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Progress
Progress is the movement towards a refined, improved, or otherwise desired state. In the context of progressivism, it refers to the proposition that advancements in technology, science, and social organization have resulted, and by extension will continue to result, in an improved human condition; the latter may happen as a result of direct human action, as in social enterprise or through activism, or as a natural part of sociocultural evolution. The concept of progress was introduced in the early-19th-century social theories, especially social evolution as described by Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer. It was present in the Enlightenment's philosophies of history. As a goal, social progress has been advocated by varying realms of political ideologies with different theories on how it is to be achieved. Measuring progress Specific indicators for measuring progress can range from economic data, technical innovations, change in the political or legal system, and questions bear ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Social Progress Index
The Social Progress Index (SPI) measures the extent to which countries provide for the social and environmental needs of their citizens. Fifty-four indicators in the areas of basic human needs, foundations of well-being, and opportunity to progress show the relative performance of nations. The index is published by the nonprofit Social Progress Imperative, and is based on the writings of Amartya Sen, Douglass North, and Joseph Stiglitz. The SPI measures the well-being of a society by observing social and environmental outcomes directly rather than the economic factors. The social and environmental factors include wellness (including health, shelter and sanitation), equality, inclusion, sustainability and personal freedom and safety. Introduction and methodology The index combines three dimensions # Basic human needs # Foundations of well-being # Opportunity Each dimension includes four components, which are each composed of between three and five specific outcome indicators. Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Progressivism
Progressivism holds that it is possible to improve human societies through political action. As a political movement, progressivism seeks to advance the human condition through social reform based on purported advancements in science, technology, economic development, and social organization. Adherents hold that progressivism has universal application and endeavor to spread this idea to human societies everywhere. Progressivism arose during the Age of Enlightenment out of the belief that civility in Europe was improving due to the application of new empirical knowledge to the governance of society.Harold Mah''Enlightenment Phantasies: Cultural Identity in France and Germany, 1750–1914'' Cornell University. (2003). p. 157. In modern political discourse, progressivism gets often associated with social liberalism, a left-leaning type of liberalism, in contrast to the right-leaning neoliberalism, combining support for a mixed economy with cultural liberalism. In the 21st ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
American Progress (John Gast Painting)
''American Progress'' is an 1872 painting by John Gast, a Prussian-born painter, printer, and lithographer who lived and worked most of his life during 1870's Brooklyn, New York. ''American Progress'', an allegory of Manifest Destiny, was widely disseminated in chromolithographic prints. It is now held by the Autry Museum of the American West in Los Angeles, California. Description ''American Progress'' has become a seminal example of American Western art. The painting serves as an allegory for Manifest Destiny and American westward expansion. The painting was commissioned in 1872 by George Crofutt, a publisher of American Western travel guides, and has since been frequently reproduced. The woman in the center is Columbia, the personification of the United States, and on her head is what Crofutt calls "The Star of the Empire." Columbia moves from the light-skied east to the dark and treacherous West, leading settlers who follow her either on foot or by stagecoach, horseback, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wikiprogress
Wikiprogress is a defunct online platform for sharing information on the measurement of social, economic and environmental progress. It is thought to facilitate sharing on ideas, initiatives and knowledge on "measuring the progress of societies". Like Wikipedia, it was open to all members and communities for contribution – anyone interested in "progress" could register. About Wikiprogress is the official platform for the OECD-hosteGlobal Project on "Measuring the Progress of Societies".The core mission of wikiprogress is "to create global information tool supported by a worldwide partnership of organisations and individuals wishing to develop new, smarter measures of progress. Wikiprogress aims to provide a health check for all societies that enables every citizen to better understand the economic, social and environmental factors that determine whether or not their lives are getting better." The idea is not just to develop progress indicators, but creating a community working ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Auguste Comte
Isidore Marie Auguste François Xavier Comte (; 19 January 1798 – 5 September 1857) was a French philosopher and writer who formulated the doctrine of positivism. He is often regarded as the first philosopher of science in the modern sense of the term. Comte's ideas were also fundamental to the development of sociology; indeed, he invented the term and treated that discipline as the crowning achievement of the sciences. Influenced by Henri de Saint-Simon, Comte's work attempted to remedy the social disorder caused by the French Revolution, which he believed indicated imminent transition to a new form of society. He sought to establish a new social doctrine based on science, which he labelled 'positivism'. He had a major impact on 19th-century thought, influencing the work of social thinkers such as John Stuart Mill and George Eliot. His concept of ''Sociologie'' and social evolutionism set the tone for early social theorists and anthropologists such as Harriet Martineau an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gross National Happiness
