Download Chapter 18

CHAPTER 18 Social Change and Collective Behavior
Chapter Outline
Social Change
 Sources of Social Change
 Theoretical Perspectives
 Collective Behavior and Dispersed
Collectivities
 Crowds
 Social Movements

Questions for Consideration
What are examples of social change at the
macro level?
 What are examples of the kinds of change
that are a result of personal computers?
 How does war bring about social change?

Social Change

Social change – involves societal alterations with
long-term and relatively important consequences.

Predicting precise change is difficult in part
because society absorbs change in ways
consistent with its own culture.

Technology is a prime force in social change.
Technologically complex societies change much
faster than technologically simple societies.
Key Assumptions in Predicting
Social Change in America
Processes for Change

Three interrelated social processes lead to social
change:
– something is either learned or
reinterpreted.
 Invention – creation of a new element by combining
two or more already existing elements.
 Diffusion – when one group borrows from another
group, change occurs though the process.
 Discovery
Sources of Social Change


Technology – knowledge and hardware combined to
achieve practice goals.
The relationship between technology and social change is
complicated.
1. social change can occur without technological
developments
2. the introduction of technology does not necessarily lead
to social change
3. the particular effects of technology will vary from
society to society because any given society filters the
adoption and use of technology through its own culture
Becoming Wired: Time it Took for 30% of
Americans to Acquire Selected Technologies
Question for Consideration

How would you explain the differences in
adoption time of these technologies?
Sources of Social Change

Population
 Alterations in population size and composition
have interesting effects on social change.

Natural Environment
 Interaction with the natural environment, from
the earliest times, has transformed American life.
Sources of Social Change

Revolution and War
 A revolution occurs when a new political elite
topples an entrenched governing regime, with the
goal of changing its society’s social structures.
 War—armed conflict that occurs within a society
or among nations—and change are closely
intertwined.
Sources of Social Change

Ideas
 Ideas can lead to social change.
 Ideas may retard or stimulate social change.
Theoretical Perspectives

Cyclical Perspective
 The dramatic upheaval during the early part of
the twentieth century led scholars to consider the
possibility that civilizations rise and fall rather
than develop in a straight line.
Theoretical Perspectives
 Three
of the most prominent advocates of the
cyclical perspective were: Spengler, Toynbee,
and Sorokin.
 Cyclical
perspectives are not so much
explanations for change as descriptions of
change.
Theoretical Perspectives

Evolutionary Perspective
 Societies are constantly moving toward
improvement.
 Spencer transformed Darwin’s ideas into social
Darwinism by drawing a parallel between living
organisms and societies, and coined the term
“survival of the fittest.”
Theoretical Perspectives
 The
contemporary evolutionary perspective looks
at the social and cultural diversity around the
world and rejects the unilinear, or single direction,
assumption of earlier perspectives.
Theoretical Perspectives

Functionalist Perspective
 Equilibrium connotes attempts to reestablish stability after
some disturbance.

According to functionalists, societies act as inherently
stable wholes that react to changes by making
adjustments and eventually assimilating change into a
new state of equilibrium.

A society in change, then, moves from stability to
temporary instability and back to stability. Sociologists
refer to this as a “dynamic,” or “moving,” equilibrium.
Theoretical Perspectives

Cultural lag – any situation in which disequilibrium is
caused by one segment of a society failing to change at the
same rate as an interrelated segment.
 Significant social change occurs when the nonmaterial
culture is forced to change because of a prior change in
the material culture.
Theoretical Perspectives

Parsons depicted societies as systems attempting to resist
change in order to maintain their current state of equilibrium.

Parsons was interested in the processes by which societies
become more complex.


differentiation
integration
Theoretical Perspectives

Conflict Perspective - Conflict theorists depict
society as unstable.
 The conflict perspective emphasizes the
separate parts of society and the conflict that
occurs among them.
 According
to the conflict perspective, social
change is the result of struggles between
 groups
for scarce resources. Social change is
created as these conflicts are resolved.
Focus on Theoretical Perspectives:
Social Change
Questions for Consideration
What are examples of “cathedrals of
consumption”?
 How have the “cathedrals of consumption”
changed our society?

