Sociology ofSocial Change

chapter 13

Social Change

Cha

pter

Out

line

A World of ChangeCollective BehaviorSocial MovementsLooking to the Future

A World of Change

Social change refers to fundamental alterations in the patterns of culture, structure, and social behavior over time.

A World of Change

Sources of Social Change• Physical environment – desert

expansion, loss of ice cover, weather patterns

• Population – size, composition, distribution

• Group conflict and resolution• Internal values and norms• Innovation – discovery and invention• Diffusion of cultural traits• The mass media

A World of Change

Perspectives on Social Change• Evolutionary

– Unilinear• Social Darwinist Herbert Spencer (1820-

1903)• Laissez-faire capitalism and imperialism

– Multilinear• Adaptive upgrading – Talcott Parsons

(1902-1979)• Gerhard Lenski (b.1924): evolution

depends on a society’s level of technology and mode of economic production

A World of Change

Lenski’s underlying continuum of societies

Industrial

Agrarian

Advanced horticultural

Simple horticultural

Hunting and gathering

A World of Change

Perspectives on Social Change (cont)

• Cyclical– Oswald Spengler (1880-1936)

• Studied 8 cultures• Development maturity decline death• Cultures have a lifespan of 1000 years

– Arnold Toynbee (1885-1975)• A civilization grows when a creative minority

successfully meets a severe challenge to the group

– Primary agent in early failures was abrupt and highly disruptive climate change

A World of Change

Perspectives on Social Change (cont)

• Functionalist– Society as a system in dynamic

equilibrium, adjusting to disturbances

– Sociologist William Ogburn (1922): Nonmaterial culture lags behind material culture

A World of Change

Perspectives on Social Change (cont)

• Conflict– Tensions between competing groups

are basic source of social change– Karl Marx’s dialectic – a world that is

becoming– Dialectical materialism – every

economic order grows to maximum efficiency, but includes internal flaws that result in decay

– Change is both individual and social

A World of Change

The Information Revolution• 2003: 2/3 of U.S. households have

computers and 57% have Internet access

• Social impacts include:– Automation of workplace activities– Concentration of power– Relationship alteration– Losses of privacy and confidentiality– Expansion of methods of crime

A World of Change

The Digital Divide

Sour

ce:

Fig

ure

gene

rate

d by

the

auth

ors

usin

g da

ta fr

om D

ay, J

anus

, and

Dav

is, 2

005.

A World of ChangeSocial Change in Developing

Nations• Modernization – a society moves

from traditional socioeconomic arrangements to industrial ones. Example: East Asia

• World system – societies develop based on their dependency on other societies. Examples: Latin America, Africa

• Thomas Friedman: The World is Flat (2005)

Collective Behavior

Collective behaviors are ways of thinking, feeling, and acting that develop among a large number of people and that are relatively spontaneous and unstructured.

Collective BehaviorVarieties of Collective Behavior• Rumors – quick info, person-to-

person• Fashions, fads, and crazes –

folkways• Mass Hysteria – rapid dissemination

of contagious anxiety– Mass psychogenic illness: “Bin Laden

itch”

• Panic – irrational, uncoordinated collective actions triggered by an immediate threat

• Crowds – temporary gathering (types here)

©2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Collective Behavior• Types of crowds

– Casual – people have little in common except perhaps viewing a common event

– Conventional – people assembled for some specific purpose that act according to established norms

– Expressive – gathering for self-stimulation and personal gratificationExamples: religious revival, rock concert

– Acting – excited, volatile collection of people engaged in rioting or other aggressive behavior

©2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Collective Behavior

• Shared characteristics of crowds– Suggestibility – lack of conventional

norms; susceptibility– Deindividualization – diminished

identity and self-awareness– Invulnerability – sense of power and

invincibility

©2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Collective Behavior

Preconditions for Collective Behavior

• Sociologist Neil Smelser (1963): Theory of collective behavior

• Value-added model imported from economics

• Six sequential steps determine range of final outcomes

• Sometimes stages are missing or misordered, or other perspectives are better

Collective Behavior

1. Structural conduciveness2. Structural strain3. Growth of a generalized belief4. Precipitating factors5. Mobilization of participants for

action6. Operation of social control

Smelser’s Six Determinants of Collective Behavior

Collective BehaviorExplanations of Crowd Behavior• Contagion Theory – Gustave LeBon’s “the

mob mind” (1896)– Imitation Suggestibility Circular

Reaction• Convergence Theory – people in crowd have

same predispositions– Hadley Cantril’s study of Texas lynching

(1941)• Emergent-Norm Theory – Sherif (1936),

Asch (1952), and Turner/Killian (1972)– Finding meaning in uncertain social

situations– Developing new norms, then enforcing

them

Social Movements

A social movement is a persistent and organized effort on the part of a relatively large number of people to bring about or resist change.

Social Movements

Causes of Social Movements• Deprivation

– Marx’s relative deprivation – discontent from the gap between what people actually have and what they believe they should have

– Example: civil rights movement (USA, 1960s)

– James Davies’ J-curve

Social Movements

Davies’s J-Curve Theory of RevolutionSource: Adapted from James C. Davies, “Toward a Theory of Revolution,” American

Sociological Review, vol. 27, February 1962, fig. 1, p. 6.

Social Movements

Causes of Social Movements (cont)

• Resource Mobilization– Social discontent is constant and

endemic – Participants choose to join via

rational process– Structural, organizational, strategic

issues are critical– Sociologist Craig Jenkins (1985):

The politics of insurgency: The farm worker movement in the 1960s.

– John Hall’s four factors (1988)

Social Movements

1. Common ethnic background or foreign language

2. Spiritual hierarchy, with authority members being of higher moral status

3. Obligatory confession4. Wearing of special clothes or

uniforms

John Hall’s Four Factors for Long-term Success of a Group

Social Movements

An ideology is a set of ideas that provides individuals with conceptions of:

the purposes of a social movement,

a rationale for the movement's existence,

an indictment of existing conditions, and

a design for action.

Social MovementsTypes of Social Movements• Revolutionary – replacement of

existing value scheme• Reform – change implementation

of existing value scheme• Resistance – blocks change or

eliminates a previously instituted change

• Expressive – concerned with renovating or renewing of people from within

Social Movements

Social revolution involves the overthrow of a society's state and class structures and the fashioning of new social arrangements.

The natural history of revolutions view is that social revolutions pass through a set of common stages and patterns in their development.

Social Movements

Terrorism is “premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience.”

U.S. Department of State, as quoted in Atran, Scott 2003. “Genesis of Suicide Terrorism”, Science, 299:1534-39.

Social Movements

Terrorism• Typically a media event• Suicide terrorists have same

characteristics as surrounding population

• Terrorists motivated by group commitment

• Scott Atran (2003):– Sociological and psychological research

into formation, recruitment, and retention– Reduce receptivity of recruits– Address the grievances of terrorist

organizations

©2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Looking to the Future

• Karl Popper– Conditional scientific predictions vs.

unconditional historical prophecies– Role of science to “understand even the

more remote consequences of possible actions”

• Futurists – study of the future– Understand, predict, and plan– USA being restructured from industrial to

information society– Modern societies shifting to global

economy

• Crisis forecasting – Los Alamos National Laboratory

©2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Looking to the Future

“We must … design strategies that minimize the impact of climate change on societies that are at greatest risk. This will require substantial international cooperation, without which the 21st century will likely witness unprecedented social disruptions.”

– Weiss and Bradley, 2001