This document discusses theories of social change. It defines social change as fundamental alterations in patterns of culture, structure, and social behavior over time. Social change can come from external forces like the environment, economy, population shifts, or internal forces like clashes over values and ideology. The document then examines different types of social change like social unrest, fads, rebellions, and moral panics. It also differentiates between groups, publics, crowds, and masses. Finally, it explores several theories of social change, including evolutionary, cyclical, and conflict perspectives.

1. 1

2. Social change is “fundamental
alterations in the patterns of
culture, structure, and social
behavior over time”.
(Hughes and Kroehler, 2007)
2

3. Social change comes from without
and within. Such as:






The physical environment (Katrina)
The economy (recession of Germany WWII)
Population (large migrations)
Clashes over resources and values (wars)
Supporting values and norms (conflict—
who's right?)
Ideology (the big conflicts/religion as well)
3

4. What kind of social change have you
experienced?
What about how the economy has changed
over the past twenty or thirty years? Have
things gotten better or worse?
4

5. 5

6. Social unrest (a bad economy)
 Riots (Watts and Rodney King)
 Manias (obsession with weight loss)
 Fads & Fashion (clothes)
 Mass flight (“white flight” -- emigration to
suburbs)
 Revivals (religion)
 Rebellions (outrage over something like a
new tax—Tea party for instance)
 Panics (anthrax scare) (War of the Worlds
Radio Broadcast 1938—Amazon cloud music)

6

7. 7

8. 

Moral Panics:
Urban Legends (California falling off the
continent—1970s)
8

9. 



Group
Public
Crowd
Mass
9

10. High degree of interaction;
common purpose; everyone
participates; informal and
intimate modes of address are
possible.
10

11. Moderate degree of interaction; a
common purpose but the
speaker/communicator has more
influence over the shape of the
situation; involvement and
participation is moderate to high;
more formal and less intimate than a
group.
11

12. High degree of interaction but
roles are ‘scripted’; the focus of
all participants is on one thing;
participants share the same
‘mood’; sender and receiver of
the message occupy the same
physical space.
12

13. No interaction amongst members of
the collective; individuals are
dispersed spatially; involvement is
low; no ‘actual’ contact between the
sender and receiver of a message;
new forms of address are cultivated;
high degree of informality.
13

14. 


Suggestibility
Deindividualization
Invulnerability
14

15. 





Structural Conduciveness
Structural Strain
Growth of a Generalized Belief
Precipitation Factors
Mobilization of Participants
for Action
The Operation of Social
Control
15

16. 16

17. 
In structure
conduciveness
(awareness and
opportunity) a group
of students gathers on
the campus quad.
Structural strain
emerges when they
feel stressed
concerning their high
tuition costs.
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17

18. 
If the crowd decides
that the tuition hike is
the fault of the
Chancellor and that she
should lower the
tuition, if they protest,
then growth and spread
of a generalized belief
has occurred.
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18

19. A precipitation factor arises when campus security
appears to disperse the crowd using pepper spray
to do so.
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19

20. 
When the student
body president sits
down and passively
resists attempts to
stop the protest this
represents
mobilization of
action.
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20

21. Finally when the
local police
arrived and direct
students affected
their dorms, we've
seen agents of
social control in
action.
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21

22. This is the final move for change.
22

23. 


Contagion Theory
Convergence Theory
Emergent Norm Theory
23

24. Tarde in the 19th Century
came up with the notion
of “group mind”
later taken up by Le Bon
24

25. 


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Members of a crowd succumb to a hypnotic
effect.
A crowd thus assumes a life of its own.
Theory of imitation. (Imitating those around
one.)
“Mob mind.”
25

26. 



“Circular reaction”
One becomes agitated
Others pick up on the excitement
Reflection of self in others
Reflexive reaction
26

27. 


Does not allow for agency.
Refuted by contemporary studies of riots
Takes on a “class” approach/paternalistic
27

28. 

The idea behind convergence theory is that
people of like mind come together for a
particular purpose and form a crowd. Crowd
behavior is not irrational; rather, people in
crowds express existing beliefs and values.
(Macionis, 1995)
Convergence of social forces
(concepts/ideas/attitudes) around a focal
point (event/personality)—sharing the same
disposition.
28

29. 


An attempt to find meaning in
uncertain settings.
...people perceive and respond to
the crowd situation with their
particular (individual_ set of
norms, which may change as the
crow experience evolves..
Ralph Turner
Decision making occurs. (But so
does conformity.)
Lewis M. Killian
29

30. 

Once individuals find themselves
in a situation ungoverned by
previously established norms,
they interact in small groups to
develop new guidelines on how
to behave.
Norms develop and are accepted
as they fit the situation.
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3.0 Unported License.
30

31. 1 Evolutionary Perspectives
2 Cyclical Perspectives
3 Conflict Perspectives
31

32. 1
Social Darwinian
Herbert Spencer:
Biological
Western Colonialism
Laissez-faire Capitalism and the
free market.
32

33. 2 Multilinear (contemporary)
Talcott Parsons:
Structural-functionalist
Progressive differentiation
“Addaptive Upgrading”
33

34. 3
Technology and Production:
Gerhard Lenski:
Change from technology and
economy leading to 
organization of power
stratification systems
34

35. 1
Oswald Spengler:
All cultures grows in stages in the
same order from birth to maturity to death
His famous book was entitled
“The Decline of the West”
35

36. 2 Arnold Toynbee:
Growth and decline again.
Civilization arises in response to challenges
(war or climate).
An intellectual elite resolve the issue
(a creative minority)
36

37. Parsons again
 Equilibrium
William F. Ogburn
 Material and Nonmaterial culture
 Change is slow and gradual
37

38. 

Material culture changes first
Then non-material culture adjusts
Think about our technologies and how well we
do or do not adapt. What about the
automobile as discussed in Hughes and
Kroehler (2007)? What about the importance
of computers and their impact upon society.
38

39. Marx again:
The dialectic, or,
dialectic materialism
progress to efficiency and
digress again
The conflict between opposites
Conflict as a major source of change
39

40. 

Change is inevitable. There is a constant
struggle between classes such as the Proletariat
and the Bourgeoisie.
Change is violent and sudden from the strain
of conflicting forces. This will only end when
the Proletariat wins the final revolution and a
true socialist state is in place.
40