GRE ISSUE写作论证论据素材 社会发展类

　　第一大类 社会发展类

　　1 社会发展的三大理论

　　In the 19th century, three great classical theories of social and historical change were created: the sociocultural evolutionism, the social cycle theory and the Marxist historical materialism theory. Those theories had one common factor: they all agreed that the history of humanity is pursuing a certain fixed path, most likely that of the social progress. Thus, each past event is not only chronologically, but causally tied to the present and future events. Those theories postulated that by recreating the sequence of those events, sociology could discover the laws of history.

　　2 社会发展阶段I： 殖民主义

　　The first process was colonialism. Although imperial powers settled most differences of opinion with their colonial subjects with force, increased awareness of non-Westem people raised new questions for European scholars about the nature of society and culture. Similarly, effective administration required some degree of understanding of other cultures. Emerging theories of sociocultural evolution allowed Europeans to organize their new knowledge in a way that reflected and justified their increasing political and economic domination of others: colonized people were less evolved, colonizing people were more evolved. When the 17th-century, English philosopher Thomas Hobbes described primeval man as living in conditions in which there are “no arts, no letters, no society” and his life as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”, he was very much proclaiming a popular conception of the “savage”. Everything that was good and civilized resulted from the slow development out of this state. Even rationalistic philosophers like Voltaire implicitly assumed that enlightenment gradually resulted in the upward progress of humankind.

　　3 社会发展阶段II： 工业革命

　　The second process was the Industrial Revolution and the rise of capitalism which allowed and promoted continual revolutions in the means of production. Emerging theories of sociocultural evolution reflected a belief that the changes in Europe wrought by the Industrial Revolution and capitalism were obvious improvements. Industrialization, combined with the intense political change brought about by the French Revolution, U.S. Constitution and Polish Constitution of May 3, 1791, which were paving the way for the dominance of democracy, forced European thinkers to reconsider some of their assumptions about how society was organized.

　　4 社会公正的概念

　　Social justice refers to the concept of a society in which justice is achieved in every aspect of society, rather than merely the administration of law. It generally refers to a society which affords individuals and groups fair treatment and a just share of the benefits of it. It can also refer to the distribution of advantages and disadvantages within a society.