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maakbaarheid

English translation: perfectibility/malleability/manipulability [(scope for) social engineering / social change]

17:02 Jan 15, 2012
Dutch to English translations [PRO]
Social Sciences - Social Science, Sociology, Ethics, etc.
Dutch term or phrase: maakbaarheid
In a column in de Volkskrant about twenty somethings nowadays who only believe in the 'maakbaarheid' of themselves, but no longer in the 'maakbaarheid van de samenleving'.
I have found 'feasibility' and 'manufacturability' in a glossary but don't think these words cover the meaning or would be used in this context in English (UK). It is more to do with their ability to contribute to or have an impact on it, but can't think of an English equivalent.
Christine Sas
Local time: 03:02
English translation:perfectibility/malleability/manipulability [(scope for) social engineering / social change]
Explanation:
'maakbaarheid van het individu' could be: 'perfectibility/malleability of the individual';
'maakbaarheid van de samenleving' could be 'perfectibility/malleability of society' or 'scope for social engineering'

Example sentences:

'The revolutionaries of the eighteenth century and their later followers often, it is true, exaggerated the malleability of society; and what is worse, they imagined that merely by discarding the past they had a key to a better future, wholly rational in design, and therefore, according to their lights, ideal.'

'Malthlus was far more conservative, and far less willing to concede the malleability of individual character, than was Mill. Whereas Malthus endorsed the idea of a lottery of life characterized by deeply rooted injustices, Mill encouraged us to experiment with our lives, to take risks and to break from the mold.'

---------
Van Dale:

maakbaarheid de (v.) = manipulability

de maakbaarheid van de samenleving = the extent to which social change can be effected by government policies
---------

--------------------------------------------------
Note added at 1 hr (2012-01-15 18:04:31 GMT)
--------------------------------------------------

Malthlus > Malthus ;) (blame ABBYY Screenshot Reader)

--------------------------------------------------
Note added at 1 day6 hrs (2012-01-16 23:56:50 GMT) Post-grading
--------------------------------------------------

Thanks!
Selected response from:

Michael Beijer
United Kingdom
Local time: 03:02
Grading comment
Thanks, i believe that social engineering doesn't sound neutral, so i'll stick with malleability, as it is possible to be used in both the personal and the social sense. Many thanks again.
4 KudoZ points were awarded for this answer



Summary of answers provided
4 +2perfectibility/malleability/manipulability [(scope for) social engineering / social change]
Michael Beijer
4 +1potential for change/improvement
Tina Vonhof (X)
2realisation
Yves Antoine
Summary of reference entries provided
Barend van Zadelhoff

Discussion entries: 5





  

Answers


13 hrs   confidence: Answerer confidence 2/5Answerer confidence 2/5
realisation


Explanation:
...

Yves Antoine
Belgium
Local time: 04:02
Native speaker of: French

Peer comments on this answer (and responses from the answerer)
neutral  Barend van Zadelhoff: even if this word was applicable, you still ignore the element of '-ibility', that is, '-baarheid'. To understand the meaning of 'maakbaarheid', study Michael's good examples. They give a good indication of the context.
9 hrs
neutral  Tina Vonhof (X): I think what you're getting at is: 'realisatie' in the sense of achieving one's potential. But 'realisation' is not used that way in English.
10 hrs
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23 hrs   confidence: Answerer confidence 4/5Answerer confidence 4/5 peer agreement (net): +1
potential for change/improvement


Explanation:
It may not be possible to find one equivalent noun that doesn't sound contrived. I think potential for chance/improvement comes close to the real meaning of 'maakbaarheid'.


