Social engineering is a term which has been used to refer to efforts in influencing particular

attitude Attitude or Attitude may refer to: Philosophy and psychology * Attitude (psychology), a disposition or state of mind ** Attitude change * Propositional attitude, a mental state held towards a proposition Science and technology * Orientation ...

s and

social behavior Social behavior is behavior among two or more organisms within the same species, it encompasses any behavior in which one member affects another. Social behavior can be seen as similar to an exchange of goods, with the expectation that when you ...

s on a large scale. This is often undertaken by

government A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a State (polity), state. In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive (government), execu ...

s, but may be also carried out by

mass media Mass media include the diverse arrays of media that reach a large audience via mass communication. Broadcast media transmit information electronically via media such as films, radio, recorded music, or television. Digital media comprises b ...

academia An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of tertiary education. The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, founded approximately 386 BC at Akademia, a sanctuary of Athena, the go ...

or private groups in order to produce desired characteristics in a target population.

Origin of concept

The Dutch industrialist J.C. Van Marken ( nl) used the term ''sociale ingenieurs'' ("social engineers") in an essay in 1894. The idea was that modern employers needed the assistance of specialists in handling the ''human'' challenges, just as they needed technical expertise (traditional engineers) to deal with non-human challenges (materials, machines, processes). "Social engineering" was the title of a small journal in 1899 (renamed "Social Service" from 1900), and in 1909 it was the title of a book by the journal's former editor,

William H. Tolman William is a masculine given name of Germanic origin. It became popular in England after the Norman conquest in 1066,All Things William"Meaning & Origin of the Name"/ref> and remained so throughout the Middle Ages and into the modern era. It is ...

(translated into French in 1910). With the

Social Gospel The Social Gospel is a social movement within Protestantism that aims to apply Christian ethics to social problems, especially issues of social justice such as economic inequality, poverty, alcoholism, crime, racial tensions, slums, unclean en ...

sociologist Edwin L. Earp's ''The Social Engineer'', published during the "efficiency craze" of 1911 in the U.S., a new usage of the term was launched that has since then become standard: "Social engineering" came to refer to an approach of treating social relations as "machineries", to be dealt with in the manner of the technical engineer.

Historical examples

In the 1920s, the government of the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

embarked on a campaign to fundamentally alter the behavior and ideals of Soviet citizens, to replace the old social frameworks of the

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire that spanned most of northern Eurasia from its establishment in November 1721 until the proclamation of the Russian Republic in September 1917. At its height in the late 19th century, it covered about , roughl ...

with a new

Soviet culture The culture of the Soviet Union passed through several stages during the country's 69-year existence. It was contributed to by people of various nationalities from every one of fifteen union republics, although the majority of the influence was ...

, and to develop the

New Soviet man The New Soviet man or New Soviet person ( ''novy sovetsky chelovek''), as postulated by the ideologists of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, was an archetype of a person with specific qualities that were said to be emerging as dominant ...

Commissar Commissar (or sometimes ''Kommissar'') is an English transliteration of the Russian (''komissar''), which means ' commissary'. In English, the transliteration ''commissar'' often refers specifically to the political commissars of Soviet and ...

s became agents of social engineering. In

India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

, social engineering was said to have been done by the state of Bihar, on a grand scale, to unify different

caste A caste is a Essentialism, fixed social group into which an individual is born within a particular system of social stratification: a caste system. Within such a system, individuals are expected to marry exclusively within the same caste (en ...

s after 2005. In his political science book, '' The Open Society and Its Enemies'', volume I, ''The Spell of Plato'' (1945),

Karl Popper Sir Karl Raimund Popper (28 July 1902 – 17 September 1994) was an Austrian–British philosopher, academic and social commentator. One of the 20th century's most influential philosophers of science, Popper is known for his rejection of the ...

made a distinction between the principles of what he called "piecemeal social engineering" and ''Utopian'' social engineering. Popper, K. 1971 ''The Open Society and Its Enemies'' Princeton, New Jersey:

Princeton University Press Princeton University Press is an independent publisher with close connections to Princeton University. Its mission is to disseminate scholarship within academia and society at large. The press was founded by Whitney Darrow, with the financial ...

Origin of concept

Historical examples

See also

References

Further reading