3. Causes and Processes of Social Change

Basic components of social change

Patterns of social change

Modernity

1. Basic Components of Social Change

American sociologists Nolan and Lenski (2004) suggested the five important elements to understand the change of human societies:

Population Culture Material products Social organization Social institutions

Population Change

Genetic constants: common genetic heritage. Genetic variables: race, skin color, body and facial forms. (refer

race and eugenics argument) Demographic variables: composition in terms of age and sex,

and its birth and death rate. Does the population size really matter?

Culture

Symbol systems (spoken, body, written language) Information (knowledge acquired through experience and largely

conveyed through symbols) Includes ideology, religion, beliefs, laws, regulation or rules,

customs, and even technology Max Weber on religion

Code of Hammurabi one of the earliest and best preserved law codes from ancient

Babylon, created in 1760 BC (before common era)

Material Products

Things people produce or obtain through trade. Includes energy, foods and capital goods such as tools and

weapons. Humans produce such essentials as fire, food, shelter. Metals, domestication of animals (horses) and industrial

machines What is the most important invention in human history?

Social Organization

Networks of relationships among people.

Social positions, roles, and statuses

Groups (primary and secondary)

Classes (working class, professional class, political elites)

Stratification (race, ethnicity, gender, region)

Pyramid of Capitalist System

Worker publication advocating industrial unionism.

It also shows the critique of capitalism.

Social Institutions

Combinations of the other components. Institutions are durable and persisting elements of socio-cultural

systems. Include marriage, kinship, property, religion, secret-ballot

elections, taxation, party, business, education, government Institutional systems are systems of interrelated institutions.

What is the most important factor?

Population Geography Climate Culture Idea Technology Economy Political leadership and government Social organization and institutions

Guns, Germs, and Steel (1997) The American geographer, Jered Diamond criticized the idea that

Eurasian (Middle East, Asia and Europe) civilization is due to any form of intellectual, moral or inherent genetic superiority.

The first step towards civilization is the move from nomadic hunter-gatherer societies to agrarian societies.

He argues that the gaps in power and technology between human societies depend on environmental differences.

The cultural or genetic differences have favored Eurasians. The invention of written language and resistance to endemic diseases are their advantages.

Diamond states that the advantages that Eurasians had in development were primarily due to a mixture of climate, crops, and animals, and not due to inherent advantages of their genes.

Geography and Society In the eighteenth century, the great Scottish scholar, Adam Smith

emphasized on geography in his Wealth of Nations, stressing the importance of waterways rather than the ease of crossing Eurasia by land.

Smith pointed out that the decisive factor in the technological development of ancient societies was the way in which the navigation of canals and rivers allowed people to move goods and spread technologies.

In the 1930s, the Annales School in France published a series of books on long-term historical structures by using a synthesis of geography, history, and sociology. The historians examined the impact of geography, climate and land use on human history.

Criticism against Diamond The American anthropologist James Morris Blaut criticized the

book of Diamond for reviving the theory of environmental determinism (Blaut, J.M. 1999. Environmentalism and Eurocentrism).

Blaut described Diamond as an example of a modern Eurocentrictheorist. He argued that Diamond's use of the terms "Eurasia" and "innovation“ might produce a wrong perception that Western Europe is responsible for technological inventions that arose in the Middle East and Asia.

2. Patterns of Social Change

Hunters and gatherers societies

Pastoral and agrarian societies

Industrial societies

Hunters and Gatherers Societies

50,000 BC (before common era) to the present (now on the verge of disappearance).

Consist of small number of people gaining their livelihood from hunting, fishing, and the gathering of edible plants.

Few inequalities. Differences of rank limited by age and sex.

Pastoral Societies

12,000 BC to the present. Today mostly part of larger states; their traditional ways of life are being undermined.

Dependent on the tending of domesticated animals for their material subsistence.

Size ranges from a few hundred people to many thousands. Marked by distinct inequalities Ruled by chiefs or warrior kings

Agrarian Societies

12,000 BC to the present. Most are now part of larger political entities, and are losing their

distinct identity. Based on small rural communities, without towns or cities. Livelihood gained through agriculture, often supplemented by

hunting and gathering. Greater inequalities than hunters and gatherer societies Ruled by Chiefs.

Neolithic Revolution The term Neolithic Revolution was coined in by V. Gordon Childe

(1923) to describe the series of agricultural revolutions of 9000–7000 BC in the Fertile Crescent in Middle East.

The Neolithic Revolution is described as a "revolution" to denote its revolutionary change, and the degree and extent of social change affecting the human societies that new agricultural practices were adopted and developed.

Traditional States or Civilizations

6000 BC to the 19th century. All traditional states have disappeared. (i. e. Babylon, Egypt,

Athens, Rome, Xian etc.) Based largely on agriculture. Some cities exist where trade and manufacture are concentrated. Very large in size, some numbering millions of people (though

small compared with larger industrial societies. Distinct apparatus of government headed by a king or emperor. Major inequalities exist among different classes.

Industrial Revolution 18-19th century to the present. Industrialization originated in eighteenth century England. The emergence of machine production based on the use of

inanimate power resources like steam or electricity. Industrial revolution transformed traditional societies into modern

industrial societies. The industrializing process has expanded at the global scale. A Watt steam engine, the steam engine that propelled the

Industrial Revolution in Britain and the world. Stephenson's Rocket 1829 ; A replica of the early locomotive

Sans Pareil at a 1980 restaging of the Rainhill Trials of 1829. A young "drawer" pulling a coal tub up a mine shaft.

Over London by Rail Gustave Dore. c. 1870.

Industrial Societies

Largest cities are vastly greater in size. Mass production based on machineries More integrated national communities. Nation states governments have extensive powers over many

aspects of citizens’ lives. Creating weaponry and modes of military organization. Mass consumption and the improvement of living standard. Western ways of life across the world over the past two centuries.

3. What is ‘Modern Society’?

A number of sociological works is based on the assumption of a sharp divide between pre-modern and modern societies. Karl Marx on feudal society and capitalist society Ferdinand Toennies on Gemeinshaft and Gesellschaft Herbert Spencer on militant society and industrial society Emile Durkheim on mechanical solidarity and organic solidarity

There is serious debate as to the qualities of the two kinds of society as well as to when Western societies became modern.

Modernity

Modernity refers to the particular attributes of modern societies. Modernity is distinguished on economic, political, social and

cultural grounds. For example, modern societies typically have industrial, capitalist economies, democratic political organization and a social structure founded on a division into social classes.

There is less agreement on cultural features, which are said to include a tendency to the fragmentation of experience, a commodification and rationalization of all aspects of life, and a speeding up of the face of daily life.

Periodization of Modernity There is disagreement about the periodization of modernity in the

West. Some argue that the formation of modernity is associated with

the appearance and spread of capitalism from the fourteenth to the eighteenth centuries. (Karl Marx)

Others argue that it is closely related with the religious changesof the fifteenth century onwards which provided the basis for rationalization (Max Weber)

Others point out the onset of industrialization in the late eighteenth and nineteenth century (Emile Durkheim)

Others emphasize the cultural transformations at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century which coincide with modernism. Recently, it has been argued that contemporary societies are no longer modern but postmodern.

Summary

The five basic components of social change (population, culture, material products, social organization, institutions) cannot actually be isolated from each other. Because they exist only in interaction with one another in a society.

Human societies are based on the subsistence technology they employ. Industrial societies are the newest type of society and technologically the most advanced.

Human societies has transformed from traditional societies to modern industrial societies.