a modern growth regime, that is, a sustained increase in per capita output, though at different points in time. Second, the income differences between the early and the later developers exhibits an inverted U-shape over time. Third, some countries with similar turning points have experienced dramatically different rates of economic development. But lets start from earlier historical period and transition time from traditional to modern society. First of all from appendix 1 we can analyze the development of society, its structure, demographic situation, political organization and social changes in culture, education and technologies.
Stage 1. From earliest centuries until about the 1600 s in the Western Europe we can notice high birth rate, high death rate. At this time was a feudal social and economic organization, based in agriculture. Family structure was nuclear, organized around a patriarchal head.
The church was the undisputed authority in all matters, with the pontiff as ultimate patriarchal head on earth, representing God. Women and children were seen as subordinate to men. They were to be obedient to the authority of the father and husband, and physical discipline was widely accepted if obedience was not forthcoming. During the 14 th century, the European has high level of social unrest, feudal social and economic structure.
As the exploration of the New World began to bring economic improvement to Europe because of 16 th century, a new merchant class developed, along with increased methods of production and increased wealth. There was a parallel development in the growth of reform in the Catholic Church, the growth of nationalism, and the emergence of the "spirit of capitalism. " The beginning of the scientific era. Of the basic assumptions and beliefs common to philosophers and intellectuals of this period, perhaps the most important was an abiding faith in the power of human reason. The age was enormously impressed by Isaac Newtons discovery of universal gravitation. If humanity could so unlock the laws of the universe, God's own laws, why could it not also discover the laws underlying all of nature and society? Stage 2: It is a period of advances in medical technology, improved methods of food production and nutrition.
By the end of the period, however, beliefs about individual rights had begun to shift basic concepts of human beings and family relations. Ideas associated with the Enlightenment, such as democracy and the human capacity to determine human destiny, promoted increased secularization of society, especially in the area of education. By the end of the period, the French and American revolutions had put these radical ideas into practice. The application of scientific knowledge to food production resulted in spectacular opportunities to increase output per land or animal unit.
Basic medical advances brought improved health and greater life expectancy to people in many parts of the world, and the total demand for food grew. Extensive settlement of the New World increased the world's cropland areas, and some new plants and animals were domesticated. The exploitation of new energy sources in the form of fossil fuels was basic to industrial development, providing the power to create these cropland areas, to grow and harvest vast quantities of food, and to transport food products throughout the world. Stage 3: Education shifted with a new emphasis on science and technology and secular ideas. There was the parallel emergence of positivism in the 18 th and 19 th centuries, which was a system of philosophy based on experience and empirical knowledge of natural phenomena, in which metaphysics and theology were regarded as inadequate and imperfect systems of knowledge. By the end of the century, industrialization, immigration, and urbanization had transformed American society into "modern" society.
The split was complete between the public world of work and politics and the private world of "family, " at least in the ideals of popular culture. In reality, many families still struggled with less "modern" conditions of life. These conditions set the stage for the next wave of social change to occur following World War II in the postwar era. Discussing two first stages, we faced with the mean traditional society.
So the main our concluded based on ideas, that the structure of traditional society is developed within limited production functions, based on pre-Newtonian science and technology, and on pre-Newtonian attitudes towards the physical world. Newton is here used as a symbol for that watershed in history when men came widely to believe that the external world was subject to a few knowable laws, and was systematically capable of productive manipulation. The conception of the traditional society is, however, in no sense static; and it would not exclude increases in output. Acreage could be expanded; some technical innovations, often highly productive innovations, could be introduced in trade, industry and agriculture; productivity could rise with, for example, the improvement of irrigation works or the discovery and diffusion of a new crop. But the central fact about the traditional society was that a ceiling existed on the level of attainable output per head. This ceiling resulted from the fact that the potentialities, which flow from modern science and technology, were either not available or not regularly and systematically applied.
Varying degrees of manufacture developed; but, as in agriculture, the level of productivity was limited by the inaccessibility of modern science, its applications, and its frame of mind. Generally speaking, these societies, because of the limitation on productivity, had to devote a very high proportion of their resources to agriculture; and flowing from the agricultural system there was a hierarchical social structure, with relatively narrow scope but some scope for vertical mobility. Family and clan conation's played a large role in social organization. The value system of these societies was generally geared to what might be called a long-run fatalism; that is, the assumption that the range of possibilities open to one's grandchildren would be just about what it had been for one's grandparents. But this long-run fatalism by no means excluded the short-run option that, within a considerable range, it was possible and legitimate for the individual to strive to improve his lot, within his lifetime.
