CAUSES OF SOCIAL CHANGE

1) Materialistic perspectives (materialistic factors are usually economic production and technology)

Marxist perspective: economic production, economic classes form the basic anatomy of society, and everything else arises in relationship to them

Other materialistic perspectives: Cultural lag theory (W. Ogburn) technological causes of change, material culture (technology) changes more quickly than nonmaterial culture (values, ideas, norms, ideologies), i.e. there is a period of maladjustment (a lag time) during which nonmaterial culture is still adapting to new material conditions

Technology causes change in 3 ways:

- increases alternatives available to society, creates new opportunities

- alters interaction patterns among people, changes structures of human groups

- creates new problems

2) Idealistic perspectives (idealistic factors/ideational aspects are values, beliefs and ideologies)

Weber’s perspective: in essence, values and beliefs, both religious and secular, have decisive impact on shaping social change, as well as other factors such as those outlined by Marx:

Protestanism: He argued that values of Protestanism, esp. Calvinism and related, produced a cultural ethic which sanctified work and worldly achievement, encouraged frugality and discouraged consumption. Unintended consequences of this religious worldview, this-worldly asceticism, encouraged development of large pools of capital through encouraging work, savings and non-frivolous consumption, and encouraged rational reinvestment and economic growth. Work was a religiously sanctioned calling. Each man is a moral free agent, accountable only to God. Suspicious of material consumption beyond bare necessities believing it led to moral corruption.

In Catholicism, work is merely mundane activity to keep one alive, encouraging other-worldly asceticism where highest form of activity was devotion to God, men were accountable to the Church which sought to regulate the operation of the economy and other secular aspects of society in terms of religious values. No reason in values to ban consumption.

Discussed China and India, whose faiths, Confucianism & Taoism and Hinduism respectively, also weren’t favorable to the development of capitalism.

Other ideational perspectives: Lewy focused on role of religion in social change citing examples of Puritan revolt in England, Islamic renaissance in Sudan in 1800s, Taiping & Boxer Rebellion in China, Islamic fundamentalism in Iran.

Cultural ideas, values, and ideologies that have broadly shaped directions of social change in modern world:

	freedom and self-determination
	material growth and security
	nationalism, e.g. French & English Canadians, English & Irish, Germans & French, Palestinians, Kurdish, Basque separatists and Spanish
	capitalism: not only type of economic system but also ideology, connected set of values and ideas emphasizing positive benefits of pursuing one’s private economic interests, competition and free marketS
	Marxism

Ideas and values can cause change or be barriers to change, can be barriers at one time or promote change at another time. Ideational culture can cause change by:

	legitimizing a desired direction of change, e.g. promoting further equality and democracy
	providing a basis for social solidarity necessary to promote change, i.e. integrative mechanisms, neutralizing the conflicting strains found in society, e.g. mobilizing force during war
	highlighting contradictions and problems, e.g. US cultural value of equality of opportunity have highlighted racism and sexism

	SOCIAL CHANGE SYLLABUS
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Revised: October 11, 2002 .