Gross National Happiness (GNH), sometimes called Gross Domestic Happiness (GDH), is a philosophy that guides the government of Bhutan. It includes an index which is used to measure the collective happiness and well-being of a population. Gross National Happiness Index is instituted as the goal of the government of Bhutan in the Constitution of Bhutan, enacted on 18 July 2008. History The advent and concept of "Gross National Happiness" (GNH) germinated in the mind of Bodhisattva Druk Gyelpo, the 4th King of Bhutan, Jigme Singye Wangchuk, groomed with the evolution of "Gaki Phuensum" (Peace and Prosperity) and the modernization period of Bhutan during the reign of Druk Gyelpo, the 3rd King of Bhutan, Jigme Dorji Wangchuk. The term "Gross National Happiness" as conceptualized by the 4th King of Bhutan, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, in 1972 was declared as, "more important than Gross Domestic Product." The concept implies that sustainable development should take a holistic approach toward ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sociocultural Evolution
Sociocultural evolution, sociocultural evolutionism or social evolution are theories of sociobiology and cultural evolution that describe how societies and culture change over time. Whereas sociocultural development traces processes that tend to increase the complexity of a society or culture, sociocultural evolution also considers process that can lead to decreases in complexity ( degeneration) or that can produce variation or proliferation without any seemingly significant changes in complexity (cladogenesis). Sociocultural evolution is "the process by which structural reorganization is affected through time, eventually producing a form or structure which is qualitatively different from the ancestral form". Most of the 19th-century and some 20th-century approaches to socioculture aimed to provide models for the evolution of humankind as a whole, arguing that different societies have reached different stages of social development. The most comprehensive attempt to develop a ge ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Green National Product
The green national product is an economic metric that seeks to include environmental features such as environmental degradation and resource depletion with a country's national product. Criticism of gross national product The gross national product (GNP) measures the welfare of a nation's economy through the aggregate of products and services produced in that nation. Although GNP is a proficient measurement of the magnitude of the economy, many economists, environmentalists and citizens have been arguing the validity of the GNP in respect to measuring welfare. Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize–winning economist, states that this standard measurement for any national economy has become deficient as a measure of long-term economic health in the recently resource-driven and globalizing world. Critics suggest that GNP often includes the environment on the wrong side of the balance sheet because if someone first pollutes and then another person cleans the pollution, both activities ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Happy Planet Index
The Happy Planet Index (HPI) is an index of human well-being and environmental impact that was introduced by the New Economics Foundation in 2006. Each country's HPI value is a function of its average subjective life satisfaction, life expectancy at birth, and ecological footprint per capita. The exact function is a little more complex, but conceptually it approximates multiplying life satisfaction and life expectancy and dividing that by the ecological footprint. The index is weighted to give progressively higher scores to nations with lower ecological footprints. The index is designed to challenge well-established indices of countries’ development, such as the gross domestic product (GDP) and the Human Development Index (HDI), which are seen as not taking sustainability into account. In particular, GDP is seen as inappropriate, as the usual ultimate aim of most people is not to be rich, but to be happy and healthy. Furthermore, it is believed that the notion of sustainable d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gender-related Development Index
The Gender Development Index (GDI) is an index designed to measure gender equality. GDI, together with the Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM), was introduced in 1995 in the Human Development Report written by the United Nations Development Program. The aim of these measurements was to add a gender-sensitive dimension to the Human Development Index (HDI). The first measurement that they created as a result was the GDI. The GDI is defined as a "distribution-sensitive measure that accounts for the human development impact of existing gender gaps in the three components of the HDI" (Klasen 243). Distribution sensitive means that the GDI takes into account not only the averaged or general level of well-being and wealth within a given country, but focuses also on how this wealth and well-being is distributed between different groups within society. The HDI and the GDI (as well as the GEM) were created to rival the more traditional general income-based measures of development such as gros ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer (27 April 1820 – 8 December 1903) was an English philosopher, psychologist, biologist, anthropologist, and sociologist famous for his hypothesis of social Darwinism. Spencer originated the expression "survival of the fittest", which he coined in ''Principles of Biology'' (1864) after reading Charles Darwin's 1859 book ''On the Origin of Species''. The term strongly suggests natural selection, yet Spencer saw evolution as extending into realms of sociology and ethics, so he also supported Lamarckism. Riggenbach, Jeff (24 April 2011The Real William Graham Sumner, Mises Institute. Spencer developed an all-embracing conception of evolutionism, evolution as the progressive development of the physical world, biological organisms, the human mind, and human culture and societies. As a polymath, he contributed to a wide range of subjects, including ethics, religion, anthropology, economics, political theory, philosophy, literature, astronomy, biology, sociology, a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Disability-adjusted Life Year
The disability-adjusted life year (DALY) is a measure of overall disease burden, expressed as the number of years lost due to ill-health, disability or early death. It was developed in the 1990s as a way of comparing the overall health and life expectancy of different countries. The DALY has become more common in the field of public health and health impact assessment (HIA). It not only includes the potential years of life lost due to premature death, but also includes equivalent years of 'healthy' life lost by virtue of being in states of poor health or disability. In so doing, mortality and morbidity are combined into a single, common metric. Calculation The disability-adjusted life year is a societal measure of the disease or disability burden in populations. DALYs are calculated by combining measures of life expectancy as well as the adjusted quality of life during a burdensome disease or disability for a population. DALYs are related to the quality-adjusted life year (QA ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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