1. SOCIAL change: TRADITIONAL, modern, and postmodern SOCIETIES
Chapter 11 (Book 24)
SOCIAL change: TRADITIONAL, modern, and postmodern SOCIETIES

2. Social Change: Traditional, Modern, and Postmodern Societies
Learning Objectives
LO 11.1 State four defining characteristics of social change.
LO 11.2 Explain how culture, conflict, ideas, and population patterns direct social change.
LO 11.3 Apply the ideas of Tönnies, Durkheim, Weber, and Marx to our understanding of modernity.
LO Contrast analysis of modernity as mass society and as class society.
LO 11.5 Discuss postmodernism as one type of social criticism.
LO 11.6 Evaluate possible directions of future social change.

3. The Power of Society
Doesn’t everyone agree that science is useful to humanity?

4. Social Change: What Is…?
Transformation of culture and social institutions over time
LO 11.1 State four defining characteristics of social change.

5. Four major characteristics
Social Change
Four major characteristics
Social change happens all the time.
Social change is sometimes intentional but often unplanned.
Social change is controversial.
Some changes matter more than others.
LO 11.1 State four defining characteristics of social change.

6. Responding to Change
In response to the accelerating pace of change in the nineteenth century, Paul Gauguin left his native France for the South Pacific, where he was captivated by a simpler and seemingly timeless way of life. He romanticized this environment in many paintings, including Nave Nave Moe

7. Causes of Social Change
Culture and change
Invention: Production of new objects, ideas, and social patterns
Discovery: Noticing existing elements of a culture
Diffusion: Spreading products, people and information from one culture to another
LO 11.2 Explain how culture, conflict, ideas, and population patterns direct social change.

8. Causes of Social Change
Conflict and change
Social conflict arising from inequality forces changes in every society (Marx)

9. Causes of Social Change
Ideas and change
Ideas can fuel social movements which bring about social change (Weber).
These young men are performing in a hip-hop dance marathon in Hong Kong. Hip-hop music, dress style, and dancing have become popular in Asia, a clear case of cultural diffusion.

10. Causes of Social Change
Demographics and change
Population patterns play a part in social change.
Migration within and among societies promotes change.

11. Who Stays Put? Residential Stability across the United States

12. Modernity
Changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution
Modernization
Process of social change begun by industrialization
Modernity: What Is…?
LO 11.3 Apply the ideas of Tönnies, Durkheim, Weber, and Marx to our understanding of modernity.

13. Four major dimensions of modernization
Modernity
Four major dimensions of modernization
Decline of small, traditional towns
Expansion of personal choice
Increasing social diversity
Orientation toward the future and a growing awareness of time

14. The United States: A Century of Change

15. Tönnies: The Loss of Community
With modernization comes the loss of Gemeinschaft (human community).
Modernity brings Gesellschaft (impersonal relationships).
George Tooker’s 1950 painting The Subway depicts a common problem of modern life: Weakening social ties and eroding traditions create a generic humanity in which everyone is alike yet each person is an anxious stranger in the midst of others.

16. Tönnies: The Loss of Community
Evaluation
Gemeinschaft exists in modern society.
No differentiation between cause and effect.
Traditional societies are romanticized.

17. Tradition and Modernity: The History of Jeans
In art from the 1500s, we see poor people wearing denim.
Jeans existed both “then” and “now,” all the while taking on new and different meanings.
This reveals the limitation of characterizing cultural elements as either “traditional” or “modern” as societies invent and reinvent their way of life all the time.
In the 1800s, jeans became the uniform for the western cowboy, and by the 1960s, they were the clothing of choice on campus.
More recently, corporate executives (especially in tech companies) have made jeans acceptable in the workplace.

18. Durkheim: Division of Labor
Divisions of labor become more pronounced with modernization.
Mechanical solidarity is virtually the same as Tönnies’s Gemeinschaft.
Organic solidarity corresponds to Tönnies’s concept of Gesellschaft.

19. Durkheim: Division of Labor
Evaluation
Societies’ norms and values strong enough to avoid anomie.
People value the personal freedom of modern society despite the risks.

20. Max Weber and Rational Society
Modernity meant replacing a traditional worldview with a rational way of thinking.
Modern society is “disenchanted.”
New social patterns that allow goal achievement adopted.
Efficiency is valued with little reverence for the past.
“Truth” is the result of rational calculation.

21. Max Weber and Rational Society
Evaluation
Weber feared that rationalization, especially in bureaucracies, would erode the human spirit with endless rules and regulations.
He worried that science was turning away from more basic questions about the meaning and purpose of human existence.

22. Karl Marx: Capitalism Capitalism
Industrial revolution was a capitalist revolution.
Modernity weakened small communities, increased labor division, and encouraged a rational world view.
Social conflict in capitalist societies would incite revolutionary change—leading to egalitarian socialism.

