Social Change: Traditional, Modern

and Postmodern Societies

2005 Pearson Education Canada Inc.

What is Social Change?

The transformation of culture and social institutions
over time. The process:
1. Is inevitable, but some societies or elements
change faster than others.
2. Is sometimes intentional, but often unplanned.
3. Is controversial.
4. Some changes matter more than others.
2005 Pearson Education Canada Inc.

Causes of Social Change

Invention
Production of new objects, ideas, and social
patterns
Discovery
Taking note of certain elements of a culture
Diffusion
The spread of products, people, and information
from one culture to another
(Contd)
2005 Pearson Education Canada Inc.

Causes of Social Change (Contd)

Conflict

and social change: Tensions and stressors

between individuals and groups as they gain or lose
power can bring about change, e.g., capitalists and
workers
Ideas and change: Ideas can fuel social movements
which bring about social change, e.g., human rights
(Contd)

2005 Pearson Education Canada Inc.

Causes of Social Change (Contd)

Natural

environment is under great stress because of

our development. The current patterns of pollution
are not sustainable.
Demographic change: Increases and decreases in
numbers can lead to social change as society may
need to expand and/or contract housing, education,
and health.

2005 Pearson Education Canada Inc.

Modernity
Modernization: The process of social change initiated by
industrialization. The key dimensions are:
Decline of small, traditional communities: Cars, TV, and
high-tech communications puts small towns in touch with
the world
Expansion of personal choice: An unending series of
options referred to as individualization
Increasing social diversity: Modernization promotes a more
rational, scientific world-view
Future orientation and growing awareness of time
2005 Pearson Education Canada Inc.

Ferdinand Tnnies:
The Loss of Community
With

modernization comes the loss of

Gemeinschaft, or human community
Modernity brings about a condition referred to as
Gesellschaft, or impersonal relationships
Critical evaluation:
Gemeinschaft exists in modern society
What is a cause and what is an effect?
Romanticized traditional societies
2005 Pearson Education Canada Inc.

Emile Durkheim:
The Division of Labour
Specialized economic activity moves from
Mechanical solidarity refers to a time when society was
held together by social bonds anchored in common moral
sentiments
Organic solidarity refers to modernity during which time
social bonding is accomplished by way of mutual
dependence
Critical evaluation: Societys norms and values are strong
enough to avoid anomie for most people, and people value
the personal freedom of modern society despite the risks.

2005 Pearson Education Canada Inc.

Max Weber: Rationalization

Modernization means replacing a traditional worldview with a
rational way of thinking
Modern people value efficiency, have little reverence for
the past and adopt whatever social patterns allow them to
achieve their goals
Modern society is disenchanted: science replaces gods.
Critical evaluation: Rationalization could erode the human
spirit, but the alienation he attributes to bureaucracy could
stem from social inequality
2005 Pearson Education Canada Inc.

Karl Marx: Capitalism

Industrial revolution was a capitalist revolution
Modernity weakened small-scale communities
Social conflict in capitalism sows seeds of
egalitarian socialist revolution
Critical evaluation: Complex theory underestimates
dominance of bureaucracy, and stifling socialist
bureaucracies were as bad or worse than
dehumanizing capitalism.
2005 Pearson Education Canada Inc.

Structural-Functional Analysis
Theory of mass society, where industry and
bureaucracy have eroded traditional social ties
Modern life is on a mass scale leading to the dehumanizing of everyone.
Ever-expanding states doom traditional values and
social patterns.
Critical evaluation: theory romanticizes the past and
ignores plight of women and minorities
2005 Pearson Education Canada Inc.

Social-Conflict Analysis
Theory of class society, a capitalist society with
pronounced social stratification
Capitalism promotes self-centredness
Persistent inequality and the state cannot combat
problems because it is controlled by capitalists
Critical evaluation: theory overlooks the increasing
prosperity of modern societies; human rights have
improved; and most Canadians favour unequal
rewards for talent and effort.
2005 Pearson Education Canada Inc.

