Social Change

1
Social Change

• Traditional, Modern And Postmodern Societies

2
Social Change the transformation of culture and
social institutions over time

• Four major characteristics
• Social change is inevitable, only the rate of
  change varies
• Social change is sometimes intentional, but often
  is unplanned
• Social change is controversial
• Some social change matters more than others

3
Why Cultural Change Takes Place

• Culture and change
• Invention
• Production of new objects, ideas, and social
  patterns
• Discovery
• Taking note of existing elements of a culture
• Diffusion
• The spread of products, people and information
  from one culture to another

4
Other Reasons Why

• Conflict and social change
• Tensions and stressors between individuals and
  groups can bring about change
• Different groups gain and lose power and
  privilege as they struggle for their own
  positions
• Ideas and change
• Ideas can fuel social movements which bring about
  social change
• The idea of equal rights for everyone
• Demographics and change
• Increases and decreases in numbers can lead to
  social change as society may need to expand
  and/or contract
• Need for jobs, housing, education, etc

5
National Map 24-1 Who Stays Put? Residential
Stability across the United States
6
Modernity Social Patterns Resulting From
Industrialization

• Peter Burger identified four characteristics of
  modernization the process of social change
  begun by industrialization
• Decline of small, traditional towns
• High-tech communications puts small towns in
  touch with the world
• Expansion of personal choice
• An unending series of options referred to as
  individualization
• Increasing diversity in beliefs
• Modernization promotes a more rational,
  scientific world-view
• Future orientation and growing awareness of time
• People living in industrialized nations tend to
  focus more on the future than on the past

7
Ferdinand Tonnies Loss of Community

• With modernization comes the loss of
  gemeinschaft, or human community
• Loss of community caring and the beginning of
  individualization and a business-like emphasis
• Modernity brings about a condition referred to as
  gesellschaft, or impersonal relationships
• People live among strangers and ignore most they
  pass on streets
• Critical evaluation
• Gemeinschaft exists in modern society
• Didnt distinguish between cause effect
• Romanticized traditional societies

8
Emile Durkheim Division of Labor

• Modernization is marked by increases in a complex
  division of labor
• People performing highly distinctive roles rather
  than everyone performing the same daily routines
• Society transformed from mechanical to organic
  solidarity
• Mechanical solidarity refers to a time when
  society was held together by social bonds
  anchored in common moral sentiments
• Organic solidarity refers to modernity during
  which time social bonding is accomplished by way
  of mutual dependence
• Critical evaluation
• Societies norms and values strong enough to
  avoid anomie
• People value the personal freedom of modern
  society despite the risks

9
Max Weber and Rational Society

• Modernization means replacing a traditional
  worldview is nothing more than the with a
  rational way of thinking
• Modern people value efficiency, have little
  reverence for the past and adopt whatever social
  patterns allow them to achieve their goals
• Critical evaluation
• The alienation he attributes to bureaucracy
  actually stems from social inequality

10
Karl Marx Capitalism

• Industrial revolution was a capitalist revolution
• Social conflict in capitalism sows seeds of
  egalitarian socialist revolution
• Critical evaluation
• Complex theory underestimates dominance of
  bureaucracy
• Stifling socialist bureaucracies as bad or worse
  than dehumanizing capitalism

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Theoretical Analysis of Modernity

• Structural-functional theory
• Mass society is a society in which prosperity and
  bureaucracy have eroded traditional social ties
• Draws upon the ideas of Tonnies, Durkheim and
  Weber
• Social-conflict theory
• Class society is a capitalist society with
  pronounced social stratification
• Draws upon the ideas of Marx
• Critical evaluation
• Mass society ignores social inequality,
  romanticizes the past
• Class society overlooks the way equality in
  modern society has increased

12
David Riesman Modernity the Individual

• Personal identity can be a problem since society
  changes so rapidly Inherent instability
• Social character refers to personality patterns
  common to members of a particular society
• Tradition-directedness refers to rigid conformity
  to time-honored ways of living
• Other-directedness refers to a receptiveness to
  the latest trends and fashions, often expressed
  in the practice of imitating others

13
PostmodernitySocial Patterns Characteristic of
Postindustrial Societies

• In some ways, modernity has failed
• Much poverty and stress
• The bright light of progress is fading
• Less confidence about future
• Science no longer holds the answers
• Science has created its share of problems
• Cultural debates are intensifying
• The promises of social movements have not been
  fulfilled
• Social institutions are changing
• All institutions are going through change,
  including the most basic, the family

14
Amitai Etzioni the Communitarianism Movement

• Strong rights presume strong responsibilities.
  Four proposals
• Halt expanding culture of rights
• Placing individual interests over the interests
  of the community is wrong
• Nothing in the constitution allows us to do
  whatever we want
• All rights involve responsibilities
• Cannot keep taking without giving back
• Certain responsibilities that no one is free to
  ignore
• Upholding the law or protecting the environment
• Defending some community rights may require
  limiting individual rights
• Protecting the public interest may require drug
  testing of certain workers