Anonymous. 1997. "Civilization Under Siege," UN Chronicle, v34n3 (1997): 30-34.

[Argues that irrepairable damage is being done to the planet by wasting precious resources and using inefficient economic methods. Advocates eco-efficiency in production processes, taxes on fossil fuels, and targeted subsidies as strategies. No citations.]

Atkinson, Giles & Kirk Hamilton. 1996. "Accounting for Progress: Indicators for Sustainable Development," Environment, v38n7 (Sep 1996): 16-20+.

[To assess progress toward sustainable development, a suitable set of indicators is clearly needed, such as air quality indices and water quality classifications. Some recent attempts at "green accounting" and the issues they raise are discussed.]

Atkinson, Giles & W. R. Dubourg & K. Hamilton & M. Munasinghe & D. W. Pearce. ???? Measuring Sustainable Development: Macroeconomy and Environment. ????: Edward Elgar.

Brinkman, Richard. 1995. "Economic Growth Versus Economic Development: Toward a Conceptual Clarification," Journal of Economic Issues, v29n4 (Dec 1995): 1171-1188.

[An attempt is made to further clarify the distinction between economic growth and economic development. Some recognition of this problem is evident in the older literature of development economics.]

Brockway, George P. 1985. Economics: What Went Wrong, and Why, and Some Things to Do About It. New York: Harper & Row.

Brockway, George P. 1991. The End of Economic Man: Principles of any Future Economics. New York: Cornelia & Michael Bessie Books.

Brockway, George P. 1995. Economists Can Be Bad for Your Health: Second Thoughts on the Dismal Science. New York: W.W. Norton,.

Cobb, Clifford W. & John B. Cobb & Carol S. Carson. 1994. The Green National Product: A Proposed Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare. Lanham: University Press of America;

[Mankato, MN]: Human Economy Center.]

Cobb, Clifford W. & Ted Halstead & Jonathan Rowe. 1995. "If the GDP is Up Why is America Down? (need to replace the Gross Domestic Product as a measure of economic progress) (Cover Story)," The Atlantic Monthly, v276n4 (Oct 1995): p59(14). <http: //www.theatlantic.com/election/connection/ecbig/gdp.htm>

[Most Americans are not experiencing an economic boom in spite of improvements in the GDP and other indicators. A group called Redefining Progress proposes replacing the GDP with the genuine progress indicator, which would measure the social value of economic activity.]

Courant, Paul N. 1994. "How Would You Know a Good Economic Development Policy if You Tripped Over One? Hint: Don't Just Count Jobs," National Tax Journal, v47n4 (Dec 1994): 863-881.

[Economists concerned with economic development should direct more energy to examining the potential for improving economic welfare as distinct from measuring the consequences of development programs.]

de Steiguer, J. E. 1995. "Three Theories from Economics about the Environment," Bioscience, v45n8 (Sep 1995): 552-557.

[That three of the most influential environmental theories were formally stated by English economists. The Malthusian doctrine of population growth and scarcity, John Stuart Mill's theory of the steady-state economy, and the neoclassical notion of efficient markets together offer a comprehensive scheme for solving environmental problems.]

Desai, M. 1994. Greening of the HDI? (Background paper for United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report 1994.) New York: UNDP.

Dworetsky, Tom. 1993. "Will the Real GNP Please Stand Up: Now's the Time for Really Gross Economics," Omni, v15n6 (Apr 1993): 14.

[Useful one-page summary of the case that the way the GNP is calculated may be part of the country's economic problems. The GNP ignores many key figures, such as distribution of income, estimation of resource depletion and international borrowing.]

Epstein, Seymour & Petra Meier. 1989. "Constructive Thinking: A Broad Coping Variable with Specific Components," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, v57n2 (Aug 1989): 332-350.

[The structure of constructive thinking and the development of an instrument for measuring it, the Constructive Thinking Inventory, are discussed.]

Ezrahi, Yaron. 1995. "The Theatrics and Mechanics of Action: The Theater and the Machine as Political Metaphors," Social Research, v62n2 (Summer 1995): 299-322.

[Argues that the political metaphors of the theater and the machine played an important role in the amoralization of behavior as an object of scientific inquiry and the definition of modern categories of social, political, economic, or psychological phenomena.]

Flower, Joe. 1997. "Beyond Economics: Healthy Communities and Healthy Economies," National Civic Review, v86n1 (Spring 1997): 53-59.

