Social change and

socialization
SOC10500 INDIVIDUAL, GROUP AND SOCIETY (FALL 2020)
PROF. BILES
Week 4: Key questions

 What is a society? How and why do societies change over time?

 What are the five kinds of society? What are their characteristics?
 What is specialization?
 How do inequalities emerge and increase in different types of societies?
 How does a functionalist perspective understand social change? Conflict
theory? Symbolic interactionism?
 What is anomie? Alienation? Compare and contrast the two concepts.
 From Marx’s POV, what is the relationship between economy and society?
 What is rationalization? The Protestant work ethic?
 What is socialization? How does socialization take place?
Society and social change

 Society
 A group of people who live in a definable
community and share the same culture
 Social change (Lenski)
 Driven by technology and technical change
Technology and its discontents
 Increasing inequality
 Pollution and global warming
 Conflict
 Technology doesn’t solve fundamental
social problems, cannot tell us what a just
society should look like
Five kinds of societies

 Societies classified based on their level of industrialization

 Societies with rudimentary technology depend on their environments
 Industrialized societies have more control over their surroundings
 From preindustrial to industrial to postindustrial
 Hunting and gathering
 Horticultural and pastoral
 Agrarian
 Industrial
 Post-industrial
Hunting and gathering societies

 Basic structure of society until 12,000-15,000 years

ago
 Based on kinship or tribes
 Depend directly on their surroundings for survival
 Nomadic
 When resources became scarce, the group moved to a new
area

 Common until several hundred years ago, rapidly

disappearing
 Mbuti in Central Africa
Horticultural and pastoral societies

 More than 7,500 years ago, societies began to

domesticate plants and animals
 Horticultural societies relied on plants
 (Relatively) sedentary, permanent settlements
 Pastoral societies raised livestock for food,
clothing, and transportation
 Nomadic
 Surplus production allows population to grow
 Specialized occupations and inequality emerge
 Trading increases
Agrarian societies

 Emerged about 5000-6000 years ago

 Larger surpluses, more trade, greater specialization,
more inequality
 Importance of family diminishes, new social
institutions emerge
 Feudalism
 Hierarchical system of power based on land ownership
and protection
 Monarchs, nobility, vassals and peasants
 Power handed down through family lines
Industrial societies

 Industrial Revolution in 18th century

 From human and animal power to machine power

 Fundamental change in organization of

society
 Centralization and bureaucracy
 Mass production
 Capitalism
 Inequality increases
 Urbanization
 New social institutions
Post-industrial societies

 Economy shifts from raw materials and industrialization to

information, technology and services
 Expansion in high technology and finance, decline in manufacturing

 From material goods to nonmaterial services

 Social classes based on access to education
Functionalist perspective on social change

 Preindustrial societies held together by mechanical solidarity

(Durkheim)
 Social order maintained by the collective consciousness of tradition and culture
 People tend to do the same type of work and tend to think and act alike
 In industrial societies, organic solidarity replaces mechanical solidarity
 Allows people with differing values to coexist
 Laws formalize morals and are based on notions of “justice”
 Transition from mechanical to organic solidarity can result in anomie
 Social uncertainty, society lacks firm collective consciousness
 Redevelopment of shared norms needed to avoid anomie
Conflict theory and social change

 Base and superstructure

 Society’s economic character forms its base, upon which
rests the superstructure, its culture and social institutions
 Base (economy) determines what a society will be like
 Conflict is primary means of social change
 Class conflict
 Alienation
 individual is isolated and divorced from society, work,
and/or sense of self
 From false consciousness (ideology) to class
consciousness
Symbolic interactionism and social change

 Weber focused on shift from traditional to

modern society
 Protestant work ethic
 New attitude toward work based on idea of
predestination
 Glorify god through work
 Foundation for capitalism
 Rationalization and bureaucracy
 Social change is the result of shift in ideas,
organization and technology
How does society affect personality traits?

 Socialization
 How does socialization take place?
 Nature vs. nurture? Socialization (n):
the process wherein people
 Gender, class and race come to understand societal
 Development perspectives norms and expectations, to
accept society’s beliefs, and
 Concepts from Freudian psycho-analysis
to be aware of societal
 Agents of socialization values
 Family and peer groups
 Formal groups (schools, religion, media)