Top 4 Theories of Social Change

 An introduction 

4 theories of Social Change :-The major sociological theories of change can be classified in a variety of ways. A person can distinguish between evolutionary, (linear), and cyclical views of social change, for example. Some of the most influential people who came before them were Comte, Spencer, Hobhouse, and Marx. The most well-known of them are those of Spengler, Pareto, and Sorokin. We'll look at a few different perspectives on how things evolve in this unit:

1- Evolutionary Theory

The concept of social evolution evolved from the concept of biological evolution.

Spencer drew parallels between social and organic growth, as well as between society and a group of people. Change, order, and direction, as well as progress and perfectibility, are all components of social evolution theory.

According to the principle of change, the system we have now is the product of changes made over time. Many evolutionists believe that change must be done in a specific way. Other evolutionists argue that there is a natural linear sequence of change in society based on the ideas of change and order.

As part of the evolutionary process, every society goes through various stages of existence and orientation. Comte, for example, devised a method of thinking about society. In his address, he stated that as society progresses through these stages, it shifts from a theological orientation to a metaphysical orientation to a positivistic perspective.

Durkheim classified societies into simple and complicated groups based on their members' similarities, or "mechanical solidarity." Everyone in simple groups is the same. People in complicated groups specialise and collaborate (what he called organic solidarity). This also implies that evolution is moving in a specific direction.

It has been argued that in evolutionary theory, it might be difficult to distinguish between simple direction and progress. A prevalent idea in many evolutionary literature is that societies expand and change over time until they end up looking like Western countries. The concept of perfectibility is an extreme manifestation of this viewpoint. In the long run, cultures continue to progress toward an ideal advanced level of industrialisation. Neo-evolutionary views, on the other hand, are less certain than the more certain evolutionary theories of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These evolutionists do not believe that change always proceeds in the same direction. That there is a general trend toward more sophisticated work division.

This is because they understand that people from different cultures have varied perspectives on what constitutes progress. One of the most serious faults in early evolutionary theories was that they frequently made untested, ethnocentric statements that could not be substantiated

2-Cyclical Theories

The primary premise of cyclical theories is that cultures and civilizations go through periods of change, which frequently begin and terminate at the same stage. A cycle occurs when you go through a series of stages. When the cycle is completed, it is repeated indefinitely. The ancient civilizations of Greece, China, and India can be explained using cyclic ideas.

Some cycle theorists are gloomy because they believe that decay will occur.

Oswald Spengler, who died in 1945, believed that every culture begins, matures, ages, and dies. The Roman Empire rose to greatness and then began to crumble. The British Empire grew strong, then crumbled. Spengler believed that social change might be positive or negative, but that no civilization can remain static for long, therefore it evolves.

Pareto (1916) proposed a way of looking at history that stated that groups strive for political power and that this creates changes in the world. His theory was flawed since it was based solely on one instance of elites travelling around in ancient Rome. His concept of political evolution ignored the rise of democratic administration in recent times.

Sorokin (1975) developed new theories that share some of the traits of the cyclical approach. Sorokin's theory is predicated on the notion that social and cultural transformation is occurring right now. This suggests that any socio-cultural system (e.g., society and civilization) changes over time due to its own forces and qualities. This principle is related to another principle, the principle of limited opportunities for change. The amount of changes that can occur in a system is limited. There is, for example, a limit to how much change can occur in a society and how many new ways of behaving can be discovered in the world. At some point, the system will run out of combinations. Is it still alive if the changes occur again? In other words, the history of socio-cultural systems has a "rhythm" or "recurrence."

Sorokin also distinguishes three sorts of culture: ideational, idealist, and sensate. He believes that these three sorts of culture come and go in the history of societies in cycles. Ideational culture is spiritual, mysterious, and difficult to comprehend.

Sensate culture is a combination of science and immediate sensory experiences that may be seen and heard straight away. Some aspects of idealistic societies are shared by both ideational and sensate cultures. These three types of cultures can be thought of as three different perspectives on reality that change based on the two preceding concepts.

3- Structural Theory

They believe society, like the human body, is a well-balanced system. Every institution has a role to play in keeping society running properly. When events occur both outside and within society, they have the potential to disrupt the social order. Changes are made by social institutions in an attempt to restore normalcy.

They also claim that most changes occur gradually, rather than abruptly, violently, or dramatically. It makes no difference how drastic the changes appear. They haven't had a significant or long-lasting impact on the foundations of society or culture. According to them, three major sources of change exist:

Development via structural and functional differentiation (e.g. changes in the size of the population through births and deaths).

Members of society's groups generate new ideas (like inventions, discoveries).

The most crucial and fundamental factor that helps individuals get along and stay together, according to this school of thinking, is that they agree on what values are important.

The phrase "cultural lag" is frequently used to characterise a culture that is out of balance in terms of both material and non-material aspects. Cultural lag, as defined by Ogburn (1886-1959), is what happens when two or more aspects of a culture change at separate speeds and become incompatible with one another.

This is referred to as "cultural lag." According to Ogburn (1922), non-material culture (values, beliefs, customs, family, religion, and so on) frequently lags behind material culture (technology, means of production, and so on). It has been a long time since family planning technology (i.e. material culture) have changed, but people are still unwilling to change. Some people dislike the concept of "family planning," but they nevertheless want a large family. When there are more people or fewer natural resources, the same thing happens. It takes time for society to grasp and accept the burden, as well as to adapt its beliefs and institutions in response. However, in order for communities to function properly, they must adapt how they maintain and repair themselves.

Some argue that the structural-functionalist perspective can only explain so many changes and so many different sorts of changes. This approach of looking at things ignores large changes that happen quickly. It also ignores the likelihood that a society will go through protracted periods of disintegration, such as when the economy is terrible (Eshleman and Cashion: 1983 : 533)

4- Conflict Theories 

The conflict theory situates the concept of dialectic (opposites) at the centre of social activity. It is also derived from early sociology, particularly Marx's works. Conflict theorists do not believe that societies progress or become more difficult in a linear fashion. If you subscribe to this school of thought, you should anticipate a negative reaction to anything you do, think, or do in the world. There are plenty good examples available now. The legalisation of abortion prompted the anti-abortion movement. The feminist movement has elicited a response from both men and women. The liberalisation of sexual norms has resulted in a large number of persons criticising them. This is the main point: Things in the world change as a result of group conflict. The fundamental problem of this strategy is that it places too much emphasis on conflict as the primary basis for change.

There is currently another approach to think about social change in sociological writing, known as the "development viewpoint." It was derived from three major sources:

It is derived from the study of how the economy evolves over time. Economists and other social scientists must consider how many people live in a country's economy and how much money they earn to determine how far the country has progressed. They point out, for example, that GNP (Gross National Product) and per capita income are two ways to quantify a country's wealth.

Because all societies are divided into two categories: those with a lot of technology and those who don't. Industrialization is sometimes given a lot of attention, which implies that cultures that are highly industrialized are regarded to be more developed than communities that are primarily agricultural.

This is based on a comparison of capitalist countries and socialist or communist countries.

People who research social issues have compared the communist economy and social structure to how things work in the West. For the time being, I'm not going to discuss this point of view because you'll be looking at it in the next unit.

This is because the development approach to social transformation emphasized the importance of having a broad comparative view that took into consideration all of the diverse and complicated relationships between developing and advanced countries. This means that no single explanation can explain all of the different ways that people change their lives.