Although central political rule in one form or another often existed in traditional societies, transcending the relatively self sufficient regions, the center of gravity of political power generally lay in the regions, in the hands of those who owned or controlled the land. The landowner maintained fluctuating but usually profound influence over such central political power as existed, backed by its entourage of civil servants and soldiers, imbued with attitudes and controlled by interests transcending the regions. In terms of history then, with the phrase 'traditional society' we are grouping the whole pre-Newtonian world: the dynasties in China; the civilization of the Middle East and the Mediterranean the world of medieval Europe. And to them we add the post-Newtonian societies, which, for a time, remained untouched or unmoved by man's new capability for regularly manipulating his environment to his economic advantage. The second stage of growth embraces societies in the process of transition; that is, the period when the preconditions for take-off are developed; for it takes time to transform a traditional society in the ways necessary for it to exploit the fruits of modern science, to fend off diminishing returns, and thus to enjoy the blessings and choices opened up by the march of compound interest. The preconditions for take-off were initially developed, in a clearly marked way, in Western Europe of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries as the insights of modern science began to be translated into new production functions in both agriculture and industry, in a setting given dynamism by the lateral expansion of world markets and the international competition for them.
But all that lies behind the break-up of the Middle Ages is relevant to the creation of the preconditions for take-off in Western Europe. Among the Western European states, Britain, favored by geography, natural resources, trading possibilities, social and political structure, was the first to develop fully the preconditions for take-off. The more general case in modern history, however, saw the stage of preconditions arise not endogenously but from some external intrusion by more advanced societies. These invasions literal or figurative shocked the traditional society and began or hastened its undoing; but they also set in motion ideas and sentiments which initiated the process by which a modern alternative to the traditional society was constructed out of the old culture. The idea spreads not merely that economic progress is possible, but that economic progress is a necessary condition for some other purpose, judged to be good: be it national dignity, private profit, the general welfare, or a better life for the children.
Education, for some at least, broadens and changes to suit the needs of modern economic activity. New types of enterprising men come forward in the private economy, in government, or both willing to mobilize savings and to take risks in pursuit of profit or modernization. Banks and other institutions for mobilizing capital appear. Investment increases, notably in transport, communications, and in raw materials in which other nations may have an economic interest. The scope of commerce, internal and external, widens. And, here and there, modern manufacturing enterprise appears, using the new methods.
But all this activity proceeds at a limited pace within an economy and a society still mainly characterized by traditional low-productivity methods, by the old social structure and values, and by the regionally based political institutions that developed in conjunction with them. In many recent cases, for example, the traditional society persisted side by side with modern economic activities, conducted for limited economic purposes by a colonial or quasi-colonial power. Although the period of transition between the traditional society and the take-off saw major changes in both the economy itself and in the balance of social values, a decisive feature was often political. Politically, the building of an effective centralized national station the basis of coalitions touched with a new nationalism, in opposition to the traditional landed regional interests, the colonial power, or both, was a decisive aspect of the preconditions period; and it was, almost universally, a necessary condition for take-off. We come now to the great watershed in the life of modern societies. The take-off is the interval when the old blocks and resistances to steady growth are finally overcome.
The forces making for economic progress, which yielded limited bursts and enclaves of modern activity, expand and come to dominate the society. Growth becomes its normal condition. Compound interest becomes built, as it were, into its habits and institutional structure. In Britain and the well-endowed parts of the world populated substantially from Britain (the United States, Canada etc. ) the proximate stimulus for take-off was mainly (but not wholly) technological. In the more general case, the take-off awaited not only the build-up of social overhead capital and a surge of technological development in industry and agriculture, but also the emergence to political power of a group prepared to regard the modernization of the economy as serious, high-order political business. (App 2). During the take-off, the rate of effective investment and savings may rise from, say, 5 % of the national income to 10 % or more; although where heavy social overhead capital investment was required to create the technical preconditions for take-off the investment rate in the preconditions period could be higher than 5 %, as, for example, in Canada before the 1890 'S and Argentina before 1914.
In such cases capital imports usually formed a high proportion of total investment in the preconditions period and sometimes even during the take-off itself, as in Russia and Canada during their pre- 19 I 4 railway booms. During the take-off new industries expand rapidly, yielding profits...
Free research essays on topics related to: economic progress, traditional society, social and economic, parts of the world, science and technology
Research essay sample on Science And Technology Social And Economic
