[용어] Social engineering

자료: Wikipedia:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_engineering_(political_science)
• cf: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_engineer

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Social engineering is a discipline{??} in political science that refers to efforts to influence popular attitudes and social behaviors on a large scale, whether by governments or private groups. In the political arena, the counterpart of social engineering is political engineering. For various reasons, the term has been imbued with negative connotations. However, virtually all law and governance has the effect of changing behavior and can be considered "social engineering" to some extent. Prohibitions on murder, rape, suicide and littering are all policies aimed at discouraging undesirable behaviors. (... ...)

In practice, whether any specific policy is labeled as "social engineering" is often a question of intent. The term is most often used by libertarians, free-market thinkers, and traditionalists as an accusation against anyone who proposes to use law, tax policy, or other kinds of state influence to change existing social mores or power relationships: for instance, between men and women, or between different ethnic groups.

- Political conservatives in the United States have accused their opponents of social engineering through the promotion of political correctness, insofar as it may change social attitudes by defining "acceptable" and "unacceptable" language or acts, and through such programs as the banning of prayers at public events.

- Political liberals in the United States have accused their opponents of social engineering through the promotion of Abstinence-only sex education, the English-only movement, Sodomy laws and state sponsored school prayer.
(... ...)

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In his classic political science book, The Open Society and Its Enemies, volume I, The Spell of Plato, Karl Popper examined the application of the critical and rational methods of science to the problems of the open society. In this respect, he made a crucial distinction between the principles of democratic social reconstruction (called 'piecemeal social engineering') and 'Utopian social engineering'

Popper wrote:

the piecemeal engineer will adopt the method of searching for, and fighting against, the greatest and most urgent evil of society, rather than searching for, and fighting for, its greatest ultimate good.[1]

According to Popper, the difference between 'piecemeal social engineering' and 'Utopian social engineering' is:

the difference between a reasonable method of improving the lot of man, and a method which, if really tried, may easily lead to an intolerable increase in human suffering. It is the difference between a method which can be applied at any moment, and a method whose advocacy may easily become a means of continually postponing action until a later date, when conditions are more favorable. And it is also the difference between the only method of improving matters which has so far been really successful, at any time, and in any place, and a method which, wherever it has been tried, has led only to the use of violence in place of reason, and if not to its own abandonment, at any rate to that of its original blueprint.[1]