Sociocultural Systems Quotes

“Consistent with intensification, humans have applied science and technology to bring greater conscious control over their decisions regarding reproduction with ever more efficient forms of birth control. In addition, consistent with bureaucratization and rationalization, governments have increasingly moved to explicitly affect the personal decisions of reproduction with tax incentives, educational programs, access to contraception information and technology, propaganda, and other pressures on individuals to either stimulate or dampen their decisions to reproduce”
― Frank W. Elwell, Sociocultural Systems: Principles of Structure and Change

“As in the past, political scientists and sociologists will continue to debate the existence of the power elite or the extent and influence of the military-industrial complex as the iron cage of bureaucracy slowly closes.”
― Frank W. Elwell, Sociocultural Systems: Principles of Structure and Change

“Few intellectuals have the independence of mind or the will to oppose either state centralization or militarization.”
― Frank W. Elwell, Sociocultural Systems: Principles of Structure and Change

“In this manner, Lenski arrives at the following causal chain: the more powerful the technology and the more detailed the division of labour, the greater the surplus of goods and services produced; the greater the surplus, the more goods and services will be distributed on the basis of power. To put it in slightly different terms, the social evolutionary process leads to greater inequality.”
― Frank W. Elwell, Sociocultural Systems: Principles of Structure and Change

“It is all a matter of individual cost-benefit decisions: change this calculation—lessen the costs of child rearing or increase the benefits—and population level will rise; increase the costs or lower the benefits and population level will slowly decline. And these individual cost-benefit decisions are dependent upon the relation of the sociocultural system to its environment.”
― Frank W. Elwell, Sociocultural Systems: Principles of Structure and Change