Factors and Causes of Social Change

Its Indian instances are the standard ones: the commercialisation of agriculture, industrialisation, the growth of a service economy, and the liberalisation of 1991, treated in [Liberalization and Globalization].

5. Cultural and ideological

Ideas, values, beliefs and ideologies. Weber's demonstration that religious ideas contributed to the development of capitalism, in [Weber: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism], is the standing answer to any account that treats ideas as merely reflecting the economy.

Indian instances: the social and religious reform movements of the nineteenth century; the ideas of Phule, Periyar and Ambedkar; the national movement; and the ideas of equality and rights that the Constitution embodies.

Diffusion belongs here: most cultural change in any society comes from borrowing rather than from invention, and it is now extremely fast.

6. Political and legal

Change in who holds power and in what the law provides. Adult franchise transformed Indian politics by making numbers count, which is [Political Parties and Voting Behaviour]. Legislation has altered the position of women, of the disabled and of subordinated castes.

The extent of law's power to produce social change is the subject of [Law and Social Change] and is genuinely contested; the honest position here is that law is one factor among several and works best in combination with the others.

7. Education

Both as a transmitter of new ideas and as an allocator of positions. The education of women is the single most powerful documented driver of change in fertility, in the age at marriage, in child health and in the next generation's schooling.

8. Individuals, leadership and movements

Great individuals and organised movements. Weber's charismatic authority, in [Weber: Power and Authority], is the theoretical treatment of the first: a leader whose personal claim breaks the hold of tradition. Social movements, reform, labour, women's, environmental, Dalit, are the collective form, and they are the mechanism by which conflict from [Conflict] becomes change.

How the factors interact

Three propositions, and they are what separates an analytical answer from a list.

No factor operates alone. Technology produces different results in different economies; law succeeds where opinion supports it and fails where it does not; and ideas spread where the material conditions receive them.

Causation is circular. Education raises female employment, which raises the age of marriage, which raises education in the next generation. Picking a starting point in such a loop is a choice, not a discovery.

Single-factor theories all fail on the evidence. Geographical determinism cannot explain difference within one environment; technological determinism cannot explain why identical technologies are used differently; economic determinism is answered by Weber; and the great-man account cannot explain why a leader succeeds at one moment and not another.

The defensible position is that social change results from the interaction of several factors, that their relative weight differs between societies and periods, and that the sociologist's task is to establish which mattered in a given case rather than to name a universal prime mover.

Ogburn's cultural lag, restated

Because it is the single most examinable mechanism here. Material culture changes faster than non-material culture, so the norms, values, institutions and laws governing a new situation lag behind it, and the interval is a period of maladjustment. Every technology in the list above arrived before the rules for it, and closing that gap is a large part of what legislatures now do.

A worked example

Take the rise in the age at first marriage in India, described in [Recent Trends in Marriage], and ask which factor caused it.

Legal: the minimum ages under the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act 2006. But child marriage continued after the earlier legislation of 1929, so law alone did not do it.

Educational: girls who remain in school marry later, and this is among the strongest relationships in the data.

Economic: employment gives an alternative to early marriage and a reason to delay.

Demographic: falling infant mortality reduces the pressure to begin childbearing early.

Cultural: reform movements and changed expectations of what a young woman's life contains.

Technological and communicative: media supplying models of a different life course.

The answer that earns marks says all of them, and then says how they combined: the law set a standard and made child marriage contestable, education kept girls out of the marriage market during the years in which they were formerly married, employment made delay rational, and the reform movements made the change respectable. The law's contribution was real and was neither first nor sufficient, which is the honest general answer about legal change and the argument of [Law and Social Change].

Quick revision

1. Factors: physical or geographical; demographic; technological; economic; cultural and ideological; political and legal; educational; individuals, leadership and movements.
2. Ogburn: invention, accumulation, diffusion, adjustment; cultural lag at the adjustment stage.
3. Marx: the economic factor is fundamental; the forces of production outgrow the relations of production and the superstructure follows.
4. Weber: ideas can cause economic change, which answers any purely economic account.
5. Diffusion: most cultural change comes from borrowing, not invention.
6. Female education is the single most powerful documented driver of demographic and family change.
7. All single-factor theories fail: geographical, technological, economic and great-man determinism each meet decisive counter-evidence.
8. Causation is circular, so the starting point in a loop is a choice, not a discovery.

Test yourself

1. Name the factors of social change with a mechanism for each. Physical or geographical, which alters what a society can do; demographic, through size, composition, distribution and migration; technological, by changing what is possible; economic, through the mode of production and ownership; cultural and ideological, through beliefs and reform movements; political and legal, by changing who holds power and what the law provides; educational, by transmitting ideas and allocating positions; and individuals and organised movements, which convert conflict into change.

2. Explain Ogburn's account of technological change and cultural lag. Change proceeds by invention, the accumulation of inventions, their diffusion to other societies, and adjustment to them. Because the material part of a culture changes faster than the non-material part, the norms, institutions and laws that should govern a new technology lag behind its arrival, and the interval is a period of maladjustment which he called cultural lag. It is why motor vehicles preceded traffic law and digital communication preceded rules on data and online harm.

3. Why are single-factor explanations rejected? Because each meets decisive counter-evidence. Geographical determinism cannot explain why societies in similar environments differ completely and why the same environment supports different arrangements at different periods. Technological determinism cannot explain why identical technologies are adopted differently or not at all. Economic determinism is answered by Weber's demonstration that religious ideas contributed to capitalism's development. And the great-man account cannot explain why the same leader succeeds at one moment and fails at another.

4. What is meant by saying that causation in social change is circular? That factors act on each other in loops rather than in a single direction. Education raises women's employment; employment raises the age at marriage; later marriage and smaller families raise the schooling of the next generation, which raises education again. In such a loop, choosing a starting point is a decision by the analyst rather than a discovery about the world, which is why claims that one factor is the ultimate cause are so difficult to sustain.

5. Which factor explains the rise in the age at marriage in India? Several in combination. The statutory minimum ages set a standard and made child marriage contestable, but law alone did not achieve it, since the practice persisted for decades after the earlier legislation. Girls' schooling kept them out of the marriage market during the years in which they were formerly married; employment made delay rational; falling infant mortality reduced the pressure to begin childbearing early; and reform movements and media models made the change respectable. The law's contribution was real, and neither first nor sufficient.