Assignment

Social and Cultural Change

1/21/2019
Riphah International Univercity, Lahore
Rana Asim
402908
 Social Change
What is Social Change?
Social change refers to any significant alteration over time in behavior patterns and cultural
values and norms. By “significant” alteration, sociologists mean changes
yielding profound social consequences. Examples of significant social changes having long‐term
effects include the industrial revolution, the abolition of slavery, and the feminist movement.
Today's sociologists readily acknowledge the vital role that social movements play in inspiring
discontented members of a society to bring about social change. Efforts to understand the nature
of long‐term social change, including looking for patterns and causes, has led sociologists to
propose the evolutionary, functionalist, and conflict theories of change (discussed in the next few
sections). All theories of social change also admit the likelihood of resistance to change,
especially when people with vested interests feel unsettled and threatened by potential changes.

Definitions of Social Change

Social change refers to any significant alteration over time in behavior patterns and cultural
values and norms. By “significant” alteration, sociologists mean changes yielding profound
social consequences.

Social change refers to an alteration in the social order of a society. Social change may be driven
by cultural, religious, economic, scientific or technological forces. More generally, social change
may include changes in nature, social institutions, social behaviors or social relations.

Social change in sociology the alteration within the social structure, characterized by changes in
cultural symbols, rules of behavior, social organizations, or value systems.

How to Change Occur?

While technology, population, environment factors, and racial inequality can prompt social
change, only when members of a society organize into social movements does true social change
occur. The phrase social movements refer to collective activities designed to bring about or resist
primary changes in an existing society or group.

Wherever they occur, social movements can dramatically shape the direction of society. When
individuals and groups of people-civil rights activists and other visionaries, for instance—
transcend traditional bounds, they may bring about major shifts in social policy and structures.
Even when they prove initially unsuccessful, social movements do affect public opinion.
Models of Social Change

 Evolutionary Theory

According to evolutionary theory, society moves in specific directions. Therefore, early social
evolutionists saw society as progressing to higher and higher levels. As a result, they concluded
that their own cultural attitudes and behaviors were more advanced than those of earlier
societies.

Identified as the “father of sociology,” Auguste Comte subscribed to social evolution. He saw
human societies as progressing into using scientific methods. Likewise, Emile Durkheim, one of
the founders of functionalism, saw societies as moving from simple to complex social structures.
Herbert Spencer compared society to a living organism with interrelated parts moving toward a
common end. In short, Comte, Durkheim, and Spencer proposed unilinear evolutionary theories,
which maintain that all societies pass through the same sequence of stages of evolution to reach
the same destiny.

Contemporary social evolutionists like Gerhard Lenski, Jr., however, view social change as
multilinear rather than unilinear. Multilinear evolutionary theory holds that change can occur in
several ways and does not inevitably lead in the same direction. Multilinear theorists observe that
human societies have evolved along differing lines.

 Functionalist Theory
 Conflict Theory

Causes of Social Change:

1. Technological and Economic Changes: (Agriculture advancement,
industrialization)
2. Modernization: standardizing as towards modern tools (Life Style, Technology)
3. Urbanization: Moving population from ruler areas to urban (Cities) areas.
4. Bureaucratization: Extreme emphasize on rules and regulation, impersonality.
5. Conflict and Competition: War: due to religion, ethnic tensions, competition for
resources. Gender and Women’s Movement: equal pay, property: Today; day
care, occupational segregation
6. Political and Legal Power: Elected Official (Government) & Unelected Officials
(Corporative Force)
7. Ideology: Religious Belief, Political or Regional Conviction.
8. Diffusion: Spreading the ones cultural to another culture.
9. Acculturation: the process in which a minority is absorbed into the majority and
entirely loses its distinctiveness.
 Cultural Change
What is Cultural Change?
Society strives its continuity and existence according to the environmental conditions of its
surrounding. People have been descending down from generation to generation with the addition
of new ideas and objects. This dynamic process of society enhances culture with refreshment and
for every generation a new culture than for the previous. A stagnant society is dead but there is
none today how so primitive it may be. Technological developments and social changes in the
form of 'evolution' and 'progress' of any rate exist there as the adjustment factors change them
according to the environmental conditions. Hence the societies and cultures are undergoing
changes with a continued process. Moreover, new things are added to material culture every day,
and they affect nonmaterial culture as well. Cultures change when something new (say, railroads
or smartphones) opens up new ways of living and when new ideas enter a culture (say, as a result
of travel or globalization).

Definitions of Cultural Change

Horton & Hunt: "changes in the culture of society are called cultural change."

Kingsley Davis: "cultural changes embarrasses Occurring in any branch of culture including,
art, science, technology, philosophy etc. as well as changes in the forms and rules of social
organization."

David Dressler and Donald Caens: "It is the modification or discontinuance of existing
'tried' and 'tested' procedures transmitted to us from the culture of the past, as well as the
introduction of new procedures.

The cultural aspect of society which includes norms, while the learning of these norms in groups
is 'social'. While entering into life whatever one finds in his environment is 'cultural' and the
activities in which he participates become 'social' for him. Ideal or expected roles from individual
are cultural and the real ones which he performed are social.

Causes of Cultural Change:

Cultural changes are set in motion in three ways. The first is invention, the process of creating
new cultural elements. Invention has given us the telephone, the airplane and the computer each
of these elements of material culture has had a tremendous impact on our way of life.

The same is true of the minimum wage, school desegregation, and women's shelters each an
important element of nonmaterial culture. The process of invention goes on constantly.
Discovery, a second cause of cultural change, involves recognizing and understanding more fully
something already in existence perhaps a distant star or the foods of another culture or women's
political leadership skills. The third cause of cultural change is diffusion, the spread of cultural
traits from one society to another. Because new information technology sends information
around the globe in seconds, cultural diffusion has never been greater than it is today.

Source of Cultural Change:

1.Discovery. Discovery is a new perception of an aspect of reality that already exists.

2.Invention. Invention is the combination or new use of existing knowledge to produce

something that did not exist before

3.Diffusion. Diffusion is the spreading of cultural traits from group to another group.

4.Acculturation.

5. Assimilation. Assimilation. It is the process of combination of two cultures in to one

culture with comprising cultural traits.

References:
https://www.cliffsnotes.com/study-guides/sociology/social-change-and-movements/social-
change-defined

http://www.cssforum.com.pk/css-optional-subjects/group-vii/sociology/51103-breif-
introduction-social-cultural-change.html

http://www.sociologyguide.com/culture/causes-of-cultural-change.php

https://opentextbc.ca/introductiontosociology/chapter/chapter3-culture/

http://www.studylecturenotes.com/basics-of-sociology/what-is-cultural-change-definition-
sources-of-cultural-change