23. Karl Marx: Capitalism Evaluation
Complex theory underestimates the dominance of bureaucracy.
Stifling socialist bureaucracies are as bad or worse than dehumanizing capitalism.

24. Summing Up

25. Summing Up

26. Theoretical Analysis of Modernity
Structural-functional theory: Modernity as mass society
Draws upon the ideas of Tönnies, Durkheim, and Weber
Proposes modernization as the emergence of mass society
LO Contrast analysis of modernity as mass society and as class society.

27. Structural-functional theory: Modernity as mass society
Mass-society theory
Scale of modern life has greatly increased.
Geographic mobility, mass communication, and exposure to diverse ways of life all weaken traditional values.
Population becomes a generic mass.

28. Structural-functional theory: Modernity as mass society
The ever-expanding state
Power resides in large bureaucracies; local communities have reduced control.
Regulations may protect and advance social equality, but they also undermine autonomy of families and local communities.

29. Structural-functional theory: Modernity as mass society
Evaluation
Positive aspects of growing modern life is matched with loss of some cultural heritage.
Modern societies may create reduced family values and patterns and increased sense of individual feelings of isolation, powerless, and materialism.
Theory romanticizes past.

30. Theoretical Analysis of Modernity
Social-conflict theory
Draws upon the ideas of Marx
Views the heart of modernization as an expanding capitalist economy, marked by inequality or class society

31. Social-Conflict Theory: Modernity as Class society
Capitalism
Suggests increasing scale of social life in modern society results from the growth and greed unleashed by capitalism (Marx)
Supports science as ideology that justifies status quo

32. Social-Conflict Theory: Modernity as Class society
Persistent inequality
Contends elite class still exists as people are still born to wealth and power
Suggests state can only accomplish minor forms become of capitalist control of economy
Posits gains of working people and minorities are result of political struggle and not government goodwill

33. Social-Conflict Theory: Modernity as Class society
Evaluation
Contends people suffer from alienation and powerlessness, not anomie
Overlooks long-term increasing prosperity of modern societies
Class society overlooks the way equality in modern society has increased

34. Summing Up

35. Modernity and the Individual
Mass society: Problems of identity
Personal identity can be a problem since society changes so rapidly
Social character: Personality patterns common to members of a particular society
Tradition-directedness: Rigid conformity to time-honored ways of living
Other-directedness: Openness to latest trends and fashions, expressed by imitating others

36. Modernity and the Individual
Class society: Problems of powerlessness
Persistent social inequality undermines modern society’s promise of freedom.
Problems of relative disadvantage exist for racial and ethnic minorities.
Power of multinational corporations is vast.
Does technology solve the world’s problems, or cause the world’s problems?

37. Modernity and Progress
In modern societies, most people expect and desire social change.
Modernity is linked to progress.
Social change is too complex to equate with progress.
New technology sparks controversy.

38. “We realize that social change comes faster all the time, but we may disagree about whether a particular change is good or bad for society.”
Found on page 713

39. Postmodernity: Postindustrial societies
All variants of postmodern thinking share the following themes.
In important respects, modernity has failed.
The bright light of “progress” is fading.
Science no longer holds the answers.
Cultural debates are intensifying.
Social institutions are changing.
LO 11.5 Discuss postmodernism as one type of social criticism.

40. Postmodernity: Postindustrial societies
Evaluation
Critics suggest modernity fails to meet human needs.
However, there have been increases in longevity and living standards.
What are the alternatives?

41. Modernization and Our Global Future
Modernization theory
In the past, the entire world was poor.
Technological change, enhanced human productivity and raised living standards in many nations.
U.S. is no longer separate from change in the rest of the world.
LO 11.6 Evaluate possible directions of future social change.

42. Modernization and Our Global Future
Dependence theory
Modernization is achieved at the expense of the poor.
World’s poorest countries remain locked in a disadvantageous economic relationship with rich nations.
This perpetuates current patterns of global inequality.
LO 11.6 Evaluate possible directions of future social change.

43. GLOSSARY Overwhelming Favor Controversial Matter Captivate Bring about
Flush
Depict
Erode
Businesslike
Inevitable
Reveal
Virtually
Correspond to
Anomie
Disenchant
Reverence
Turn away from
Incite
Egalitarian
Underestimate
Stifling
Sacred
Secular
Anonymity
Privacy
Supplement
Disperse
Intervention
Retain
Draw upon
Mass society
Ever expanding
Reside in
Undermine
Unleash
Greed
Contend
Goodwill
Overlook
Interpretation
Directedness
Time honored
Spark
Fade
Longevity
Enhance
Perpetuate