7 Main Factors which Affect the Social Change in Every SocietyBy Saheb DAdvertisements:

Social Change characterizes every society. However its direction, speed and nature are affected by several factors.Main factors which affect social change can be discussed a follows:1. Natural Factors:Natural forces and factors play an important role in unifying or disintegrating the society. Although human beings have made tremendous progress during the last 150 years or so, yet they have not been able to wield full control over the nature. A storm, earthquake, flood, drought, disease and similar natural events even today can disrupt the social system. Natural calamities like floods, earthquakes, draughts, famines and other natural disasters always force changes in the social conditions and life of the affected people. On the one hand these factors and forces act as a source of big loss for the victims; on the other hand these initiate efforts aimed at rapid reconstruction and development. As such, the natural factors can on the one hand, cause havoc in physical conditions of social life, these may also affect the social conditions in a positive way. Large scale floods in Pakistan in August 2010 inflicted very heavy losses on more than 10 million people of the country. At the same time, these gave rise to very comprehensive human attempts at socio-economic reconstruction and development. Haiti is now getting rebuilt after the devastating earthquake of 2010. 2. Geographical Factors of Social Change:The geographical conditions always affect the social system and act as factors of social change. The cultural life of the people depends upon the physical environment. Progress also depends upon the availability of natural resources, their exploitation and how are these being recouped and preserved. The climate always affects the socio-economic activities of the people. For instance, there is little economic activity at both poles (North and South) due to intense and long spells of cold the speed of social change remains negligible. On the other hand, there is always an intense activity in temperate regions (neither too cold nor too warm), and consequently the speed of social changes is quite fast. It is necessary to remember that physical environment changes slowly and in a society social change can come at a fast rate. As such geographic factors are not the sole determining factors of social change. Social Change never comes due to any single factor. During the last several countries there have been no appreciable change in the physical environment of Europe and yet during the same period a big social change came in European societies under the impact of the technology revolution of the 20th century.3. Biological Factors:Biological factors also affect social change. Biological factors are those factors which determine the structure, selection and hereditary qualities of generations. The human element is ever changing. Each new generation is different from previous generation. It is different in form, ideas and in many other ways from the one gone before. Darwin and Spencer are of the opinion that each generation and its members have to compromise with the physical environment. Only those persons survive in the struggle for life who are fit and are able to live, or those, in other words, who have the ability to face the physical conditions. The weak ones get destroyed. The process of the survival of the fittest affects the social organization.4. Demographic Factors:The Demographic factors always influence the process and nature of Social Change. The population increase or decrease always brings social problems. When the birth-rate in a society exceeds death-rate, population begins to rise. A constantly rising population gives birth to poverty, unemployment, disease and several other related problems. On the other hand, a low birth-rate means leads to decrease in the size of the population. When population is low, there are fewer skilled hands available and the country cannot make full use of the natural resources. The social conditions deteriorate the size of families shrink and it affects the social relations. Even the sex ratio of in a society greatly influences social order. When in a society the number of women is more than men, the custom of polygamy sets in. On the contrary, if there are more men than women, it often gives rise to polyandry. When women outnumber men, dowry system becomes common, when men outnumber women the custom of bride valuation starts. Falling ratio of females in society always creates a dangerous imbalance in society. Population always influences social institutions, relations, social structure, values and ideals. Demographic factors have large and profound bearing on the society as well as on the process of social change.5. Socio-economic Factors:The economic factors constitute an important factor of social change. Marx said that the entire social structure of a country is determined by economic factors i.e the means of production and distribution of material means of production and distribution. When there are changes in the means of production i.e the material productive forces of society, it is always changes the social organization. The birth of the institutions of marriage and family took place under the influence of the means of production of material means of livelihood. With the birth of family wealth and possessions became important. When the society graduated to agricultural stage, the social organization grew more complex. People settled down at a particular place for raising crops. Life became stable and located and the villages came into being. Agriculture gave rise to allied industries. With the division of labour the society got divided into several classes. The institution of kingship and feudalism was born during this period. The agriculture stage gave way to the industrial stage. In the era of Industrial revolution several inventions came to be made and machine system of production came into existence. All this brought about drastic changes in the social set-up. The problem of housing cropped up in the cities. Urbanisation came into play. The problem of maintaining law and order and the need for providing civic amenities came to very big. More and more ways of entertainment came to be developed. The joint family system suffered a decline and the nucleus family came to be the basic social unit. Women also became a work force. Male-female relations got changed when women also started working in factories, offices and shops. The condition of women got ameliorated in developed societies. The social values, norms and traditions underwent a big change. Thus, socioeconomic factors have been and continue to be fundamentally important factors of social change but these are not the only determinants of.6. Cultural Factors:The cultural factors also play a