Social change

• Social change refers to the notion of social progress or sociocultural

evolution
• Paradigmatic change in the socio-economic structure (shift away from
feudalism towards capitalism)
• Driven by cultural, religious, economic, scientific or technological
forces
 Causes/Contributing factors of social change:
1. Demographic:
• increase in birth and decline in death
• migration of population
2. Cultural:
• invention (produce new products, ideas and social patterns. Like:
mobile phone)
• discovery (finding something that has never been found before or
finding something that already exists)
• diffusion (spreading of ideas, culture and objects to other societies)
3. Conflict:
• change is caused by tension and conflict
• strain, deprivation, cultural revitalization (major causes of conflict)
• social division based on class, caste, gender, ethnicity, etc. are the
important sources of conflict
4. Social movements:
• bring about deliberate change in the values, norms, institutions,
culture, relationships and traditions of society
• generate new identities and a new perspective
5. Technology:
• transition from hunting gathering to agrarian society and finally post
modern society
 Theories of social change

• three basic theories of social change: evolutionary, functionalist, and

conflict theories.
1. Evolutionary theory
✔ applied Charles Darwin’s work in biological evolution
✔ society moves in specific directions
✔ early social evolutionists saw society as progressing to higher and
higher levels
✔ Auguste Comte saw human societies as progressing into using
scientific methods
 Cont.

✔ Emile Durkheim saw societies as moving from simple to complex

social structures
✔ Herbert Spencer compared society to a living organism

2. Functionalist theory
✔ emphasize what maintains society, not what changes it
✔ Talcott Parsons saw society in its natural state as being stable and
balanced
✔ significant social problems (union strikes) represent nothing but
temporary rifts in the social order
 Cont.

✔ According to his equilibrium theory, changes in one aspect of society

require adjustments in other aspects
✔ When these adjustments do not occur, equilibrium disappears

3. Conflict theory
✔ a society's wealthy and powerful ensure the status quo in which social
practices and institutions favorable to them
✔ change plays a vital role in remedying social inequalities and injustices
 Cont.

• Karl Marx accepted the evolutionary argument but did not agree that
each successive stage presents an improvement over the previous stage
• Marx noted that history proceeds in stages in which the rich always
exploit the poor and weak as a class of people
• conflict is desirable and needed to initiate social change and rid social
inequality