[A car crash or an oil spill may be "good" for the economy when measured in traditional economic terms. Perhaps it is time to rethink the approach to economics. If a healthy community is a whole community, then an economics is needed that goes beyond dollars and that will measure and maximize the true community wealth.]

Ghazi, Polly & Judy Jones. 1996. "O, To Be a Mexican," New Statesman (1996), v9n419 (Sep 6, 1996): 26-27.

[A large salary and a job for life are not Britons' prime goals any more. If politicians don't want to lose touch, they must realize what makes people happy. The psychology of happiness is discussed.]

Gross, B. M. & J. Straussman. 1974. "The Social Indicators Movement," Social Policy, (Sep-Oct 1974): 43-44.

Hammond, Allen et al. 1995. Environmental Indicators : A Systematic Approach to Measuring and Reporting on Environmental Policy Performance in the Context of Sustainable Development. Washington, DC: World Resources Institute.

Haq, Mahbub ul. 1995. Reflections on Human Development: How the Focus of Development Economics Shifted from National Income Accounting to People-Centred Policies. New York: Oxford University Press.

Henderson, Hazel. 1994. "Paths to Sustainable Development: The Role of Social Indicators," Futures, v26n2 (Mar 1994): 125-137.

[Reviews current debate about new indicators of wealth and progress and how the meaning of "development" is changing. The goal of sustainable development is to clarify the confusion of means with truly evolutionary human development as the ends to be pursued within the ecological tolerances of the Earth.]

Hilhorst, J.G.M & M. Klatter. 1985. Social Development in the Third World: Level of Living Indicators and Social Planning. London; Dover, NH: Croom Helm (In co-operation with the Institute of Social Studies at the Hague).

Inkeles, Alex. 1966. "The Modernization of Man," 138-150 in M. Weiner (ed.), Modernization: The Dynamics of Growth. New York: Basic Books.

[Nine point scale of attitudes and individual character which he feels are pre-requisite to economic growth.]

Inkeles, Alex. 1969. "Making Men Modern: On the Causes and Consequences of Individual Change in Six Countries," American Journal of Sociology, v75 (Sep 1969): 208-225.

Jackson, T. & N. Marks. 1994. Measuring Sustainable Economic Welfare: A Pilot Index 1950-1990. Stockholm: Stockholm Environment Institute.

Klugman, Jeni. 1991.   Decentralization: A Survey of Literature from a Human Development Perspective.   UNDP Human Development Report Occasional Paper No. 13. <http://www.undp.org/undp/hd ro/oc13.htm>

[Assesses the impact of decentralisation of government expenditures and revenues upon human development. Reviews the literature on decentralisation, to argue a lack of quantitative and rigorous studies. Suggests that detailed analysis of the various dimensions of decentralisation - participation, financing and comparative priorities - and of the relevant effects upon efficiency, resource availability and equity, may provides some lessons.]

Kruger, Loren. 1997. "The Drama of Country and City: Tribalization, Urbanization, and Theatre Under Apartheid," Journal of Southern African Studies, v23n4 (Dec 1997): 565-584.

[In a reversal of the classic notion of city as progress, the Africanized city came to signify barbarism for white South Africans, who then proposed a counter-civitas, a perverse modernity defined not by urban civility but by isolation in the country. This essay takes the tensions between and within the racial appropriations of country and city in apartheid's perverse modernity as the point of departure for a critical revaluation of the affinities and differences among African, Afrikaans, and white English drama and performance in South Africa.]

Kupfer, David & Paul Glover & Olaf Egeberg. 1995. "To Stitch the World Back Together Again," Whole Earth Review, n87 (Fall 1995): 22-29.

[In an interview, economist and writer Hazel Henderson discusses her economic theories, including her proposal for an alternative to the GNP. Paul Glover discusses Ithaca NY's use of local paper money, and Olaf Egeberg explains how his Washington DC neighborhood uses a neighborhood exchange directory.]

Lambert, Thomas. 1995. "What they Missed in Cairo: Defusing the Population Bomb," USA Today: The Magazine of the American Scene, v123n2596 (Jan 1995): 33-35.

[In the context of the Sep 5-13, 1994 International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, questions the widely held belief that the planet cannot sustain an increasing population.]

Lerner, Daniel. 1958. The Passing of Traditional Society: Modernizing the Middle East. New York: Free Press.

[Empathy, imagine oneself in some other role, as key personality trait.]

London, Bruce. 1987. "Structural Determinants of Third World Urban Change: An Ecological and Political Economic Analysis," American Sociological Review, v52n1 (Feb 1987): 28-43.

