How Did Cultural Change Create Social Conflict

20.2 Sources of Social Change

Learning Objectives

1. Describe the major sources of social modify.
2. Explain cultural lag and provide an example.

We have seen that social change stems from natural forces and also from the intentional acts of groups of people. This section further examines these sources of social change.

Population Growth and Limerick

Much of the discussion and so far has talked most population growth as a major source of social change every bit societies evolved from older to modern times. Yet fifty-fifty in modern societies, changes in the size and composition of the population can have of import effects for other aspects of a society, equally Chapter xix "Population and Urbanization" emphasized. Every bit just one example, the number of school-anile children reached a loftier betoken in the late 1990s as the children of the mail–World War II infant boom entered their school years. This swelling of the school-aged population had at least 3 important consequences. Beginning, new schools had to be built, modular classrooms and other structures had to be added to existing schools, and more teachers and other school personnel had to exist hired (Leonard, 1998). Second, schoolhouse boards and municipalities had to borrow dollars and/or enhance taxes to pay for all of these expenses. 3rd, the construction industry, building supply centers, and other businesses profited from the building of new schools and related activities. The growth of this segment of our population thus had profound implications for many aspects of U.S. society even though information technology was unplanned and "natural."

Civilisation and Technology

Culture and applied science are other sources of social change. Changes in culture tin alter applied science; changes in technology can transform culture; and changes in both can alter other aspects of lodge (Crowley & Heyer, 2011).

Two examples from either end of the 20th century illustrate the circuitous relationship among culture, applied science, and guild. At the outset of the century, the motorcar was still a new invention, and automobiles slowly just surely grew in number, diversity, speed, and ability. The auto altered the social and physical mural of the United States and other industrial nations as few other inventions have. Roads and highways were built; pollution increased; families began living further from each other and from their workplaces; tens of thousands of people started dying annually in auto accidents. These are just a few of the effects the invention of the automobile had, but they illustrate how changes in technology tin affect so many other aspects of social club.

At the stop of the 20th century came the personal computer, whose development has also had an enormous impact that will not be fully understood for some years to come. Anyone old enough, such as many of your oldest professors, to remember having to blazon long manuscripts on a transmission typewriter will easily adjure to the difference computers have made for many aspects of our work lives. Eastward-mail, the Internet, and smartphones take enabled instant communication and make the globe a very minor place, and tens of millions of people now utilise Facebook and other social media. A generation ago, students studying away or people working in the Peace Corps overseas would send a alphabetic character back habitation, and information technology would take up to 2 weeks or more than to arrive. It would take another week or 2 for them to hear back from their parents. Now even in poor parts of the earth, access to computers and smartphones lets united states of america communicate instantly with people across the planet.

As the world becomes a smaller identify, it becomes possible for dissimilar cultures to have more contact with each other. This contact, too, leads to social change to the extent that 1 culture adopts some of the norms, values, and other aspects of some other culture. Anyone visiting a poor nation and seeing Coke, Pepsi, and other popular U.S. products in vending machines and stores in diverse cities will have a culture shock that reminds us instantly of the influence of one culture on some other. For amend or worse, this bear on means that the world's diverse cultures are increasingly giving way to a more uniform global civilisation.

This process has been happening for more than than a century. The ascension of newspapers, the development of trains and railroads, and the invention of the telegraph, telephone, and, subsequently, radio and television allowed cultures in different parts of the world to communicate with each other in ways not previously possible. Affordable jet transportation, jail cell phones, the Internet, and other mod technology accept taken such communication a gigantic step further.

Every bit mentioned before, many observers fearfulness that the world is becoming Westernized every bit Coke, Pepsi, McDonald's, and other products and companies invade other cultures. Others say that Westernization is a expert thing, because these products, but especially more than important ones like refrigerators and computers, do make people's lives easier and therefore better. Still other observers say the bear upon of Westernization has been exaggerated. Both inside the United States and beyond the world, these observers say, many cultures proceed to thrive, and people continue to hold on to their ethnic identities.

Cultural Lag

An of import aspect of social change is cultural lag, a term popularized past sociologist William F. Ogburn (1922/1966). When in that location is a change in one aspect of society or civilization, this change often leads to and even forces a alter in another aspect of social club or culture. However, often some time lapses before the latter change occurs. Cultural lag refers to this delay between the initial social change and the resulting social change.

