Social change

Social change is a general term which refers to:

change in the nature, the social institutions, the social behaviour or the social relations of a society or community of people.
acts of advocacy for the cause of changing society in a positive way (subjective).

The term is used in the study of history, economies and politics, and includes topics such as the success or failure of different political systems, globalization, democratization, development and economic growth. The term can encompass concepts as broad as revolution and paradigm shift, to narrow changes such as a particular cause within small town government.

Social change could be:

slow, gradual, incremental, and evolutionary; in this it might be barely noticeable
fast, radical, sudden and revolutionary; it might even take people by surprise.
wide in scope, affecting almost all people in a society
limited in scope, affecting only a small number of people.

Social change is a topic in sociology, but also involves political science, economics, history, anthropology and many other social sciences.

Among many forms of creating social change are theater for social change, protesting, and political activism.

Theories of social change

Some social change is almost always occurring, but many different theories have been mooted to explain significant social changes in history.

These theories include:

the idea of decline or degeneration, or, in religious terms, the fall from an original state of grace, connected with theology;
the idea of cyclical change, a pattern of subsequent and recurring phases of growth and decline, and the social cycles;
the idea of continuous social progress;
Marx's historical materialism
Evolutionary theories (how one social form evolves into another), including social darwinism
Theories of sociobiology

A currently popular author on social change is Jared Diamond.

Examples

Some recent trends in global change are that the world population has become more concentrated in the less developed world and in cities, there has been a tremendous growth in internet use, infant mortality rates have declined, illiteracy has declined, more people are living in freedom, GDP per capita has increased, and poverty has declined.

Measuring social change

These changes did not happen equally throughout the world, however. For example, in 1960, infant mortality rates were more than 4.5 times higher in developing countries than it was among industrialized countries. In 2000, infant mortality rates in developing countries was about 10 times higher than was IMR in industrialized countries. That is, infant mortality rates declined faster among the more developed countries. There were similar disparities in illiteracy and political freedom. That is, conditions did improve among less developed countries, but not as much as they did among more developed countries. In addition, some countries experienced worsening of conditions, for example, increases in infant mortality rates, increases in illiteracy and less freedom.

Social change and social order

The concept of social change contrasts with the concept of social order. Social order is maintained by social institutions and social practices which conserve and enforce "normal" ways of relating. Thus, social change usually means that some or all social institutions are changed, or disappear or are destroyed - depending on how big the social change is. By implication, ways of relating which are considered normal may be considered abnormal later, or vice. social oreder can also imply the maintenance of a particular norm of that group from generation to generation. in such a way that it becomes geneological to that group example in the issue of incest law of incest social order is that the tradition be maintained.

Causes and sequence

The primary change agent is technology, which once gets widely adopted causes imbalance in economic relationship between economic agents. This leads to change in social balance of power hence causes a change.

References

Global Social Change Reports. Gene Shackman, Ya-Lin Liu and George (Xun) Wang. 2004. http://gsociology.icaap.org/reports.html

External links

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