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| The technology and the practices employed for expanding or limiting basic subsistence production, especially the production of food and other forms of energy. |
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| The application of systematic methods of observation and careful logical analysis. |
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| The ability of a sociocultural system to change with the demands of a changing physical or social environment. |
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| Power and authority concentrated into a few offices. |
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| Men and women who occupy the highest positions of the dominant institutions of a society and who consequently hold enormous power. |
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| In sociology, all human institutions, groups, and organizations. |
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| The tendency of bureaucracies to refine their procedures to attain their goals ever more efficiently. |
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| Rational action in relation to a goal; one of Weber’s four action types. |
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| A geometric rate of progression that has the potential of producing a very fast rise (or an "explosion") in the numbers of a population experiencing such growth. |
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| The introduction of a new technology, product, or technique into a sociocultural system. |
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| The state of being modern, usually associated with industrial and hyperindustrial societies. |
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| An economic system in which the means of production and distribution of goods and services are publicly owned. |
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| Thomas Robert Malthus's theory of population dynamics, according to which population increase inevitably comes up against the “natural limits” of food supply because population grows geometrically (1, 2, 4, 8, 16, . . .) while food supply grows arithmetically (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, . . .). |
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| Structured inequalities in life chances between groups in society. |
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| The elements of society and social organizations that exert an influence on individual human behaviour. |
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| The relative proportions of different age-sex categories in a population. |
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| An economy in which decisions regarding investment, production, price, and distribution are based on supply and demand. |
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| Theories of cumulative sociocultural change which generally hold that human societies move from simple to complex forms of organization. |
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