Modernity and the Individual

Mass

society can make finding an identity difficult

People can shuttle from one identity to another
According to David Reisman modernization brings
changes in social character, personality patterns
common to members of a society, from

Tradition-directedness: rigid conformity to timehonoured ways of living to

Other-directedness: receptiveness to the latest trends
and fashions, often expressed by imitating others
2005 Pearson Education Canada Inc.

Class Society:
Problems of Powerlessness
Persistent

inequality undermines modern society`s

promise of individual freedom.
Some are well off and many experience economic
uncertainty and powerlessness.
Herbert Marcuse disagrees that modern society is
rational, and states that science causes problems not
solves them.

2005 Pearson Education Canada Inc.

Modernity and Progress

Progress:

a state of continual improvement

Traditional cultures are seen as backward, but

Is our society too fast and stressful?
Does technology threaten privacy?

Global

variation: In other parts of the world, such as

the Peoples Republic of China and Latin America,
combinations of traditional and modern are not
unusual.
2005 Pearson Education Canada Inc.

Postmodernity
Patterns of post-industrial societies
In important ways, modernity has failed: Much
poverty and and lack of financial security
The bright light of progress is fading: Less
confidence about future
Science no longer holds the answers: Science has
created its share of problems.
(Contd)
2005 Pearson Education Canada Inc.

Postmodernity (Contd)
Cultural

debates are intensifying: The promises of

social movements have not been fulfilled.
Social institutions are changing: post-industrial
society is remaking society again
Critical evaluation: Great increases in life
expectancy and standard of living have occurred.
What are the alternatives?

2005 Pearson Education Canada Inc.

Looking Ahead

Solutions to problems elude us

Finding meaning
Resolving conflicts among nations
Eradicating poverty
Controlling population
Treating AIDS
Establishing a sustainable economy

9/11 has drawn us into the U.S. sphere of influence.

We cannot isolate ourselves.
2005 Pearson Education Canada Inc.

Major source of change:

Technological advancement
Technological

change may be one of

most accelerated
Computers have become
indispensable
Convenience and access to
information
Negatives?
Loss of privacy
Blurring of traditional lines between
work and home
Pine Forge Press, an imprint of Sage
Publications, 2008.

Major source of change:

Social Movements

social movement Continuous, large-scale,

organized collective action motivated by the desire
to enact, stop, or reverse change in some area of
society
Types of movements

Reform Movement define?

Countermovement define?
Revolutionary Movement- define?

Pine Forge Press, an imprint of Sage

Publications, 2008.

Rising Expectations
When

conditions at their worst,

many solely focused on survival
People more likely to seek
social change when living
conditions have improved
somewhat
Chance for change seems
possible
Pine Forge Press, an imprint of Sage
Publications, 2008.

Sociological Imagination

We re-create society not only through acts

of defiance and organized social
movements but also through our daily
interactions
society is simultaneously a human creation
and a phenomenon that exists
independently of us, influencing and
controlling our private experiences
Through sociology, we can be aware of the
chains that restrict our movements, but we
also have the tools to break those chains
Pine Forge Press, an imprint of Sage
Publications, 2008.

Human Society and Culture

Humans have two hereditary systems:
a genetic system, which transfers biological
information from biological parent to offspring
through the coding properties of DNA
a cultural system, which transfers cultural
information, ideas from speaker to listener,
from writer to reader, from performer to
spectator through social interactions coded in
language and custom, and embodied in records
and traditions

Richard Dawkins compared the two in his

classic The Selfish Gene (1976) in which
he coined the term meme for the unit of
cultural inheritance or cultural evolution,
an idea or concept

Human Society and Culture

The entire tradition of the Liberal Arts is
an effort to describe and understand
human society and culture
Anthropology and Archaeology
History and Sociology
Languages and Literature and the other Arts
Psychology and Philosophy

The scientific disciplines went their own

way in studying the causes of human
behaviors in the first century after
Darwin

Human Society and Culture

If we look back to the Victorian era, Darwins
concept of natural selection both captivated
and frightened many of his contemporaries
The power of the process of natural selection,
the struggle for existence, caused many
individuals from disciplines outside of the
biological sciences to apply Darwinian-type
explanations and analogies to other fields of
study to help justify their positions in disciplines
outside of biology: sociology, politics, ethics,
jurisprudence, aesthetics and economics, etc.

