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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
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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
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