Mann, Michael. 1986. The Sources of Social Power. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

["...the radical Christian universalization of the human being..."]

Marx, Leo. 1997. "Technology: The Emergence of a Hazardous Concept," Social Research, v64n3 (Fall 1997): 965-988.

[The changes in society and culture marked by the emergence of technology are examined. The chief danger of technology is the mystification, passivity and fatalism it helps to engender.]

Mazumdar, Krishna. 1996. "Level of Development of a Country: A Possible New Approach," Social Indicators Research, v38n3 (Jul 1996): 245-274.

[Attempts to find income elasticities of eight social indicators of development with respect to per capita real gross domestic product adjusted for purchasing power parity and expressed in international dollars.]

McClelland, David. 1966. "The Impulse to Modernization," 28-39 in M. Weiner (ed.), Modernization: The Dynamics of Growth. New York: Basic Books.

[That there is a mental virus, n-Ach (need to Achieve). Under modernization, sample of thoughts from a society, eg. from popular literature, show high incidence of urge to do better (more efficiently or faster) the next time.]

McClelland, David. 1967. The Achieving Society. New York: Free Press.

Muir, Star A. 1994. "The Web and the Spaceship: Metaphors of the Environment," Et Cetera, v51n2 (Summer 1994): 145-152.

[Two metaphors commonly used by the environmental movement--the web of life metaphor and the spaceship metaphor. Examines their implications.]

Nielsen, Francois & Arthur S. Alderson. 1997. "The Kuznets Curve and the Great U-Turn: Income Inequality in U.S. Counties, 1970 to 1990," American Sociological Review, v62n1 (Feb 1997): 12-33.

[Nielsen and Alderson examine the determinants of inequality in the distribution of family income in approximately 3,100 counties of the US in 1970, 1980, and 1990. Such a study provides a window on global trends in social inequality during the period, which spans the tail end of the Kuznets curve and the more recent upswing in income inequality.]

Nolan, Patrick & Gerhard Lenski. 1996. "Technology, Ideology and Societal Development," Sociological Perspectives, v39n1 (Spring 1996): 23-28.

[To address the question of whether ideology or technology has been the more powerful force shaping societies and their development, log-linear models are used to assess the association of typologies based on religious beliefs and on subsistence technology with indicators of community size, political complexity, stratification, marital patterns and premarital sex norms.]

O'Hara, Phillip Anthony. 1997. "A New Measure of Macroeconomic Performance and Institutional Change: The Index of Community, Warranted Knowledge, and Participation," Journal of Economic Issues, v31n1 (Mar 1997): 103-128.

[Develops a macroeconomic measure of socioeconomic progress based on the holistic view of the instrumental and ceremonial functions of institutions.]

Pandey, M.D. & J.S. Nathwani. 1996. "Measurement of Socio-Economic Inequality Using the Life-Quality Index," Social Indicators Research, v39n2 (Oct 1996): 187-202.

[Present a method for measuring socio-economic inequality using a composite social indicator, Life-Quality Index, derived from two principal indicators of development, the Real Gross Domestic Product per person and the life expectancy at birth. The proprosed approach is illustrated using data from urban Canada.]

Parsons, Talcott. 1964a The Social System. New York: Free Press.

[Pattern Variables Scheme.]

Parsons, Talcott. 1964b. "Evolutionary Universals in Society," American Sociological Review, v29n3 (1964): 339-357.

[Structural features universal to modernism.]

Proops, J. L. R. 1993. "A Proposed Alternative Approach to Integrating the Environment into the National Accounts," in E. Lutz (ed.), Towards Improved Accounting for the Environment. Washington, D.C.: World Bank.

Repetto, R. & R. Solorzano et al. 1991. Accounts Overdue: Natural Resource Depreciation in Costa Rica. Washington, D.C.: World Resources Institute.

Repetto, R. & W. Magrath & M. Wells & C. Beer & F. Ross. 1989. Wasting Assets: Natural Resources in the National Accounts. Washington, D.C.: World Resources Institute.

Rostow, Walt W. 1997. "Lessons of the Plan: Looking Forward to the Next Century," Foreign Affairs, v76n3 (May 1997): 205-212.

[Rostow notes that three dimensions of the Marshall Plan increase in significance with the passage of time, including the Plan's role in producing a post-war global economy that would avoid the problems that plagued the West after WWI.]

Schmidhauser, John R. 1989. "Power, Legal Imperialism, and Dependency," Law and Society Review, v23n5 (1989): 857-878.