The Two Cultures

The Two Cultures is the title of an
influential 1959 Rede Lecture by
British scientist and novelist C. P.
Snow
Its thesis was that the breakdown
of communication between the
"two cultures" of modern society
the sciences and the
humanities was a major
obstacle to solving the world's
problems

Social Darwinism
Historians looking back at these efforts
to justify social hypotheses by analogy
to natural selection term the
phenomenon Social Darwinism
The term was not coined until 1877 by a
German and did not become a
widespread term for this phenomenon in
the English speaking world until after
WW II
It is generally used to discredit the
social hypotheses under discussion

Social Darwinists
Herbert Spencer, who coined the term the
Struggle for Existence was a sociologist who
saw human societies evolving and increasing
in complexity
Freidrich Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud
borrowed concepts to apply to the
development of the human psyche
Frederich Engels and Karl Marx (co-founders
of Marxist communism) saw their theory as
evolutionary, a basis of struggle in history
Karl Marx wrote to Darwin for permission to
dedicate his book Das Capital to him, but
Darwin declined the honor

Social Darwinists
Adolph Hitler and Benito Mussolini relied on Darwinian
justifications for their fascism
In America, laissez faire capitalists, the Rockefellers
and van der Bilts, etc., and author Ayn Rand justified
their economic philosophy, in part, by analogy to the
survival of the fittest, but in their view, to be rich
was to be fit
This is just the short list of some of the most famous of
the Social Darwinists; there are still Social Darwinists
today, though they wouldnt use that term themselves

Are there no workhouses? Are there

no prisons...then let them die and
decrease the surplus population.
Ebenezer Scrooge

Social Darwinism
Not everyone agreed that biological concepts should
be extended to society, even though nature and
culture share similar evolutionary mechanisms,
especially natural selection
Thomas Huxley Evolution and Ethics (1893)
Julian Huxley Evolutionary Ethics (1943)
The naturalistic fallacy described by British
philosopher G. E. Moore in his Principia Ethica (1903)
Moore stated that a naturalistic fallacy is committed
whenever a philosopher attempts to prove a claim about
ethics by appealing to a definition of the term "good" in terms
of one or more natural properties (such as "pleasant", "more
evolved", "desired", etc.)

Eugenics
Human traits and human populations
could be improved by guiding their
evolution through selective breeding
First advocated by Darwins cousin,
Sir Francis Galton in 1883
Positive Eugenics: increase the
frequency of beneficial alleles
Negative Eugenics: decrease the
frequency of harmful alleles

Eugenics
Initially eugenics was simply
proposals to encourage or
discourage marriages based on
phenotypes
Even at the outset, this was
impractical and it was difficult to
identify superior or inferior
phenotypes in an impartial
scientific way
Originally it was well-meaning,
progressive, and based on the
good science of the day

Eugenics
Idealized for its lofty goals for half a century and
supported by many prominent thinkers, it fell into
disfavor when abused by the Nazis
Simultaneously, advances in genetics, i.e., the
Modern Synthesis, showed that harmful alleles
cannot be eliminated by controlling breeding, since
most harmful alleles exist in phenotypically normal
heterozygotes, and that with multigenic and
pleiotropic effects, it is difficult to determine which
alleles are truly harmful at the population level
We may be entering a new age of molecular
eugenics thanks to the Human Genome Project, etc.

