1. Chapter 18, Section 1

2.  Remember, sociology stemmed from the Industrial Revolution in Europe in the 1800s.  Social change= alterations in various aspects of society over time.  Led to the formation of four major theories to explain the process.

3.  Views change from a historical perspective.  States that societies pass through stages of emergence, development, and then decline. Social change is a natural offshoot of that cycle.  Oswald Spengler and Pitirim Sorokin.

4.  Spengler  4 stages of societies: childhood, youth, adulthood and old age.  Western civilization reached ‘adulthood’ around 1700…. so now it is on the decline and will eventually disappear.  Sorokin  Societies fluctuate between two extremes– ideational culture (belief/truth in religion) and sensate culture (belief/truth in science). ▪ The balance is known as idealistic culture.

5.  Views change as a process that moves in one direction, and grows in complexity.  As members in a society adapt, they push society to develop more extensively.  Difference between early evolutionary sociologists and modern ones.

6.  Early Evolutionary  Comte, Spencer  Justified social and political conditions;  Distinction between weaker and stronger countries.  Modern Evolutionary  Societies have a tendency to be more complex over time;  Progress does not mean the same in all societies.

7.  Change in one aspect of society yields changes in all aspects– societies maintain balance  Functionalist Talcott Parsons  As a society encounters new norms, it differentiates between old and new, and the new ones become institutionalized.

8.  Change results from conflicts between groups of opposing interests.  Karl Marx and Ralf Dahrendorf  Marx’s class conflict  differences between classes lead to revolutions (an extreme form of social change).

9.  Agreed with Marx in that conflict is central to all societies.  Social conflict is not just between classes, but race, gender, etc. as well.  Also believed that revolution does not yield all social change within modern, industrial societies– interest groups.