862Social Change

Coleman, James S. 1988. Social Capital in the Creation

of Human Capital. American Journal of Sociology
94(suppl):95120.
Portes, Alejandro. 1998. Social Capital: Its Origins and
Applications in Modern Sociology. Annual Review of
Sociology 24:124.
Putnam, Robert. 2000. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and
Revival of American Community. New York: Simon &
Schuster.

SOCIAL CHANGE
Social change can occur throughout an entire society
or within parts of a society like groups, communities,
or regions. It can have a variety of causes, including
the efforts of individuals and groups to address social
problems.
For analytic purposes, social change may be considered as any fundamental alteration in (a) the structure of existing relationships of a society or parts of
a society, (b) the processes or common practices used
in everyday life, (c) population composition (for
instance, the size of a society or ethnic groups within a
community), and (d) the basic values, ideas, and ways
of thinking that prevail in a society or its parts. In actuality, when significant alteration takes place in one of
these aspects, it is accompanied by change in one or
more other aspects. For example, structural changes in
U.S. race relationships during the 20th century were
accompanied by alterations in discriminatory practices
and in the idea of race itself. In Japan during the late
19th century, as new ideas and policies affecting
national unification and relationships with world powers emerged, alterations in occupations and urbanization of the Japanese population also took place.

Types of Social Change

Social change may be categorized into three types:
radical, reformist, and transient change. Radical (or
foundational) change is made up of extensive transformations in the basic character or nature of a society, community, or group. Successful revolutions, for
instance, sometimes bring widespread and profound
transformations of many social institutions. The
Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Chinese Revolution of 1949 brought such transformations in government, religion, education, and economic life. Later in

the 20th century, in many societies the affordability of

personal computers and sophisticated software contributed to profound alterations in modes of communication, entertainment, storage of information,
research procedures, types of occupations available,
and the curriculums of schools and universities.
Sometimes, radical or foundational change occurs
when people seek resolutions of what they consider
important social problems. The elimination of the
apartheid system in South Africa during the early
1990s encompassed foundational change resulting
from initiatives to eliminate existing problems. In
other cases, radical changes may follow as unanticipated consequences of natural events or new governmental programs.
Reformist social changes are modifications to a society, community, or group that are less extensive and
less transformative. Reformist social change typically
results from focused efforts to address specific social
issues or problems. For example, individuals and
groups in the womens movement that gained momentum in the United States during the 1960s found the situation of women unsatisfactory and through efforts
achieved some reforms in gender relationships, the
types of education and occupations available to
women, and beliefs about womens abilities and rights.
Persons seeking social justice goals frequently pursue
social reforms. The efforts on behalf of better housing
and health care for poor people in U.S. cities early in
the 20th century by individuals like Jane Addams,
Mary Kingsbury Simkovitch, and Lillian Wald were
concerned with bringing about reforms, and these produced lasting changes.
Currently, individuals may become change
agents who are trained and sponsored by private or
governmental organizations to create reforms in
groups or communities. In the United States, for
example, agencies like the Peace Corps and the
Agency for International Development have provided
field representatives with training for introducing
changes in education and farming practices in developing societies. In other cases, nongovernmental
organizations (NGOs) may place trained community
organizers in localities to build or strengthen public
support for social reforms. When many people
become concerned with addressing complex social
problems, individuals and groups committed to radical foundational changes and those seeking reforms
may share some goals and cooperate in some actions.
However, because the types and extent of changes

Social Change863

sought by each are different, cooperation is necessarily limited.

Unlike radical and reformist change, transient
social change is change that may be expected to occur
periodically and refers to variations that have a minor
or temporary effect on the character of a society or its
components. For instance, in societies where new production procedures are welcomed, the nature of work
may be understood as changeable and people may
expect retraining cycles during their careers. Societies
can also experience variations as fashion changes and
fads, which are passing enthusiasms that have little
lasting effect on social arrangements and actions.

Sources and Causes of Change

The emergence of significant changes within a society
is a complex process. In identifying sources behind a
past change, or that might produce a future reform, it
helps to be aware that multiple causes are usually
involved. For example, social movements (collections
of groups and individuals combining to produce
change) have been behind many reforms. But understanding causes involved in these reform changes may
require examination of specific variables within social
movementsfor instance, how movements coalesced,
produced leaders, identified specific objectives, organized resources, and responded to resistance. Understanding may also require examination of conditions
inside or outside a society that allow change to occur.
Analysis of change often calls for identification of primary and secondary causes; it may also call for determining that factor or variable that operates as the
immediate precipitant of change.
There are many possible sources of social change.
As suggested earlier, new technologies (tools and procedures) may contribute to change. Historians and
social scientists have written about the social effects of
technologies including (to name a few) the printing
press, steam engines, trains, assembly lines, light bulbs,
movies, forestry techniques, automobiles, televisions,
and programmable chips. Change can also result from
new policies introduced by national governments (for
instance, the immigration policy changes developed in
the United States during the 1960s) or by actions of
foreign governments or groups that threaten or actually
invade a society. Environmental variables have also
been important in bringing about social change; prolonged droughts, floods, hurricanes, earthquakes,
and volcanic eruptions have contributed to social

transformations in societies around the world. By the

last decades of the 20th century, globalization (the
establishment of elaborate transnational networks for
finance, production, and marketing) became a powerful source of change in many societies.

