11 - Social Change Flashcards
Change in a social context
The adjustments or adaptations made by a group of people in response to a dramatic change experienced in at least one part of their lives
Components of change
- Direction
- Volume
- IMpact/implications/effects
Five interpretations of social change
- Modernism
- Conservatism
- Postmodernism
- Evolution
- Fashion
Modernism
- Holds that change equals progress
- What is modern or new will automatically be better than the older thing it replaces
- Views society as advancing along a straight path
Social Darwinism
Posits that societies naturally proceed from simple to complex and only the strongest triumph
Three distinct stages societies progress through
- Savagery
- Barbarism
- Civilization
Critics of modernism
Science, technology and industry have created as many problems as possible that we need to solve (e.g., pollution and longer work hours).
Conservative thinkers
Belief that change is not always for the best and that in fact it is important to make sure some values and customs need to be preserved
Cycle of civilisation
The belief that civilisations rise and fall in a predictable cycle
Slippery slope argument
Citing one instance of social change as evidence for imminent collapse of entire social order
The luddites
- Example of conservatism
- Luddites who waged a battle against the modernization of the textile industry in England in the early 1800s as their work became obsolete
- Objected to the deplorable working conditions of the emerging textile industry
- Opposed manufacturing of need
Two types of opposition to globalisation
- Particularist protectionist
- Universalist protectionists
Particularist protectionist
- Opponents of globalization focus on the socioeconomic, political, and cultural problems caused in their home territory by increasing processes of globalization
- e.g. Al-Qaeda and ISIS
Universalist protectionists
- Promote the interests of the poor and marginalised groups worldwide
- E.g. Doctors without borders
Postmodernism
- As a social theory, relates largely to narrations
- Challenges the notion that researchers can speak for people that they study without letting them have a voice
- Dispute the argument that anyone can talk of progress or decline across all societies
VIrtual class
Those whose power and wealth are derived from making the world “virtual”
Three ways in which virtual class acts like a class
- Virtual class responsible for the loss of jobs by those who do not belong to the class
- The virtual class limits access to information on the Internet “Privileged corporate codes”
- Virtual class restricts the freedom of creativity, promoting instead “the value of pattern-maintenance”
Evolution
- Model of social change in which change is seen as an adaptation to a set of circumstances
- Survival of the best fit rather than the fittest
Fashion
- Model of social change that
promotes change for its own sake - Change does not always reflect value change, improvement, or turn for the worse
- E.g. Tattoos, Dreads
Social change and sociology in Canada
- It needs to improve, to get better, in a modernist sense
- It needs a touch of conservatism to ensure that it does not stray
- It must constantly have postmodern eyes, using multidimensional perception to look at who has benefitted and who hasn’t from sociology
- It must adapt and evolve (evolution)
- It must go with the times (fashion)
