SOCI 210: Sociological Perspectives Nov. 3 1. Social Change 2. Collective behavior 3. Social movements 1
Social Change 2
Social change Social rigidity Social change ⦙ Empirically, social ⦙ Much of what sociologists structures do change look at is ways that social structures resist change ⦙ New norms emerge ⦙ E.g: ⦙ Understanding the parts of Class boundaries social structures that Gender essentialism, resist change can help Racialization, understand how change Economic inequality does happen Socialization ⦙ All focus on ways that dominant ideologies and norms are reinforced 3
Social change (modernity) Modernity • Huge social change over the past several centuries • Very slow change, but studied in depth • How do social scientists explain the changes of modernity? Technological Population change change Institutional Cultural change change 4
Social change (modernity) Technological Population change change • Industrialization, • Demographic transition sanitation, medicine, theory seeks to explain communication, … shift toward modernity mostly as a result of • Technology can change improved health fundamentally the way people relate to each • Changes to immigration other, culture, material or demographic conditions, and processes change the themselves ethnic, linguistic, national, generational • Conflict and functionalist composition of society theories argue that shift (and therefore dominant toward mechanized/ ideals) industrialized production caused changes of modernization 5
Social change (modernity) Institutional Cultural change change • Changes to economic, • Modernity is a shift in all political, religious (etc.) of these dimensions institutions associated together with large-scale social • Individualism, change rationalism, secularism, • E.g. Weber’s rational- abstraction of social legal governance institutions, … • Cause or e ff ect? • Modernity is endogenous : Nothing happened to society from the outside to bring about modernity Harder to explain because social changes come from society itself 6
Social change How do we explain endogenous social change? 1 2 Conflict theories Interactionist theories ⦙ Social change is the product of oppressed populations realizing their common cause and changing institutional framework (class consciousness) ⦙ Powerful reassert dominance in new context ⦙ Work of deliberate social change is making the Protestors stand in front of the burning Minneapolis Police Third Precinct systems of oppression (May 28, 2020) clear, helping oppressed see their common plight, and organizing 7
Social change How do we explain endogenous social change? 1 2 Conflict theories Interactionist theories ⦙ Social inertia based on constant normalization and reinforcement in everyday interaction ⦙ Social change occurs when new norms of interaction take hold, subverting previous assumptions ⦙ Work of deliberate social change is to upset expectations of interaction Rosa Parks sitting in the front of a bus in as visibly as possible Montgomery, Alabama in 1956 8
Social change How do we explain endogenous social change? 1 2 Conflict theories Interactionist theories Common thread : Collective behavior Social change happens when enough people decide it should 9
Image credit Photo: @nickwoltman (Twitter) Photo: United Press 10
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