Paradigm shifts in macrosociology

Arbeitspapier

This paper looks at changes in macrosociological paradigms for social development that traditionally stretch from the primitive society through the stratified medieval society to the image of a functionally differentiated modern society. Changing the perspective from a systems theoretical view of societies to an actor perspective, I focus on populations of individual actors and organizations as collective actors. Over recent decades, important structural changes in the nature of populations and of organizations have taken place in the Western world. The most important relate to economic globalization and financial internationalization. An increasingly flexible population and narrowly goal-specific organizations produce a situation of societal instability that appears to characterize the present, though its causes reach back half a century.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: MPIfG Discussion Paper ; No. 23/3

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Sozialwissenschaften, Soziologie, Anthropologie
• Subject: Integrationsbias der Systemtheorie ; Konfliktlinien in gegenwärtigen Gesellschaften ; Systemzerfall und seine Ursachen ; conflict lines in present societies ; integration bias of systems theory ; system decomposition and its sources

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Mayntz, Renate
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies
• (where): Cologne
• (when): 2023

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/273382
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:44 AM CET