Contemporary Perspectives on Planned Social Change: A Comparison

Abstract

This paper offers a typology of social change efforts based on an analysis of their divergent root assumptions about values and the nature of reality rather than a categorization of their various activities. Analysis of change agents' images of society and of the individual, their diagnoses of contemporary society, and their priorities for action yields three perspectives of planned social change: the professional-technical, the political, and the countercultural, which the authors discuss in terms of such issues as their varying kinds of constituencies, resources, roles, and institutional bases.