Tina Vonhof (X)
Canada
Local time: 20:02
Native speaker of: Native in DutchDutch, Native in EnglishEnglish
PRO pts in category: 16

Peer comments on this answer (and responses from the answerer)
agree  Michael Beijer: parallel to the meanings discussed here [(potential for) perfectibility/malleability/manipulability/change/improvement etc] there's also the very specific socio/political/historical meaning of the term as it was used in Dutch society in the 20's & 70's.
20 mins
  -> Thank you Michael. It would be very difficult to capture all these different meanings in another language.
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56 mins   confidence: Answerer confidence 4/5Answerer confidence 4/5 peer agreement (net): +2
perfectibility/malleability/manipulability [(scope for) social engineering / social change]


Explanation:
'maakbaarheid van het individu' could be: 'perfectibility/malleability of the individual';
'maakbaarheid van de samenleving' could be 'perfectibility/malleability of society' or 'scope for social engineering'

Example sentences:

'The revolutionaries of the eighteenth century and their later followers often, it is true, exaggerated the malleability of society; and what is worse, they imagined that merely by discarding the past they had a key to a better future, wholly rational in design, and therefore, according to their lights, ideal.'

'Malthlus was far more conservative, and far less willing to concede the malleability of individual character, than was Mill. Whereas Malthus endorsed the idea of a lottery of life characterized by deeply rooted injustices, Mill encouraged us to experiment with our lives, to take risks and to break from the mold.'

---------
Van Dale:

maakbaarheid de (v.) = manipulability

de maakbaarheid van de samenleving = the extent to which social change can be effected by government policies
---------

--------------------------------------------------
Note added at 1 hr (2012-01-15 18:04:31 GMT)
--------------------------------------------------

Malthlus > Malthus ;) (blame ABBYY Screenshot Reader)

--------------------------------------------------
Note added at 1 day6 hrs (2012-01-16 23:56:50 GMT) Post-grading
--------------------------------------------------

Thanks!

Michael Beijer
United Kingdom
Local time: 03:02
Works in field
Native speaker of: Native in EnglishEnglish
PRO pts in category: 15
Grading comment
Thanks, i believe that social engineering doesn't sound neutral, so i'll stick with malleability, as it is possible to be used in both the personal and the social sense. Many thanks again.

Peer comments on this answer (and responses from the answerer)
agree  Barend van Zadelhoff: I think they are talking here about the possibility to create a better society, a better person. Also, 'maakbaarheid' is often used in such a context. This means I would prefer 'perfectibility', if it's bit more neutral 'malleability'. NOT manipulability.
27 mins
  -> Thanks Barend. Yes, all of them cover different shades of meaning. Perfectibility (moral) / Malleability/Social engineering (neutral/abstract) / Manipulability (negative connotation).
agree  Marjolein Snippe: I agree; malleability or perfectibility. Or rewrite the sentence entirely 'find it in their power to change / have an influence on...'
21 hrs
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Reference comments


23 hrs
Reference

Reference information:
perfectibility of themselves

Perfection was expected to come about by a variety of means. Partly it would be by way of natural development and progress (the view espoused by David Hume) but more so by way of education (precursors of this view included John Locke, David Hartley, and the leaders of the Polish Enlightenment) and by way of overt state action (Claude Adrien Helvétius, later Jeremy Bentham); reliance was placed in cooperation among people (Charles Fourier, 1808), later in eugenics (Francis Galton, 1869). While the foundations of the faith in the future <perfectibility of man> changed, the faith itself persisted. It linked the people of the Enlightenment with the idealists and romantics — with Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, the Polish Messianists — as well as with the 19th-century Positivists and evolutionists; Herbert Spencer penned a great new declaration championing the future <perfection of man>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfection

malleability of society

The alternative order explicitly incorporated notions of popular sovereignty (in which the people was equated with the nation and abstracted from any individual volition), national emancipation (not in institutionalist, constitutional terms as in liberalism, but through a cultural-spiritual regeneration), and a new civilisation comprising a new man (both of which would substitute the thoroughly compromised homo economicus of liberalism but still referred to the Enlightenment ideals of the <malleability of society and the perfectibility of man>, cf. Eisenstadt 1999).

As the condition of modernity is founded on the notions of human autonomy and the <malleability of society>, any concrete, institutionalised solution for modern society is temporary and essentially contestable. Any programme of modernisation is based on multi-interpretable concepts (liberty, democracy, progress) which – due to their general and abstract nature – are open for different interpretations and thus to critique regarding
their unfulfilled status.

http://www.eui.eu/Personal/Researchers/pblokker/Finaldocconc...

Barend van Zadelhoff
Netherlands
Works in field
Native speaker of: Native in DutchDutch
PRO pts in category: 8
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