2.5 Divergence

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Do curso por The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

Social Science Approaches to the Study of Chinese Society Part 1

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The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

Social Science Approaches to the Study of Chinese Society Part 1

7 ratings

This course seeks to turn learners into informed consumers of social science research. It introduces concepts, standards, and principles of social science research to the interested non-expert. Learners who complete the course will be able to assess evidence and critically evaluate claims about important social phenomena. It reviews the origins and development of social science, describes the process of discovery in contemporary social science research, and explains how contemporary social science differs from apparently related fields. It describes the goals, basic paradigms, and methodologies of the major social science disciplines. It offers an overview of the major questions that are the focus of much contemporary social science research, overall and for China. Special emphasis is given to explaining the challenges that social scientists face in drawing conclusions about cause and effect from their studies, and offers an overview of the approaches that are used to overcome these challenges. Explanation is non-technical and does not involve mathematics. Statistics and quantitative methods are not covered. Explore the big questions in social science and learn how you can be a critical, informed consumer of social science research. Course Overview video: https://youtu.be/QuMOAlwhpvU After you complete Part 1, enroll in Part 2 to learn how to be a PRODUCER of Social science research. Part 2: https://www.coursera.org/learn/social-science-research-chinese-society

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The Big Questions

In Week 2, we will focus on The Big Questions. By the end of this week, you should have some sense of the range of questions that are the focus of much social science research. The next week, Week 3, will expand on China specific research.

2.1 Overview2:10

2.2 Inequality5:35

2.4 Social context and individual outcomes9:24

2.5 Divergence7:24

2.6 Political and social change3:58

2.7 Summary2:47

Conheça os instrutores

Cameron Campbell
Professor of Social Science
Associate Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Science

[MUSIC]

>> Hi, in this module, we're going to be talking about Divergence.

That is, the big differences that we see between continents,

countries, and regions within countries.

If we look at this map of the world, which shows countries by

color according to their GDP, that is, their level of average income,

as we probably all know, there are big differences between countries, and

indeed, regions of the world in terms of well being.

Some countries, some regions are much better off than others.

Nowadays, some of the best off regions of the world are in North America,

Northwest Europe, and a few other place like Japan and Australia.

Meanwhile, you have other parts of the world that are much poorer,

and then many others that are still in between.

Trying to understand why it is that nowadays there is so

much difference between regions, countries and

continents, is a central task of social science.

And a lot of the discussion about where these modern differences come from

ties back to an ongoing debate within social science

about the original Great Divergence.

In particular, why it is that the Industrial Revolution started

in northwest Europe in the late 18th century and early 19th century?

If you remember from the previous map, a lot of the countries there

are the best off right now, are those places in northwest Europe and

eventually north America, that experienced the Industrial Revolution earlier.

And then unrelated question is trying to understand whether or

not countries differed much before the Industrial Revolution.

It used to be widely assumed that the countries that had experienced

the Industrial Revolution first, England, northwest Europe and

so forth, we're actually better off going back into history.

Now there's a lot of argument and discussion about that topic, and

people are examining the historical record to try to figure out whether the big

differences that became very clear in the 19th century, and are so salient today,

really existed before the 19th century, and if they existed, what they were?

And as to why there may have been differences between countries,

either in terms of when the Industrial Revolution took place, or in

terms of whether they were better or worst of, before the Industrial Revolution?

There's no shortage of theories.

Thousands of books have been written about the topic.

People attributing the occurrence of the Industrial Revolution, to all sorts

of differences especially between East and West, between northwest Europe and China.

People have argued for the importance of government, political institutions,

legal institutions, the family, population dynamics,

modes of agriculture, and any number of other factors.

The debate will probably continue and

it remains one of the biggest topics in social science today.

A related question beyond the one that I just talked about,

about why the Industrial Revolution got started in northwest Europe, and

also to some extent, north America in the early 19th and late 18th century,

is why there have been so many differences since the middle of the 20th century in

the experiences of other countries around the world?

Some countries since the 1950s have done extremely well,

while others have not done as well,

even though back in the 1950s they were at a roughly similar levels of development.

So on the one hand, we have the example of China,

which has done extremely well, especially in the last 30 or so years.

And many parts of China are now regarded as modern cities and so forth.

And yet, some other parts of the world that perhaps 50 or 60 years ago,

back in the 1950s, were similar to China in terms of their level

of economic development and other factors, haven't done as well.

Again, there's no shortage of theories about why we may have had such

divergences, not just between China and other countries, but

between different regions in the world, Africa, the Middle East and so forth.

Again, people have looked at the role of government,

government policy, education, health policy,

culture, religion, and any number of other factors.

Again these debates will probably continue and

they will remain a major issue in the study of social science.

Another aspect of divergence, is the great differences in political and

social organization that we see between continents, between countries and

between regions, even within the same country nowadays.

And in particular we're interested in why these differences occur, and

we know that these differences exist.

Think about the examples of the United States and China.

The United States and China are very different nowadays and

if we think back to the 18th century, when the late 18th century,

the United States was founded and when the Emperor Qianlong was ruling China.

At that time obviously, the politics and the society of these two places differed,

and of course, other countries around the world differed as well.

A big question related to this is understanding how far back

these differences go.

Do they go back to the middle ages?

Do they go back to the time of the Roman Empire and

the Han Dynasty and the other ancient empires?

Or they do go back even further?

And are they related to things like climate, agriculture,

religion or other factors?

And then, time back to what we've talked about just a few minutes ago,

a big interest in social science is understanding how these difference in

modes of political and social organization have influenced economic development.

As a hint to that earlier, we've been a lot of arguments that political and

social differences influence the timing of the Industrial Revolution

in northwest Europe and perhaps, contributed

to their not being an Industrial Revolution until later elsewhere.

This topic, understanding the origins and the implications of political and

social organization differences across continents and

across countries, is a central topic of social science, and

it is going to be remaining one for the forseeable future.

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