Social change: meaning, kindred concepts, factors and theories

1. Meaning of social change

• MacIver and Page: social change is change in social relationships; “our direct concern as sociologists is with social relationships. It is the change in these which alone we shall regard as social change.”
• Kingsley Davis: by social change is meant only such alterations as occur in social organisation, that is, the structure and functions of society.
• Gillin and Gillin: social changes are variations from the accepted modes of life, whether due to alteration in geographical conditions, cultural equipment, composition of the population or ideologies, and brought about by diffusion or inventions within the group.
• Jones: social change describes variations in, or modifications of, any aspect of social processes, social patterns, social interaction or social organisation.

2. Characteristics of social change

1. Universal — every society changes; no society is static.
2. Social, not individual — it concerns the community as a whole.
3. Rate varies — fast in urban industrial societies, slow in tribal and rural ones; faster in modern times.
4. Unpredictable in exact form — we cannot say for certain what will change and how.
5. Inevitable and continuous.
6. May be planned or unplanned — five-year plans and social legislation are planned; changes from war or a pandemic are not.
7. Many factors interact — no single cause explains it.
8. Neutral — change itself does not imply good or bad.
9. Chain reaction — a change in one part produces change in others.

3. Kindred concepts

• Social evolution. Herbert Spencer defined evolution as “an integration of matter and concomitant dissipation of motion during which the matter passes from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent heterogeneity”. Applied to society, it means a movement from simple, undifferentiated societies to complex ones with division of labour. Its features: gradual, continuous, directional, from within, from simple to complex.
• Progress. Ogburn and Nimkoff: progress means change for the better, and therefore implies a value judgment. MacIver: progress implies not merely direction but direction towards some final goal. What is progress for one group (a dam) may be loss for another (displaced tribals).

4. Factors of social change

1. Physical or geographical — climate, floods, earthquakes, droughts, exhaustion of resources. Ellsworth Huntington stressed climate.
2. Biological and demographic — population size, birth and death rates, migration, sex ratio. Rapid population growth strains resources; migration to cities changes family life.
3. Technological — Ogburn and Veblen saw technology as the prime mover. The steam engine created the factory and the industrial city; the Green Revolution changed Indian agriculture; the internet has altered work, education and politics.
4. Economic — Marx: change in the mode of production changes the whole superstructure. Industrialisation broke up the joint family and the jajmani system.
5. Cultural and ideological — Weber: religious ideas (the Protestant ethic) produced economic change. Ideas of liberty, equality and nationalism drove the freedom movement.
6. Political and legal — the State through legislation, planning and the Constitution (abolition of untouchability, land reforms, reservation, panchayati raj under the Seventy-third Amendment, 1992).
7. Education and mass media — spread new values and awareness.
8. Great individuals and movements — Gandhi, Ambedkar, Basavanna; social reform and protest movements.

5. Theories of social change: linear (uni-linear) theories

Linear theories hold that society moves steadily in one direction, through fixed stages, from lower to higher.

• Auguste Comte — law of three stages: theological (explanation by gods), metaphysical (abstract forces) and positive (science). Each stage of thought has its matching social organisation.
• Herbert Spencer — evolutionary theory: society evolves like an organism, from simple to compound, from militant to industrial society, through “survival of the fittest” (Spencer’s phrase).
• L.H. Morgan (Ancient Society, 1877): savagery, barbarism, civilisation.
• Karl Marx: primitive communism, slavery, feudalism, capitalism, socialism and communism, driven by class struggle.
• Durkheim: from mechanical to organic solidarity.
• Tönnies: from Gemeinschaft to Gesellschaft.

Criticism. Societies do not all pass through the same stages; the theories assume Western society to be the highest; change can be backward or sideways; and they cannot be tested. Later multi-linear theories (Julian Steward) allow different paths.

6. Cyclical theories

Cyclical theories hold that societies rise, flourish, decline and return to a starting point, as seasons or the life of an organism do. The Hindu idea of four yugas — Satya, Treta, Dvapara and Kali — repeating in a cycle is an ancient example.

• Oswald Spengler (The Decline of the West, 1918–22): every culture is like an organism with birth, youth, maturity and death. He traced eight major cultures and predicted the decline of Western civilisation.
• Arnold J. Toynbee (A Study of History, 1934–61): civilisations grow through challenge and response. A challenge from the environment or from other people is met by a creative minority; when the minority stops being creative and becomes merely dominant, the civilisation breaks down. Toynbee studied about 21 civilisations.
• Pitirim Sorokin (Social and Cultural Dynamics, 1937–41): culture swings between the ideational (truth through faith and the supernatural), the sensate (truth through the senses, materialism) and an intermediate idealistic type. Sorokin called this the principle of limits: when one type reaches its limit, the pendulum swings back. He judged the modern West to be a late sensate culture.
• Vilfredo Pareto: the circulation of elites — “lions” who rule by force are replaced by “foxes” who rule by cunning, and back again. “History is a graveyard of aristocracies.”

Criticism. The theories are speculative, use biological analogies loosely, are pessimistic and cannot be verified; they fit some civilisations better than others.

How this is examined

Definition-and-factors or definition-and-characteristics questions need two definitions and a numbered list with Indian examples. “Explain theories of social change” requires both groups with thinkers and criticism. Short notes on cyclical theory take Spengler, Toynbee and Sorokin; a note on social evolution takes Spencer’s definition, features and how evolution differs from progress.