Chapter 18: Social Change and Modernization

 Social change occurs in any society that is willing to develop and grow. Social change is very important for a society to become the best they can be. Modernization goes along with social change for a society must change to become modernized. As modernization occurs, so does social change.

Sociologists define social change as alterations in various aspects of a society over time. A cyclical theory of social change views change from a historical perspective; societies arise, go through various stages o development, and then decline. Oswald Spengler suggested that all societies pass through four stages – childhood, youth, adulthood, and old age. Pitirim Sorokin's view was that all societies fluctuate between two extreme forms of culture. In an ideational culture, truth and knowledge are sought through faith or religion. The other extreme is a sensate culture, where people seek knowledge through science. Sometimes, societies reach a middle point between those extremes, which he called the idealistic culture. Sorokin referred to this natural tendency (of swinging back and forth between ideational and sensate cultures) toward social change as the principle of immanent change.evolutionary theory of social change views change as a process that moves in one direction – toward increasing complexity. Evolutionary theorists of the 1800s believed that all societies progress through the same distinct stages of social development. By the early 1920s, most social scientists had rejected evolutionary theory. It did not remain out of favor for long, however. Modern evolutionary theorists do not claim that all societies pass through a single set of distinct stages of development on their way toward some ideal of Western society, they hold that societies have tendency to become more complex over time. Talcott Parsons, a functionalist theorist, offered the equilibrium theory of social change, which argued that a change in one part of the system produces change in all of the other parts of the system. According to the conflict theory of social change, change results from conflicts between groups groups with opposing interests. Karl Marx saw violence as a necessary part of social change. Ralf Dahrendorf believed, opposing Marx, that social conflict can take many forms.

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Modernization is the process by which a society's social institutions become increasingly complex as the society moves toward industrialization. According to sociologists' view of modernization theory, the more-developed nations modernized because they were the first to industrialize. Immanuel Wallerstein proposed the world-system theory, which views modernization in terms of the world economy. Core nations are the most powerful developed nations – the United States, Canada, Japan, and the countries of Western Europe – that form the center, or core, of the world economy. Peripheral nations are the poor countries in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. Semiperipheral nations are somewhere in between core and peripheral nations. A country's external debt is the amount it owes to foreign individuals, organizations, companies, and governments. Modernization has both negative and positive consequences for social life and the natural environment. Modernization offers many benefits to developing countries. Modernization is often accompanied by the arrival of electricity and communication technology such as telephones. The very same technological innovations that improve the standard of living and prolong life in modern societies also give rise to problems. The family and religion lose some of their traditional authority in modern society. Modernization has brought with it the problems of soil, water, and air pollution. Modern technology also gives rise to moral and ethical questions.

As we can see social change is inevitable and important to a developing society. Modernization plays a big role in the development of nations from peripheral to core nations possibly in the future. Modernization is great for a society to grow but sometimes the growing of a society can cause damage to other societies or to the environment around them.