Harmful Eugenics Policies

Restrictions on immigration and marriage
Racial segregation, including bans in the United
States on marriage between whites and African
Americans, was overturned by the Supreme Court
in 1967
Compulsory sterilization of the feebleminded,
certain criminals, and others deemed unfit
Forced abortions
In Germany under the Nazis, genocide of those
(especially Jews) regarded as racially inferior and
thus a threat to the purity of the Aryan race
Among many other examples . . .

Deleterious Alleles
Despite improvements in medical care,
alleles that have obvious deleterious
effects still affect human populations
(genetic load)
Some arise as new mutations
Some are preserved by heterozygote
advantage or hybrid vigor
Others are preserved because public
health, sanitation, and medical science
reduce the effect of natural selection, but
add to our genetic load

Nature versus Nurture?

This false dichotomy has been debated
since before Darwins day
At times it pitted biologists against
psychologists and other social scientists
Few biologists ever doubted that it was the
combination of genotype and environment
interacting that produced the phenotype,
whether at the molecular, cellular,
organismal, or species level

Why Is Sex Fun?

Diamond speculates on the
evolutionary forces that shaped
the unique aspects of human
sexuality:
female menopause, males' role in
society, having sex in private, and,
most unusual of all, having sex for fun
instead of for procreation

Diamond considers the lengthy

period of dependency of human
infants, sex for pleasure as the tie
that helps bind a mother and a
father together, and menopause
as an evolutionary advantage that,
by ending the childbearing years,
allows females to pass wisdom and
knowledge on to society and
succeeding generations

The Third Chimpanzee

Diamond argues that humans are
just a third species of chimpanzee
but a unique animal due to its
capacity for innovation, which
caused a great leap forward in
hominid evolution
After stressing the significance of
spoken language, along with art and
technology, Diamond focuses on the
self-destructive propensities of our
species to kill each other (genocide
and drug abuse) and to destroy the
environment (mass extinctions)
He also discusses human sexuality,
geographic variability, and
ramifications of agriculture
(metallurgy, cultivated plants, and
domesticated animals)

Guns, Germs, And Steel

Diamond proposes that the uninterrupted

east/west axis of Eurasia produced a wider
variety of potential crop plants and large, landdwelling animals suitable for sedentary food
production
Agriculture gave rise to food surpluses, which
allowed for the specialization of labor, which
provided for the emergence of centralized
governments and bureaucracies
Farming and centralized government created
the necessity for writing, providing its
possessors a far more accurate way of
recording and transmitting data than oral
language, which greatly increased the military
prowess of Eurasian generals by allowing for
better intelligence
Finally, these farming, centralized societies
urbanized
Urbanization, combined with the domestication
of animals, subjected these denser human
populations to diseases, zoonoses from their
livestock, diseases to which these populations
developed immunities and which would one
day kill off and weaken other human
populations when introduced around the globe

Collapse
Collapse is a catalog of case
studies of the deaths of past
civilizations, such as the
Mayans and Anasazi, as well
as contemporary societies,
such as Rwanda during the
1994 genocide
In Collapse, Diamond argues
that past civilizations
collapsed for five reasons:
environmental damage,
climate change, hostile
neighbors, friendly trade
partners, and societal
responses to environmental
problems

The World Until Yesterday

Diamond looks at the ways we have
evolved by comparing practices of
traditional societies and modern and
industrialized societies
Diamond draws on his fieldwork in
New Guinea, the Amazon, Kalahari,
and other areas to compare the best
and most questionable customs and
practices of societies past and present
Diamond does not idealize traditional
societies, with smaller populations
and more interest in maintaining
group harmony than modern societies
organized by governments seeking to
maintain order, but he does
emphasize troubling trends in
declining health and fitness as
industrialization has spread to newly
developing nations

Human Control Over Our Own

Evolution
Although our lives have changed
immeasurably as a result of our advanced
technology, our genetic makeup has not
Biological and cultural adaptations
operate at different rates
A result of improvements in sanitation,
diet, and medical practice over the last
century and a half, natural selection now
exerts relatively little influence on our
fitness