Understanding Social Change

Social change has long received attention in a diversity
of fields. Aristotle, writing in the fourth century BCE,
inquired into the best form of social organization in
which humans might live (the city-state, he concluded)
and how this best form develops from changes in simpler forms of association. During the 19th and 20th
centuries, social conditions in many societies inspired
novelists, dramatists, and other writers to bring questions of change before the public. In various societies,
such individuals (Charles Dickens, Jane Austen,
Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mark Twain, George Bernard
Shaw, Jacob Riis, Marcel Proust, Franz Kafka, Upton
Sinclair, Alan Paton, Yukio Mishima, Michael
Harrington, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Chinua Achebe,
and Edna OBrien) made issues of social change
explicit or implicit parts of their work.
However, it was early 19th-century philosophers
and social scientists like Henri de Saint-Simon and
Auguste Comte who, influenced by major upheavals
during their lifetimes and ideas of their Enlightenment
predecessors, are credited with beginning modern
efforts to understand social change. They saw change
as progress and assumed that developmental dynamics
governed change in all societies. Later in the 1800s,
many social scientists and philosophers such as Karl
Marx, Herbert Spencer, William Graham Sumner, and
Lester Frank Ward made the phenomenon of social
change a focus of attention and followed the same
developmental assumption. By the opening of the
20th century, Spencer and his American followers had
pushed Social Darwinism (including the ideas of societal evolution and the superiority of more civilized
societies) into prominence, while anthropologist Franz
Boaz and others were beginning to produce studies
and articles countering evolutionary notions. Around
the same time, the ideas of Marx about class conflict
as the key source of change gained in influence; a few
years later, the analysis of sociologist Max Weber
concerning the causal importance of beliefs and values began gaining scholarly recognition. Around
midcentury many social scientists were influenced
by sociologists Talcott Parsons, Lewis Coser, and

864Social Conflict

other structural functionalists who explained social

change as resulting from strains or inconsistencies
within social systems. Soon after, other sociologists
like Ralf Dahrendorf, William Domhoff, and Pierre
Bourdieu brought attention back to the importance of
conflict and power differences as sources of change.
By the later years of the century, the assumption
that social change was governed by developmental
dynamics had been largely discarded, and the focus
was on describing and understanding change in specific societies and situations.
Frank Naughton
See also Cultural Diffusion; Cultural Lag; Cultural Values;
Culture Shock; Social Movements; Social Revolutions;
Urbanization

Further Readings

Diamond, Jared. 2004. Collapse: How Societies Choose to

Fail or Succeed. New York: Viking.
Greenwood, Davydd J. and Morten Levin. 2006. Introduction
to Action Research: Social Research for Social Change.
2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Harper, Charles L. and Kevin T. Leicht. 2006. Exploring
Social Change: America and the World. 5th ed. Upper
Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
McMichael, Philip. 2007. Development and Social Change:
A Global Perspective. 4th ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine
Forge Press.

SOCIAL CONFLICT
The ubiquitous nature of social conflict often leads to
an intuitive understanding that human beings are
inherently conflictive by nature. Typifying this view
was Sigmund Freud. Although he noted the importance of social processes in its unfolding, Freud
thought that the fundamental causes of social conflict
existed in a priori drives. Human beings, according to
him, are not gentle creatures who always prefer to
be at peace with one another. Rather they are endowed
with a death instinct, the instinctual capacity to be
aggressive at best or self-destructive at worst.
Sociological understanding, on the other hand, transcending a person-centered approach that gives undue
emphasis to intrapsychic dynamics, assumes that the
sources of social conflict reside in social relations.

The structure of these social relations render as

inevitable the eventuation of conflict that ultimately
leads to a major social change or alternatively, if the
social mechanisms for properly managing it are available, the reproduction of the existing social order. In
extreme cases, social conflict could be reduced to a
benign level. By and large, human beings are not
characteristically aggressive or amicable, for social
structure has the capacity to enable or constrain members and groups of society to go either way.

Sources and Functions

of Social Conflict
Although social scientists agree on the social nature of
conflict, they differ on its source. Karl Marx was
among the first modern social scientists who examined its causes, and according to him, social inequality, accompanied by social institutions that reinforce
disproportionate distribution of resources, is the fountainhead of all conflicts. To the extent that processes
reproducing social stratification are intact, social conflict remains steady and pervasive. However, conflicts
between contending classes open only at critical historical moments. Insofar as superordinate groups do
not exhaust their rulership role, social conflicts
remain hidden until a legitimization crisis ensues.
Such a crisis arises when a subordinate class turns
itself from a class-in-itself into a class-for-itself;
that is, a class aware of its interests that works toward
attaining the historical mission of constructing an
alternative social order.
Although not fully subscribing to Marxs view,
Max Weber, like his predecessor, was deeply interested in the social causes of conflict. Going beyond
Marxs economic theory of conflict, Weber added the
dimensions of political and cultural factors to an
understanding of social conflict, thereby suggesting a
tripartite view of social stratification. From his perspective, social conflict arises when there is status
consistency. Whereas status inconsistency refers to a
condition wherein groups fare differentially in the
multiple areas of social organization, thereby forestalling the feelings of powerlessness, status consistency is a condition in which certain groups have
disproportionate power, wealth, and prestige simultaneously. Conflict reaches a critical stage when some
membersdenied access to the cultural, political, and
economic capitals of their societiesbecome indignant at the existing system of social arrangements.