Social Change: Meaning and Characteristics

In one line

Social change is any alteration in the structure of a society or in the way its members relate to one another, whatever its direction and whatever its cause.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: social change is the alteration, over time, in the structure and functioning of a society, that is, in its social relationships, institutions, norms, values, roles and patterns of behaviour. MacIver and Page define it as a change in social relationships. Kingsley Davis describes it as changes that occur in social organisation, that is, the structure and functions of society. Gillin and Gillin: variations from the accepted modes of life, whether due to alteration in geographical conditions, cultural equipment, composition of the population, ideologies, or diffusion within the group.

What counts, and what does not

Social change is change in social relationships and structure. Two boundaries must be drawn.

Against cultural change. Cultural change is change in any part of a culture, including art, technology, language and belief. Social change is change in the structure of social relationships. The two overlap heavily and are not identical: a new style of music is cultural change and not social change; the entry of women into paid employment is both. Where they are used interchangeably, as they often are, an answer should note the distinction and then say which sense it is using.

Against individual change. One family moving house is not social change; a change in where families in general live is. Social change is change in the pattern, not in the instance, which is the same distinction [What Sociology Is] draws between the individual and the social.

The characteristics

MU names characteristics expressly, and these eight are the standard answer.

1. Social change is universal. It occurs in every society without exception. No society has ever been static, and the belief that traditional societies were unchanging is an illusion produced by looking at them briefly.
2. It is continuous. It goes on without interruption, from the beginning of a society to its end. There is no period of complete rest.
3. It varies in speed and in form. Slow in some societies and periods, extremely rapid in others; and the rate itself has accelerated, since more change occurred in the twentieth century than in many centuries before it.
4. It is often unplanned, occurring as a by-product of decisions taken for other reasons. Planned change exists, through legislation and policy, but most change is not planned by anybody.
5. Its consequences are frequently unintended. A change introduced for one purpose produces effects nobody sought, and this is one of the most useful propositions in the module.
6. It is chain-reactive. Because a society is a system whose parts are interdependent, from [Social Structure and Social System], a change in one part produces change in others. A change in the economy alters the family; a change in the family alters the law.
7. It is not always progress, and is value-neutral. This is the characteristic students most often get wrong, and it has its own section below.
8. Prediction is difficult. The direction may be identifiable, the timing and the magnitude are not.