C HAPTER 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:  Discovery – 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.

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 long- term 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?