VULNERABILITIES OF SOCIAL STRUCTURE: STUDIES OF THE SOCIAL DIMENSIONS OF NUCLEAR ATTACK
Abstract
Possible patterns of social effects and societal vulnerabilities which would result from nuclear attack on the United States are surveyed through analyses of the social sciences. The analyses are centered on the various ways in which social structure and social institutions may be considered to be vulnerable to nuclear attack. A monograph is presented on the general problems of societal analysis posed by attempts to study the vulnerabilities of social structure to nuclear attack. The central theme is that levels of behavioral ordering beyond the individual -- particularly social institutional and social organizational processes -- set the dimensions for the social effects of attack. Five essays report on particular domains of social effects which may result from nuclear attack and on particular methodological problems which must be solved in the study of social effects. Topics considered include individual- human and social psychological dimensions of nuclear attack, demographic effects and population recovery problems, economic recovery after nuclear war, political-administrative dimensions of nuclear attack, and the use of especially the comparative method of social analysis as a tool for developing knowledge about societal vulnerability. A number of ways are traced in which the social dimensions and domains of nuclear attack indicate problems for planners and administrators. The fundamental problem of social planning to reduce societal vulnerability is to understand and control the unfolding of what can be conceived as characteristic, time-dependent, sequentially ordered progressions of social attack effects.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Dec 01, 1966
- Accession Number
- AD0653468
Entities
People
- David M. Heer
- Howard R. Swearer
- Neil J. Smelser
- S. D. Vestermark Jr.
- Sidney G. Winter Jr.