Contemporary Mechanisms of Social Change

Abstract

This chapter examines four distinct but interrelated mechanisms of social change operative today: Capitalist relations of competition; information and networks; global warming; and developments in international relations. Although it does not account for them completely, capitalist relations of competition, it is argued, play a large role in the emergence of the other mechanisms. These, however, are not simply effects but, it is shown, effects with their own causal powers for morphogenesis.