Discussions of examples of cultural lag often feature a technological modify equally the initial change. Ogburn (1922/1966) cited one such case from the decades after the American Civil State of war: the rising of the automobile age. The development of factories during the Industrial Revolution meant that work became much more dangerous than before. More than industrial accidents occurred, but injured workers were unable to receive acceptable fiscal compensation considering the existing law of negligence allowed them to sue just the person—a fellow worker—whose negligence caused the injury. Notwithstanding, negligent workers were typically very poor themselves and thus unable to provide meaningful compensation if they were sued. This meant that injured workers in event could receive no money for their injuries.

Over time, the sheer number of industrial accidents and ascent labor protest movement pressured lawmakers to help injured workers receive financial assistance. Some states began to permit workers to sue the companies whose dangerous workplaces were responsible for their injuries, and juries awarded these workers huge sums of money. Fearing these jury awards, in the early on 1900s the manufacturing industry finally developed the process at present called workers' compensation, which involves fairly automatic payments for workplace injuries without the necessity of lawsuits (Barkan, 2009). The delay of several decades betwixt the ascension of factories and industrial accidents and the eventual establishment of workers' bounty is a fine instance of cultural lag.

A more than recent example of cultural lag involves changes in child custody constabulary brought about by changes in reproductive applied science. Developments in reproductive technology accept allowed same-sex couples to have children conceived from a donated egg and/or donated sperm. If a aforementioned-sex couple later breaks up, information technology is not yet clear who should win custody of the couple'southward kid or children because traditional custody law is based on the premise of a divorce of a married heterosexual couple who are both the biological parents of their children. Withal custody law is slowly evolving to recognize the parental rights of same-sex couples. Some cases from California are illustrative.

In 2005, the California Supreme Court issued rulings in several cases involving lesbian parents who concluded their relationship. In determining custody and visitation rights and kid back up obligations, the court decided that the couples should be treated under the law as if they had been heterosexual parents, and it decided on behalf of the partners who were seeking custody/visitation rights and child support. More than generally, the court granted aforementioned-sexual practice parents all the legal rights and responsibilities of heterosexual parents. The change in marital law that is slowly occurring because of changes in reproductive technology is some other example of cultural lag. As the legal director of the National Eye for Lesbian Rights said of the California cases, "Same-sex couples are at present able to procreate and accept children, and the law has to take hold of up with that reality" (Paulson & Wood, 2005, p. 1).

The Natural Environs

Changes in the natural surround tin can also lead to changes in a society itself. Nosotros see the clearest evidence of this when a major hurricane, an earthquake, or another natural disaster strikes. Three recent disasters illustrate this miracle. In April 2010, an oil rig operated by BP, an international oil and free energy company, exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, creating what many observers called the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history; its effects on the ocean, marine animals, and the economies of states and cities affected past the oil spill volition be felt for decades to come. In January 2010, a devastating convulsion struck Haiti and killed more than 250,000 people, or most 2.5% of that nation's population. A calendar month after, an even stronger earthquake hit Chile. Although this earthquake killed only hundreds (it was relatively far from Chile'southward large cities and the Chilean buildings were sturdily built), it notwithstanding caused massive damage to the nation's infrastructure. The furnishings of these natural disasters on the economy and society of each of these two countries will certainly as well be felt for many years to come.

As is axiomatic in this photo taken in the backwash of the 2010 earthquake that devastated Republic of haiti, changes in the natural environment can lead to profound changes in a club. Ecology changes are one of the many sources of social change.

Slower changes in the environment can also have a big social bear on. Every bit noted earlier, one of the negative effects of industrialization has been the increase in pollution of our air, water, and footing. With estimates of the number of U.Due south. deaths from air pollution ranging from a low of 10,000 to a high of sixty,000 (Reiman & Leighton, 2010), pollution certainly has an of import impact on our lodge. Climate modify, a larger environmental problem, has also been relatively deadening in arriving but threatens the whole planet in means that climate change researchers accept already documented and will no doubt be examining for the rest of our lifetimes and beyond (Schneider, Rosencranz, Mastrandrea, & Kuntz-Duriseti, 2010). Chapter 20 "Social Change and the Environment", Department 20.3 "Society and the Environment" and Section xx.4 "Understanding the Environment" examine the surroundings at greater length.

Social Conflict: War and Protest

Change besides results from social conflict, including wars, ethnic conflict, efforts past social movements to alter gild, and efforts by their opponents to maintain the condition quo. The immediate bear on that wars have on societies is obvious, as the deaths of countless numbers of soldiers and civilians over the ages have afflicted not just the lives of their loved ones only also the course of whole nations. To take only 1 of many examples, the defeat of Germany in Earth War I led to a worsening economic system during the next decade that in plow helped fuel the rise of Hitler.