role in bringing about social change. Our social life depends upon our beliefs, ideas, values, customs, conventions, institutions and the like. When there is a change in these, it influences the social life. For example, let us (consider the system of marriage. To begin with, the ceremonies were religious and people regarded marriage as something sacred and irrevocable. Today we hold a different view. Marriage is held be good for personal comfort. It has affected the thinking in favour of irrevocability of marriage and consequently the number of divorcees has registered a big increase. The view regarding the issues (children born out of marriage) has undergone a change. Today all western societies have been living with children born to unwed mothers and children belonging to broken families. In India, the mad love of a male child and the short-sighted view of girl-child as a burden have together given rise to the evil and inhuman and dangerous, practice of female feticide. The pressures of modern industrial culture have forced the people to practice small family norms. The relations between the parents and children have undergone a big change. The new love and need for working couples has acted j as a source of big change in family relations and culture. Thus, socio-economic and cultural factors always act as big and formidable factors of social change.7. Science and Technology as factors of Social Change:In contemporary times science and technology happens to be the most important factor of social change. New scientific inventions and technologies always greatly influence the social life. Ogburn and Nimkoff rightly observe, The most wonderful and universal phenomenon of modern life is not capitalism, but science and technology and capitalism is only its by product. Mechanisation brings changes in the economic structure and relations. This leads to a change in old values, norms and ideals. Technology brings about changes in the physical environment and the material culture of each society which in turn gives birth to social change.Social ConflictChange also results from social conflict, including wars, ethnic conflict, efforts by social movements to change society, and efforts by their opponents to maintain the status quo. The immediate impact that wars have on societies is obvious, as the deaths of countless numbers of soldiers and civilians over the ages have affected not only the lives of their loved ones but also the course of whole nations. To take just one of many examples, the defeat of Germany in World War I led to a worsening economy during the next decade that in turn helped fuel the rise of Hitler. In a less familiar example, the deaths of so many soldiers during the American Civil War left many wives and mothers without their familys major breadwinner. Many of these women thus had to turn to prostitution to earn an income, helping to fuel a rise in prostitution after the war (Marks, 1990). [12]Social movements have also been major forces for social change. Racial segregation in the South ended only after thousands of African Americans, often putting their lives on the line for their cause, engaged in sit-ins, marches, and massive demonstrations during the 1950s and 1960s. The Southern civil rights movement is just one of the many social movements that have changed American history, and we return to these movements later in the chapter.CONFLICT THEORYTop of FormYou can opt-out at any time.Please refer to our privacy policy for contact information.Bottom of FormConflict theory emphasizes the role of coercion and power in producing social order. This perspective is derived from the works of Karl Marx, who saw society as fragmented into groups that compete for social and economic resources. Social order is maintained by domination, with power in the hands of those with the greatest political, economic, and social resources. When consensus exists, it is attributable to people being united around common interests, often in opposition to other groups.Marx theorized that the work of producing consensus was done in the "superstructure" of society--which is composed of social institutions, political structures, and culture--and what it produced consensus for was the "base," the economic relations of production (Read more about Marx's theory of base and superstructure here).Following on the heels of Marx, Italian scholar and activist Antonio Gramsci argued that consensus to rule is achieved in large part through cultural hegemony, which refers to the dominant group's ability to attain consent to their rule through ideas, norms, values, and beliefs.According to conflict theory, inequality exists because those in control of a disproportionate share of societys resources actively defend their advantages. The masses are not bound to society by their shared values, but by coercion at the hands of those in power. This perspective emphasizes social control, not consensus and conformity. Groups and individuals advance their own interests, struggling over control of societal resources.Those with the most resources exercise power over others with inequality and power struggles result. There is great attention paid to class, race, and gender in this perspective because they are seen as the grounds of the most pertinent and enduring struggles in society.Whereas most other sociological theories focus on the positive aspects of society, conflict perspective focuses on the negative, conflicted, and ever-changing nature of society. Unlike functionalists who defend the status quo, avoid social change, and believe people cooperate to effect social order, conflict theorists challenge the status quo, encourage social change (even when this means social revolution), and believe rich and powerful people force social order on the poor and the weak. Conflict theorists, for example, may interpret an elite board of regents raising tuition to pay for esoteric new programs that raise the prestige of a local college as self-serving rather than as beneficial for students.Whereas American sociologists in the 1940s and 1950s generally ignored the conflict perspective in favor of the functionalist, the tumultuous 1960s saw American sociologists gain considerable interest in conflict theory. They also expanded Marx's idea that the key conflict in society was strictly economic. Today, conflict theorists find social conflict between any groups in which the potential for inequality exists: racial, gender, religious, political, economic, and so on. Conflict theorists note that unequal groups usually have conflicting values and agendas, causing them to compete against one another. This constant competition between groups forms the basis for the ever-changing nature of society. Critics of the conflict perspective suggest that it glosses over the complexities and nuances of everyday life and relationships of power.

