Social Change

Social change is a general term which refers to: change in the nature, the social institutions, the social behavior or the social relations of a society, community of people, or other social structures; any event or action that affects a group of individuals that have shared values or characteristics; and acts of advocacy for the cause of changing society in a normative or standard way.

The term is  used in the study of history, economics, and politics, and includes topics such as: the success or failure of different political systems, globalization,  democratization, development and economic growth. The term can encompass concepts as broad as revolution and paradigm shift, to narrow changes such as a particular cause within small town government. The concept of social change imply measurement of some characteristics of this group of individuals. While the term is usually applied to changes that are beneficial to society, it may result in negative side-effects or consequences that undermine or eliminate existing ways of life that are considered positive.

Social change could be: slow, gradual, incremental, and evolutionary; in this it might be barely noticeable fast, radical, sudden and revolutionary; it might even take people by surprise; wider  in scope, affecting almost all people in a society; limited in scope, affecting only a small number of people.
It is theorized that some social change is almost always occurring, but many different theories have been mooted to explain significant social changes in history.


These theories include:

1.     the idea of decline or degeneration, or, in religious terms, the fall from an original state of grace, connected with theology;

2.     the idea of cyclical change, a pattern of subsequent and recurring phases of growth and decline, and the social cycles;

3.     the idea of continuous social progress;

4.     Marx's historical materialism;

5.     Evolutionary theories (how one social form evolves into another), including social Darwinism;

6.     Theories of sociobiology

Jared Diamond a currently popular author on social change  claimed that a primary agent of social agent is technological advancement, such that the wide adoption of a new technology leads to imbalance in the economic relationship between economic agents. This in turn leads to changes in the social balance of power, therefore leading to social change.
The following examples how technological advancement produces social change:

•           Technology Alters Economic Structures—the advance of microcomputers led to a boom in the E-Commerce Industry. Unfortunately, the boom was short-lived as many e-businesses, like Pets.com, went under.

•           Technology Alters Social Relationships—with the advent of the Internet, social forms, such as dating, are now being mediated in a virtual sense.

•           Technology Alters Values—many people are concerned with the values associated with new technology. For example, some individuals have blamed violent media—video games, movies, CDs—for forms of violence in our society.

•           Technology Alters Self—Kenneth Gergen’s The Saturated Self (2000) argues that our intimate lives have been co-opted by the media and the various forms of technology around us. As a result, we develop “saturated selves” dependent on the values of media and technology external to us.

•           Technology Alters Politics—during the Tienamen Square uprising in China in 1989, after the Chinese government cut the video feed of CBS and other stations, dissidents used fax machines to get the word out about the atrocities being committed by the government. In contemporary politics, many parties and political action committees use technology to build larger coalitions, raise money and educate others about their candidates’ views.

The following discussions may help give a more concrete understanding of social change:
 

Social change occurs constantly at both large and small scales, and takes numerous concurrent forms originating in multiple strata of society. Agents of change play a vital role in numerous sectors of society. Meanwhile, organizations directed at change, and broad-based social movements, are institutions unto themselves, shaping and responding to human agency in numerous ways. Understanding social change and appreciating the variety of forms it takes are necessary conditions of competent democratic citizenship. An understanding of social change through both theory and practice, as well as across cultures, times, and places, is necessary for deepening and broadening democracy.

Panopio and Raymundo (2004) gave a very distinct definition of social change which refers to the variations or modifications in the pattern of social organizations of subgroups within a society or the entire society itself. It showed clearly or manifested in the rise and fall of groups, communities or institutional structures and functions; or changes in the statuses and roles of members in the family, work setting, church, school, government, leisure, and other subsystems of the social organization.

Examples of these social change organizations include:

• Building  community-based responses, not solutions that affect just a few individuals and leave the underlying social problems intact.
• Changing  attitudes, behaviors, laws, policies and institutions to better reflect the values of inclusion, fairness, diversity and opportunity.
• Insisting  on accountability and responsiveness among institutions, including the government, large corporations, universities and other entities whose policies and actions profoundly affect the living conditions of individuals and communities, whether locally, nationally, or internationally.
• Expanding the meaning and practice of "democracy" by involving those closest to social problems in determining their solutions.