One of the many sad truisms of war is that its impact on a social club is greatest when the state of war takes place within the gild's boundaries. For case, the Republic of iraq state of war that began in 2003 involved 2 countries more any others, the The states and Republic of iraq. Because it took place in Iraq, many more Iraqis than Americans died or were wounded, and the state of war certainly affected Iraqi social club—its infrastructure, economy, natural resource, and and so along—far more than information technology afflicted American gild. Most Americans continued to live their normal lives, whereas most Iraqis had to struggle to survive the many ravages of war.

Historians and political scientists accept studied the effect of war on politics and the economy. War can change a nation's political and economic structures in obvious ways, every bit when the winning nation forces a new political system and leadership on the losing nation. Other political and economical changes brought past war are subtler. World War I provides an interesting example of such changes. Before the war, violent labor strikes were common in Britain and other European nations. When the war began, a sort of truce developed between management and labor, as workers wanted to appear patriotic by supporting the war effort and hoped that they would win important labor rights for doing and then. However, the truce before long dissolved after prices began to rise and wages did not. Labor-management conflict resumed and became very intense past the end of the state of war.

This disharmonize in turn forced European political and business leaders to grant several concessions to labor, which thus accomplished gains, however limited, in political and economic power. Labor'due south participation in the war attempt helped it win these concessions. As a historian summarized this connectedness,

By the end of the state of war, labor's wartime mobilization and participation had increased its relative ability within European societies. As a result, and despite the fact that endeavors to reward labor for its wartime cooperation were, in full general, provisional, partial, and one-half-hearted, it was nonetheless the case that labor achieved some existent gains. (Halperin, 2004, p. 155)

Other types of nonobvious social changes take resulted from diverse wars. For instance, the deaths of and so many soldiers during the American Civil War left many wives and mothers without their family'southward major breadwinner. Their poverty forced many of these women to plow to prostitution to earn an income, resulting in a rise in prostitution after the war (Marks, 1990). Some 80 years later, the interest of many African Americans in the U.S. war machine during World War Two helped begin the racial desegregation of the military. This change is widely credited with helping spur the hopes of African Americans in the South that racial desegregation would someday occur in their hometowns (McKeeby, 2008).

Social movements have besides been major forces for social change. Despite African American involvement in World War II, racial segregation in the S ended only afterwards thousands of African Americans, often putting their lives on the line for their cause, engaged in sit down-ins, marches, and massive demonstrations during the 1950s and 1960s. The Southern ceremonious rights motility is merely one of the many social movements that have changed American history, and we return to these movements in Chapter 21 "Collective Behavior and Social Movements".

Key Takeaways

• Major sources of social change include population growth and composition, culture and engineering science, the natural environment, and social conflict.
• Cultural lag refers to a delayed change in one sector of order in response to a modify in another sector of guild.

For Your Review

1. Write a brief essay in which you annotate on the advantages and disadvantages of cell phones for social relationships.
2. The text states that courts are commencement to grant same-sex couples the same parental rights and responsibilities that heterosexual couples have. Exercise you believe that this is a positive evolution or a negative development? Explain your answer.

References

Barkan, Due south. E. (2009). Law and society: An introduction. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Crowley, D., & Heyer, P. (2011). Communication in history: Technology, culture, lodge (6th ed.). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

Halperin, S. (2004). State of war and social change in modern Europe: The corking transformation revisited. Cambridge, England: Cambridge Academy Press.

Leonard, J. (1998, September 25). Crowding puts crunch on classrooms. The Los Angeles Times, p. B1.

Marks, P. (1990). Bicycles, bangs, and bloomers: The new woman in the popular press. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.

McKeeby, D. (2008, February 25). Finish of U.S. military segregation ready stage for rights motion. Retrieved from http://world wide web.america.gov/st/peopleplace-english/2008/February/20080225120859liameruoy0.9820215.html.

Ogburn, W. F. (1966). Social change with respect to cultural and original nature. New York, NY: Dell. (Original piece of work published1922).

Paulson, A., & Wood, D. B. (2005, Baronial 25). California court affirms gay parenting. The Christian Scientific discipline Monitor, p. 1.

Reiman, J., & Leighton, P. (2010). The rich become richer and the poor get prison: Ideology, class, and criminal justice (9th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Schneider, S. H., Rosencranz, A., Mastrandrea, M. D., & Kuntz-Duriseti, Grand. (Eds.). (2010). Climate modify science and policy. Washington, DC: Island Printing.

Source: https://open.lib.umn.edu/sociology/chapter/20-2-sources-of-social-change/

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