CULTURAL LAGCultural Lag is a common societal phenomenon due to the tendency of material culture to evolve and change rapidly while non-material culture tends to resist change and remain fixed for a far longer period of time. Due to the opposing nature of these two aspects of culture, adaptation of new technology becomes rather difficult. This distinction between material and non-material culture is also a contribution of Ogburn's 1922 work on social change.9. Cultural Lag creates problems for a society in a multitude of ways. Where new technologies are considered. For example, the advent of stem cell research has given rise to many new, potentially beneficial medical technologies; however these new technologies have also raised serious ethical questions about the use of stem cells in medicine. The birth rate (technically, births/population rate) is the total number of live births per 1,000 of a population in a year.[Mortality rate, or death rate,[1] is a measure of the number of deaths (in general, or due to a specific cause) in a particular population, scaled to the size of that population, per unit of timeA Definition of MigrationThe definition of the word can be "the movement of people from one place to another". There are two main types of migration: first, internal migration, i.e. migration within one country, and secondly international migration, which means the movement from one country to another. A good example of internal migration is the movement from East Germany to West Germany, which causes big problems for East Germany. A good example of international migration is the movement from third-world countries to Europe or America. The next question is: What makes people migrate from one place to another? The reasons for migration can be divided into two main aspects, the so-called "push" and "pull" factors. Push factors are those in their old place which force people to move. For example, there may be civil wars or wars in general in the country, but political or religious oppression, climate changes, lack of jobs or simply poverty are all important push factors. Pull factors are factors in the target country which encourage people to move; these include peace and safety, a chance of a better job, better education, social security, a better standard of living in general as well as political and religious freedom.Cultural LagThe role played by material inventions, that is, by technology, in social change probably received most emphasis in the work of William F. Ogburn. It was Ogburn, also, who was chiefly responsible for the idea that the rate of invention within society is a function of the size of the existing culture base. He saw the rate of material invention as increasing with the passage of time.Ogburn believed that material and non-material cultures change in different ways. Change in material culture is believed to have a marked directional or progressive character. This is because there are agreed-upon standards of efficiency that are used to evaluate material inventions. To use air-planes, as an example, we keep working to develop planes that will fly, higher and faster, and carry more payloads on a lower unit cost. Because airplanes can be measured against these standards, inventions in this area appear rapidly and predictably. In the area of non-material culture, on the other hand there often are no such generally accepted standards. Whether one prefers a Hussain, a Picasso, or a Gainsborough, for example, is a matter of taste, and styles of painting fluctuate unevenly. Similarly, in institutions such as government and the economic system there are competing forms of styles, Governments may be dictatorships, oligarchies, republics or democracies.Economic system includes communist, socialist, feudal, and capitalist ones. As far as can be told, there is no regular progression from one form of government or economic system to another. The obvious directional character of change in material culture is lacking in many areas of non-material culture. In addition to the difference in the directional character of change, Ogburn and others believe that material culture tends to change faster than non-material culture. Certainly one of the imperative aspects of modern American life is the tremendous development of technology. Within this century, life has been transformed by invention of the radio, TV, automobiles, airplanes, rockets, transistors, and computers and so on. While this has been happening in material culture, change in government, economic system, family life, education, and religion seems to have been much slower. This difference in rates of cultural change led Ogburn to formulate the concept of culture lag. Material inventions, he believed bring changes that require adjustments in various areas of non-material culture.Invention of the automobile, for instance, freed young people from direct parental observation, made it possible for them to work at distances from their homes, and, among other things, facilitated crime by making escape easier. Half a century earlier, families still were structured as they were in the era of the family farm when young people were under continuous observation and worked right on the homestead.Culture lag is defined as the time between the appearance of a new material invention and the making of appropriate adjustments in corresponding area of non-material culture. This time is often long. It was over fifty years, for example, after the typewriter was invented before it was used systematically in offices. Even today, we may have a family system better adapted to a farm economy than to an urban industrial one, and nuclear weapons exist in a diplomatic atmosphere attuned to the nineteenth century. As the discussion implies, the concept of culture lag is associated with the definition of social problems. Scholars envision some balance or adjustment existing between material and non-material cultures. That balance is upset by the appearance of raw material objects. The resulting imbalance is defined as a social problem until non-material culture changes in adjustment to the new technology.