Study unit 8: Culture as a process

Question 1

define social change

Answer 1

social change is the transformation in the organisation
of society and in the patterns of thought and behaviour of people over time

Question 2

what two intertwined forces that were
at work during the industrial revolution

Answer 2

(1) the erosion of traditional norms and values, which
irreversibly changed “the way of life that people had maintained for thousands
of years” (Giddens 2001:7) and (2) the representation of this process, in the
field of classical sociology, as reflecting the beginning of the age of progress.
The Industrial Revolution marked the spread of new aims and new ideas; with
it was born the idea that society on the whole changes for the betterment
of the human condition (Sztompka 1993:8) – the idea that the new order of
modernity will replace the [established traditional] situation of the past (Claval
2001:6) and improve people’s standards of living and economic wellbeing

Question 3

what can modernization refer to

Answer 3

“modernisation is a total transformation of a traditional
or pre-modern society into the types of technology and associated social
organization that characterize the advanced, and economically prosperous,
nations of the Western world

Question 4

define cultural crisis

Answer 4

The term cultural crisis reflects something more fundamental and more
important in the nature of modern Western society: namely the breakdown
in the values and norms that have underpinned modern Western culture and
tradition since the beginning of the Second World War (Eckersley 2001). Social
change causes cultural crisis

Question 5

contract social change caused from cultural crisis and cultural trauma

Answer 5

Social change associated with cultural trauma
can be contrasted with the cultural crisis one with this simple observation: it is
impossible to predict in which direction it will occur, and there is considerable
variation between societies in terms of their susceptibility to it over time. The
decadence that it afflicts is not assumed to affect all societies in the same
way because it runs through temporary breakdowns, backlashes, even lasting
reversals (Sztompka 1993), rather than in a smooth, predictable (linear),
and consistent way.

Question 6

what conditions form part of cultural trauma

Answer 6

The conditions for cultural trauma are ripe when there is some kind of a
split, ambivalence or clash within a culture, emerging suddenly, rapidly,
and unexpectedly, and [affecting] the core areas of cultural components, such as basic values, central beliefs, and common norms … [such
as] when people find themselves in the grip of a new culture, or more
precisely when the socialized, internalised culture that they carry in
their heads … clashes with the cultural environment in which they find
themselves … There are two variations of this kind of cultural clash