Human Control Over Our Own

Evolution

Less than half the hunter

gatherers lived to age 20
so they were unlikely to
have more than 3 or 4
offspring and most of those
died young too
In technologically
advanced societies, most
people live past age 50 and
can reach their biological
Figure B03: Survival curves for populations of huntergatherers versus citizens of a modern industrialized
capacity of 12 to 15
society
offspring unless they
choose to limit family size
As economic security
increases, they tend to
limit family size voluntarily
Adapted from May, R. M., Nature 327 (1987):
15-17

Cultural Evolution
Outpaces Biological Evolution
One measure of how change
continues to affect us is the time it
takes to double our collective
knowledge
Human minds have become
agents of a novel selection
mechanism by consciously
choosing among alternatives
because of their consequences
(rational decision making)

Clones and Cloning

A clone is an organism
descended from and
genetically identical to
another organism
All offspring produced
by asexual means
Figure 04: Nucleus in pipette
Antonio Petrone/ShutterStock,
Inc.

Dolly (1996 2003)

was a female domestic
sheep, and the first
mammal to be cloned
from an adult somatic
cell, using the process
of nuclear transfer

Reproductive Technology and

Eugenics
So, if almost everyone
now survives to have
children, and if our
children can be
protected from
natural selection so
that they too will have
children, will natural
selection continue to
operate on humans?
Yes, but at a reduced
rate

Figure 03A: Doctor retrieving

eggs from ovary using vaginal
ultrasound
Monkey Business
Images/ShutterStock, Inc.

Figure 03B: Illustration of

a 12 cell embryo within
Joemembrane
Mercier/Dreamstime.com

Figure 02:
Ultrasound
attem/ShutterStock,
Inc.

Supreme Court Critical

of Patents on Human Genes
The Supreme Court
justices said on Monday,
April 15, 2013, they
were highly skeptical of
the idea that a company
or a scientist can hold a
patent on human genes
and prevent others from
testing or using them

Several justices said

patents should not be
given for products of
nature, whether they
are plant leaves that
cure a disease or tiny
parts of the human
body

Presentation On Social
Groups And
Organization

Social group
Group is any physical
collection of people.
Number of people who
share
consciousness
of
membership together and
of interaction.

Characteristics of Group

Collection of individuals
Interaction among Members
We feeling
Group Unity
Common interest
Group norms
Size of the group
Stability
Influence on personality

Importance of Social
Group

Survival
Support
Society
Friendship
Communication
Family

Factors Enforcing Group

Formation

1. Psychological Factors
2. Biological Factors
3. Kinship Bond
4. Geographic Factors
5. Cultural Factors
6. Economic Factors
7. Religious Factors
8. Political Factors

Classification of Groups
Primary Group
A small social group whose
members share personal and
enduring relationships.

 Secondary Group
A large and impersonal social
group whose members
pursue a specific activity or
goal.

Social Organization
General social agreement or
social consensus.
An articulation of different
parts which perform various
functions.

Nature of Organizatio

1. A definite purpose
2. Organization is a process
3. Consensus among the
members
4. Harmony between statuses
and roles
5. Structure of relationship
6. Control of the Organization o
the behavior of the
individuals

Types of Organization
Informal Organization

A small group, the members of

which are tied to one another
as persons.
Eg. Gangs, Peer Groups, Bands,
etc

 Formal Organization
Large secondary groups
organized to achieve their
goals efficiently.
Examples : Banks, Universities,
Corporations,
Trade Unions, Political parties,
Factories etc

Max Webers
Bureaucracy
Bureaucracy is an
organizational model
rationally designed to
perform tasks efficiently.

Key Elements of the Idea

Bureaucratic System
Specialization
Hierarchy of offices
Rules and
Regulations
Technical
Competence
Impersonality
Formal, written
communication

Any
Questions ?