Social Change: Meaning and Characteristics

To these are usually added: it is a community change, affecting the group and not merely individuals; it results from the interaction of many factors, no single one being sufficient; and it can be temporal, comparable only across time.

Change is not progress

The distinction has to be made explicitly, because ordinary speech runs them together.

Social change is neutral: any alteration, in any direction. Evolution is change in a direction, from simple to complex, as [The Evolutionary Perspective] sets out. Progress is change towards a goal regarded as desirable, and it therefore involves a value judgment about what is desirable, which sociology as a categorical science cannot supply.

The consequence for an answer: a change may be progress in one respect and regression in another, and to whom it is progress is a question about which group is speaking. Industrialisation raised output and destroyed occupations; urbanisation brought opportunity and dissolved the arrangements that supported the old. A student who describes every change as progress is writing about their own values, not about the society.

Development, growth and evolution

The speed of change, and why it accelerated

Worth its own paragraph, because it is what makes the topic urgent.

Change is cumulative: each generation begins from what the last achieved, so the base on which further change is built keeps growing. This is the property of culture identified in [Culture]. Add to it the growth of communication, which spreads a change from one society to another in months rather than centuries, the deliberate pursuit of change through research and legislation, and population growth, and the result is that the rate itself increases.

The consequence, which is where this module meets a law degree, is that cultural lag, from [Culture], is now the permanent condition rather than an occasional maladjustment. The norms and rules governing a new situation are almost always behind it, and much of modern legislative activity consists of catching up.

A worked example

Cheap mobile telephony reaches a rural district.

Is it social change? The device itself is material culture. The change becomes social when it alters relationships, and it does.

The chain. Migrant workers can now speak to their families daily, so migration becomes easier to sustain and increases. Wives of migrants become the effective heads of households, and their authority within the family rises. Agricultural prices become known directly, so the intermediary's advantage falls. Marriage arrangements begin to be made outside the traditional circles. Young people acquire a source of norms outside the family, which is the media agency of [Socialization]. Grievances are recorded and circulated, so complaints reach authorities that never heard them before.

The unintended consequences. Nobody introduced the technology in order to change the authority of women in migrant households, and it did.

And the law follows, late. Rules on data, on transactions by phone, on evidence in electronic form, on online harm. Cultural lag exactly, and it illustrates every characteristic in this chapter: universal, continuous, rapid, unplanned, chain-reactive, and neither progress nor decline but both at once.

Quick revision

1. Social change is alteration in social structure and relationships. MacIver and Page: a change in social relationships.
2. It is not cultural change (any part of a culture) and not individual change; the unit is the pattern.
3. Characteristics: universal; continuous; variable in speed; often unplanned; frequently producing unintended consequences; chain-reactive, because the parts of a society are interdependent; value-neutral, not progress; and hard to predict.
4. Change is neutral, evolution is directional, progress implies a desirable goal and therefore a value judgment sociology cannot supply.
5. Change is cumulative, which with communication, deliberate innovation and population growth is why its rate keeps rising.
6. Cultural lag is now the permanent condition, and much modern legislation is catching up with it.

Test yourself

1. Define social change and distinguish it from cultural change. Social change is alteration over time in the structure and functioning of a society: in its social relationships, institutions, norms, roles and patterns of behaviour. Cultural change is alteration in any part of a culture, including technology, art, language and belief. The two overlap greatly but are not identical: a new musical style is cultural change alone, while the entry of married women into paid employment is both, because it alters the structure of relationships within the household as well as the culture.

2. Give six characteristics of social change. It is universal, occurring in every society without exception; continuous, with no period of complete rest; variable in speed and form, and the rate has itself accelerated; frequently unplanned, occurring as a by-product of decisions taken for other reasons; chain-reactive, since the parts of a society are interdependent so that a change in one produces change in others; and value-neutral, being any alteration in any direction rather than improvement.

3. Distinguish social change, evolution and progress. Social change is any alteration in social structure, in any direction, and involves no evaluation. Evolution is change in an identifiable direction, from the simple and homogeneous to the complex and differentiated. Progress is change towards a goal regarded as desirable, and therefore contains a value judgment about what is desirable. Sociology, being a categorical and not a normative science, can establish that change has occurred and in what direction, but cannot pronounce it progress.

4. Why are the consequences of social change often unintended? Because a society is a system of interdependent parts, so a change introduced into one produces adjustments in others that nobody planned or foresaw. Cheap telephony was not introduced in order to alter the authority of women in migrant households, and it did so. The introducer controls the change; nobody controls the chain of consequences, which is why the effects of a reform routinely differ from its purpose.

5. Why has the rate of social change accelerated? Because culture is cumulative: each generation begins from what earlier generations achieved, so the base on which further innovation is built keeps expanding. To that are added rapid communication, which spreads a change between societies in months rather than centuries; the deliberate pursuit of change through research, policy and legislation; and population growth. The result is that cultural lag, the interval before norms and rules catch up with new conditions, has become a permanent condition rather than an occasional one.