Collective Behavior


Collective behavior is the relatively spontaneous
and unstructured social behavior of people who
are responding to similar stimuli.
 It is collective because it usually occurs among a
large number of people.
These dispersed collectivities engage in the less
structured forms of collective behavior—rumors,
mass hysteria, panics, fads, and fashions.
Major Forms of Collective Behavior
Rumors

A rumor is a widely circulating story of
questionable truth.
 Rumors usually focus on people or events that
are of great interest to others.

An urban legend may incorporate current rumors,
they tend to have a longer life and wider
acceptance.
Mass Hysteria and Panics

Mass hysteria is a collective anxiety created by
the acceptance of one or more false beliefs.

A panic occurs when people react to a real threat
in fearful, anxious, and often self-damaging ways.
 Panics usually occur in response to such
unexpected events as fires, invasions, and ship
sinkings.
Fads, Crazes, and Fashions

Fads are unusual behavior patterns that spread
rapidly, appeal to a particular segment of society,
and then disappear after a short time.

A craze is a type of fad that can have serious
consequences for its adopters.

Fashions are behavior patterns that evolve over
time and receive wide approval, but change
periodically.
Crowds

The most dramatic form of collective behavior is
the crowd, because it involves intense emotions.

A crowd is a temporary collection of people who
share an immediate common interest.

A crowd situation involves ambiguity and
uncertainty; participants have no predefined ideas
about the way they should behave toward one
another or toward some target on which their
attention is converging.

A casual crowd is the least organized, least
emotional, and most temporary type of crowd.

A conventional crowd has a specific purpose and
follows accepted guidelines

Expressive crowds have no significant or longterm purpose beyond unleashing emotion.

An acting crowd takes some action toward a target

A mob is an emotionally stimulated, disorderly
crowd that is ready to use destructiveness and
violence to achieve a specific purpose.

Riots are episodes of crowd destructiveness and
violence.
Theories of Crowd Behavior

Contagion theory emphasizes the irrationality of
crowds that is created by participants stimulating
one another to higher and higher levels of
emotional intensity.
Theories of Crowd Behavior

For Blumer, the basic process in crowds is a
“circular reaction”—people mutually stimulating
one another.
 In milling, the first stage, people move around in
an aimless and random fashion.
 The second stage, collective excitement, is a
more intense form of milling.
 The last stage, social contagion, is an extension
of the other stages.

Emergent norm theory stresses the similarity
between daily social behavior and crowd behavior.
 In
both situations, norms guide behavior.
 Even
within crowds, rules develop.
 These
rules, of course, are emergent norms,
because the crowd participants are not aware of
the rules until they find themselves in a particular
situation.

Convergence theory – crowds are formed by
people who deliberately congregate with others
whom they know to be like-minded.
 According
to convergence theory, the
independent variable in crowd behavior is the
desire of people with a common interest to come
together.
Social Movements

Four Defining Elements of Social Movements:
1. a large number of people
2. a common goal to promote or prevent social
change
3. some degree of leadership and organization
4. activity sustained over a relatively long period
of time.

A revolutionary movement attempts to change a
society totally.

A reformative movement aims to effect only
partial change in a society; it can either advocate
change or resist change.

A redemptive movement focuses on changing
individuals.

An alternative movement seeks only limited
changes in individuals.
Relative Deprivation Theory

Relative deprivation occurs when people
compare themselves with others and believe that
they should have as much as those others have.

Unfulfilled rising expectations occur when newly
raised hopes for a better life either are not satisfied
at all or are not satisfied as rapidly as people had
expected.
The J-Curve Theory of Revolution
J-Curve Theory

According to Davies’s J-curve theory, a revolutionary
movement is most probable when a decline in the fortunes
of the masses follows a period of rising expectations
accompanied by actual economic improvement.
Value-Added Theory

The value-added theory is based on an economic
process, each step in the creation of a product
contributes (adds value) to the final entity.
Value-Added Theory

Six conditions are necessary and sufficient for the
development of a social movement:
structural conduciveness
 structural strains
 generalized beliefs
 precipitating factors
 mobilization of participants for action
 and ineffective social control.

Resource Mobilization Theory

Resource mobilization is the process through which
members of a social movement secure and use the
resources needed to advance their cause.
Questions for Consideration



What does it mean to translate a personal problem
into a social issue?
How does Victor Ayala’s research and action
provide a positive model for others?
What personal problems might you have that could
translate into a social issue and subsequently a
social movement?