[Elements of scholarly perspectives that deal with political and economic power, legal imperialism and dependency in different ways are examined. The contributions of contemporary scholars, like Shapiro, have set the stage for the development of indicators of considerably greater precision for transnational relationships.]

Schooler, Carmi. 1996. "Cultural and Social-Structural Explanations of Cross-National Psychological Differences," Annual Review of Sociology, v22 (1996): 323-349.

[Cross-national differences in individual values, attitudes, and behaviors are examined, focusing on how social-structural and cultural factors account for the differences found.]

St. Clair, Matthew. 1998. "GDP and the Smoke Signals from Southeast Asia," World Watch, v11n1 (Jan 1998): 7-8.

[The gross domestic product (GDP) is not a complete measure of happiness and well-being. Southeast Asia and its disregard for the environment is a good example of this; forest fires in this region are devastating natural resources and crippling the area.]

Straussfogel, Debra. 1997. "World-Systems Theory: Toward a Heuristic and Pedagogic Conceptual Tool," Economic Geography, v73n1 (Jan 1997): 118-130.

[Uses complex systems theory, Marxist conceptions of economic structure, and four-capital model from ecological economics to operationalize core-periphery structural definitions. Theory of dynamic processes.]

Streeten, Paul. 1971. "How Poor Are the Poor Countries," 78+ in Dudley Seers & Leonard Joy (eds.), Development in a Divided World. Hammondsworth, UK: Penguin.

[Effects of "initial conditions," e.g.. climate, on development.]

Stremlau, John. 1996. "Dateline Bangalore: Third World Technopolis," Foreign Policy, n102 (Spring 1996): 152-168.

[Many US companies rely on computer software developed and tailored to their needs in Bangalore and other Indian cities. India is positioned to become a major force in the global software marketplace.]

Taylor, Charles. 1995. "Two Theories of Modernity," Hastings Center Report, v25n2 (Mar 1995): 24-33.

[The rise of modernity can be taken either as a change from earlier centuries to today, involving something like "development," as the demise of a "traditional" society and the rise of the "modern." This is an acultural theory that conceives of modernity as the growth of reason, defined as the growth of scientific consciousness, or the development of a secular outlook, or the rise of instrumental rationality, or an ever-clearer distinction between fact-finding and evaluation. But modernity is not that one form of life toward which every culture converges as it discards beliefs. Nor is it a set of transformations that any and every culture can go through--and that all will probably be forced to undergo. Modernity is a movement from one background of understandings to another. Outlines the terms of a cultural theory.]

United Nations. 1993. Integrated Environmental and Economic Accounting: Interim Version. Department for Economic and Social Information and Policy Analysis (Studies in Methods. Series F; No.61). New York, NY: United Nations.

["Handbook of National Accounting."Ô]

Uribe, Victor M. 1997. "The Enigma of Latin American Independence: Analyses of the Last Ten Years," Latin American Research Review, v32n1 (1997): 236-255.

[Useful discussion of key issues and positions. Comparative book review of "Response to Revolution" by Michael Costeloe, "La Independencia" edited by German Colmenares, "The Independence of Latin America" edited by Leslie Bethell, and "Trade, War, and Revolution" by John R. Fisher.]

Van Rossem, Ronan. 1996. "The World System Paradigm as General Theory of Development: A Cross-National Test," American Sociological Review, v61n3 (Jun 1996): 508-527.

[Defines a role-based rather than stage of development based definition of world system standing (core, semi-periphery, periphery). Case by case discussion of role relations, that roles affect dependencies, and dependencies affect economic performance.]

Waddell, Steve. 1995. "Lessons from the Healthy Cities Movement for Social Indicator Development," Social Indicators Research, v34n2 (Feb 1995): 213-235.

[Emerging developments of social indicators are examined through the experience of a health planning initiative begun in 1986 under the coordination of the World Health Organization. The three stages of indicator development are understanding, consensus, and commitment. Indicators are client-driven historical artifacts.]

Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1992. "The Concept of National Development, 1917-1989: Elegy and Requiem," American Behavioral Scientist, v35n4-5 (Mar 1992): 517-529.

Wilkinson, Richard G. 1994. "The Epidemiological Transition: From Material Scarcity to Social Disadvantage?," Daedalus, v123n4 (Fall 1994): 61-77.

[Mortality rates in the developed world are no longer related to per capita economic growth but are now related to the scale of income equality in each society. This represents a transition from the primacy of material constraints to social constraints as the limiting condition on the quality of life.]

Return to top of page