What are the important aspects of social change

Change is a very broad concept. Though change is all around us, we do not refer to all of it as social change. Thus, physical growth from year to year, or change of seasons do not fall under the concept of social change. In sociology, we look at social change as alterations that occur in the social structure and social relationship.

 The International Encyclopaedia of the Social Science (IESS 1972) looks at change as the important alterations that occur in the social structure, or in the pattern of action and interaction in societies.

Alterations may occur in norms, values, cultural products, and symbols in society. Other definitions of change also point out that change implies, above all other things, alteration in the structure and function of a social system. Institutions, patterns of interaction, work, leisure activities, roles, norms and other aspects of society can be altered over time as a result of the process of social change

From these and other definitions of social change, we can see that:

• Social change is essentially a process of alteration with no reference to the quality of change.
• Changes are society is related/linked to changes in a culture so that it would be sometimes useful to talk about ‘socio-cultural change. Some sociologists, however, differentiate between social change and cultural change. Social change is defined as alterations in the social structure, (including the changes in the size of society) or in particular social institutions, or in the relationship between institutions. They feel that social change refers mainly to actual human behavior. Cultural change, on the other hand, refers to variation in cultural phenomena such as knowledge and ideas, art, religion moral doctrines, values, beliefs, symbol systems, and so on. This distinction is abstract because in many situations it is difficult, or nearly impossible to decide which type of change is occurring. For instance, the growth of modern technology as part of the culture has been closely associated with alterations in the economic structures, an important part of society.
• Social change can vary in its scope and in speed. We can talk of small scale or large scale changes. Changes can take a cyclical pattern, e.g. when there is the recurrence of centralization and decentralization in administrative organizations. It can also be revolutionary. Revolutionary change can be seen when there is an overthrow of the government in a particular nation. Change can also include short term changes (e.g. in migration rates) as well as long term changes in economic structures. We can include in social change, both growth and decline in membership and size of social institutions. Change may include continuous processes like specialization, and also include discontinuous processes such as a particular technical or social invention which appears at some point in time.
• Change also varies in scope, in that it may influence many aspects of society and Social Change disrupt the whole social system. The process of industrialization which affected many aspects of society. In contrast, the substitution of matches for rubbing sticks to start a fire had a relatively limited scope. Some changes occur rapidly but others take a long time. Many of the Western nations took many decades to become industrialized, but developing nations are trying to do it more quickly. They do this by borrowing or adapting from those nations which have already achieved it. Today most sociologists assume that change is a natural, inevitable, ever-present part of life in every society. When we are looking at social change, we are focusing not on changes in the experiences of an individual, but on variations in social structures, institutions, and social relationships.