Sociology of
Social Change
chapter 13
Chapter Outline
Social Change
A World of Change
Collective Behavior
Social Movements
Looking 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
The Digital Divide
Source: Figure generated by the authors using data from Day, Janus, and Davis, 2005.
A World of Change
A World of Change
Social 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 Behavior
Varieties of Collective Behavior
• Rumors – quick info, person-toperson
• 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)
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 selfstimulation and personal gratification
Examples: religious revival, rock
concert
– Acting – excited, volatile collection
of people engaged in rioting or other
aggressive behavior
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Collective Behavior
• Shared characteristics of crowds
– Suggestibility – lack of conventional
norms; susceptibility
– Deindividualization – diminished
identity and self-awareness
– Invulnerability – sense of power and
invincibility
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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
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Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Collective Behavior
Smelser’s Six Determinants
of Collective Behavior
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Structural conduciveness
Structural strain
Growth of a generalized belief
Precipitating factors
Mobilization of participants for
action
6. Operation of social control
Collective Behavior
Explanations 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 Revolution
Source: 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
John Hall’s Four Factors for
Long-term Success of a Group
1. Common ethnic background or
foreign language
2. Spiritual hierarchy, with
authority members being of
higher moral status
3. Obligatory confession
4. Wearing of special clothes or
uniforms
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 Movements
Types 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
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
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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
©2008 The McGraw-Hill
Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.