Social Change: Traditional, Modern, and Postmodern Societies

Karl Marx explained about the modernization of capitalism that the capitalism is a complex. But
he undervalued the dominance of bureaucracy in modern societies. According to the socialist, it was
turned out as bad as or even worse than the dehumanizing aspects of capitalism is the stifling effect of
bureaucracy. It was synonymous with capitalism about the modern society. He saw the Industrial
revolution as basically a capitalist revolution. He is the one who traced the emergence of the bourgeois in
medieval Europe to the expansion of commerce. The Industrial revolution gave it a powerful new
productive system because the bourgeois gradually displaced the feudal aristocracy. Marx agreed that
modernity weakened small communities, sharpened the division of labor, and encouraged a rational
worldview. But it is simply as conditions necessary for capitalism to flourish. As what Marx explanation:
Draws population from farms and small towns into an ever-expanding market system centered in cities.
Specialization is needed for efficient factories and rationality is exemplified by the capitalists’ endless
pursuit profit.

In 16th century the Art historian have identified paintings that show people are typically who
wears jeans. In the 1700s, The British sailors are using fabric for making sails but also for constructing
hammock to sleep in and for fashioning shipboard clothing. In 1853, The Levi Strauss in US clothing
manufacturing was sold dungarees to miners because they were digging for gold in California gold rush.
The familiar blue and this white woven fabric is very strong and durable. Here in this world, jeans is the
chosen one as the fashion and everyday use among the people. It is a cloth that people used to wear and a
choice of people who had limited budgets and who did demanding physical labor. Cowboys used to wear
jeans also in all across the western United States. Jeans were worn by almost all working people in 20 th
century while in 1930 most of the prisoners in their country wore denim. Jeans has a pattern that is made
and it is symbolize as lower social standing.

A youth based counterculture was emerging by the year 1960s. The older pattern that they copied
the styles of the rich and famous that is what you called as “looking upward” was rejected of the new
cultural orientation and it began as “looking downward” that adopted the look of people who used to it
even the down and out. By the end of 1960s, rock stars and celebrities, and college students in Hollywood
used to wear their favored jeans as symbolized as working people and part of eras more left leaning
political attitudes. But jeans are now paid by money in popularity of jeans in the fashion industry by the
year 1980s. It was promoted as designer jeans among more well-off people who probably had never
entered a factory in their lives.

Calvin Klein in 1980 was launched by the help of a teenage Brooke Shields that become all the
rage among the people who were able spend many times as much as the jeans was worn by ordinary
people and now jeans was accepted in all occasions. As you can see the history of jeans, how it made and
who and how it invented the jeans it is the fact that the jeans is now modern and trending and has many
designs and colors to be made. It reveals the limitation of characterizing cultural elements as either
traditional or modern in a world that which societies invent and inherent their way of life all the time.
Religion:

Religion involves things that surpass the limits of our knowledge as the explanation of the French
sociologist named Emile Durkheim. Religion deals in everyday experience that transcend with ideas,
neither common sense nor sociology can prove or disprove religious doctrine. It identifies that it is a
matter of faith, belief that based on conviction rather share on scientific evidence. The New Testament of
the bible defines faith as the conviction of the things that is not seen (Hebrew 11:1) and urges Christians
to walk by faith not by sight (2 Corinthians 5:7).

Society has a life and power of its own beyond the life of any individual. It is shaping the life of
its group and living on beyond them. According to Durkheim, he identified the three major functions of
religion that contribute to the operation of society. The first one is Establishing Social Cohesion, it
defines that religion is being unite to the people by sharing symbolism, values, and norms. It is a ritual
that establish rules of having fair in playing and organizing our social life. The second one is the
Promoting of Social Control, In every society they use their ideas in every religious in order to promote
conformity. Many religions used to call God as a “judge” because it encourage to the people to obey and
respect the cultural norms. They used religion as back up to the power of political systems. The third one
is the Providing Meaning and Purpose, Religious belief offer the comforting sense that our short lives
serve some greater purpose. It strengthened by such beliefs, people are less likely to despair in the face of
change or even tragedy. For this reason, we mark major life course transition including birth, marriage
and death with religious observances.

Early hunters and gatherers practiced animism as the breath of life. The belief that elements of the
natural world are conscious life forms that affects humanity. The belief in a single divine power
responsible for creating the world began with pastoral and horticultural societies which that is appeared
10,000-12,000 years ago. The conception of God as a “shepherd” arose because Christianity, Judaism and
Islam were all began among pastorals peoples. The world religions are Christianity, Islam, Buddhism,
Judaism and Hinduism. Christianity is the most widespread religion with 2 billion followers, one-third of
the world’s people. Most of them were lived in Europe. European colonization spread Christianity
throughout much of the world over the past 500 years. Its dominance in the west shown by the fact that
our calendar numbers and years from the birth of Jesus Christ. Islam has about 1.6 billion followers,
which is almost one-fourth of humanity. Islam was also called as Muslims. A majority of people in the
Middle East are Muslims, so we tend to associate Islam with Arab in the region of the world. Judaism, in
terms of numbers it has 15 million followers worldwide make it something less than a world religion.
Jews make up majority of the population in only one country which is the Israel. But it has a special
importance to the United States because the largest concentration of Jews is 5.7 million people is found in
North America. Hinduism is the oldest of all the world’s religions, originating in the Indus river valley
about 4500 years ago. The Buddhism, twenty-five hundred years ago the rich culture of India gave rise to
Buddhism. It has 380 million people or 6 percent of humanity are Buddhist and almost all live in Asia.