Lecture 3, Sociological Approaches to Social Change

TOOLS FOR UNDERSTANDING SOCIAL CHANGE

At the beginning of Chapter 5, Harper and Leicht explain the difference between describing social change and explaining social change. In a way, this discussion summarizes what this class is all about – learning to understand and explain instead of just describing it. However, even the best analysis begins with a description of what has changed so we’ll spend some time on that also. In fact, your first paper will require you to describe an institutional change from a sociological perspective so that will be the first topic of this lecture.

The tools that sociologists use to describe social change are called concepts. Concepts are things which exist only in the abstract, only as shared mental images of something . English teachers divide nouns into many categories. Sociologists divide nouns into only two categories. The first category consists of nouns that refer to something that actually exists in a physical form. Books, cars, buildings, rivers, fish, John Smith, apples, bridges, and hammers fit into this category. The other category of nouns refers to things that are real but don’t actually exist in a physical form. Things like love, happiness, friendship, patriotism, social class, crime, fun, parenthood, and sociology are all abstractions. Their reality lies in the mental images we have of such things, not in the physical world. Sociologists, and scientists in general, refer to such nouns as “concepts.”

I discussed the concept of “institution” in the last lecture. Institutions don’t exist “out there.” The word is a term that sociologists use to characterize a pattern of activities. This concept is one of the main tools we will use in this course to understand social change. You will use the concept of institution in your first paper where I ask you to describe an institutional change.

IDEALISM: However, as I said earlier, sociologists don’t stop with a description of social change. They want to understand causes and consequences of change as well. This requires the use of other concepts. Harper and Liecht cover some of those concepts in Chapters 5 & 6. First they discuss causes. The most important discussion here, for our purposes, is the distinction between material and idealistic causes of change. Keep in mind that sociological definitions of the concepts differ from those we use in everyday life. While you probably think of idealism as referring to someone with high ideals, perhaps even a “starry eyed” idealist, sociologists think of idealism as the philosophical position that ideas matter- that our beliefs, values, ideals, hopes, and dreams influence what happens to society and to us. Human agency is seen as an important force in social change. An idealist,If an idealist were worried about gun safely, they would suggest that we educate children about the dangers of playing with guns. in the sociological sense, is one who believes that human ideas can affect the course of history and that we can fix social problems by recognizing the complexity of the system, taking responsibility, finding creative solutions, planning and implementing. Changes in people’s ideas cause social change.

MATERIALISM: And materialism to a sociologist is not quite the same thing it is to a non-sociologist. We don’t mean just a desire for material goods. For us materialism is a philosophical position that suggests that matter is the only reality and everything in the world can be understood and explained in terms of matter . “Matter” refers to material, things of substance, concrete; material things occupy space and have a tangible existence. Buildings, roads, mountains, and computers are all material objects.If a materialist were worried about gun safety, they would advocate that all guns be fitted with trigger locks so if children find them the guns can't be used. Materialism, in philosophy, is the belief that social change and individual attitudes and behaviors are the result of physical processes, not the ideas of individuals. Many sociologists also think that material forces are what determine the things that happen in a society or to an individual . Changes in material factors cause social change.

Harper and Leicht also discuss “patterns of change.” While these theories have some explanatory power, they are largely descriptive. That is, they describe the patterns of change that can be seen over a long period of time. They are more useful for understanding social change in the past, or on a very large scale, than they are for helping us understand the present. We will, however, come back to the dialectic model of change in the last part of the course so focus on this in your reading as well as materialism and idealism.

In Chapter 6, the authors review three different approaches to social change based on the three major theoretical current in sociology. If you don’t remember structural-functionalism, conflict theory, and the “interpretive” or symbolic interactionism from your 204 course, this is a good time to get out an introductory sociology text book or do some searching on the internet.

EXAMPLE OF A SOCIOLOGICAL ANALYSIS

What I want to do in this lecture is to pull together some of these elements so I can show you how a sociologist might look at social change in contemporary society. Keep in mind that this is the sort of thing I want you to do in your first paper. You’ll have a chance to practice in your group first. I’ve put the elements I want to include in my analysis into Diagram I. Take a few minutes to study the elements. This diagram is the framework for my analysis of a social change in the educational institution. Diagrams are helpful because we can see the overall structure of the analysis.

OBSERVATIONS

I begin with an observation about a change I have noticed in the behavior of college students. Some behaviors are quite different from when I was in college during the early 1970s and I wondered why. Notice that I am focusing on a small element in society. It is possible to do an analysis of change on a much larger scale but since this serves as an example for your first paper, I didn’t want it to be too complicated. You will want to select something manageable for your paper.

I observed (although you could learn this from research on the topic) that while my professors expected me to read four or five textbooks for a course in 1970, students today rarely have time to read more than one. This reflects a change in the role of student. While most students in the 1970s were just students, most students today work at one or more jobs and many have already established families so they must work around the constraints of family life. They have more roles to fill than earlier students so they have more role conflict.

Certain norms for the behavior of students have also changed. My fellow students and I were expected to attend each and every class and to remain there for the entire class period. We didn’t get extra points for attendance. It was simply a norm for students to be there. We didn’t arrive late or leave early. We didn’t take calls on our cell phones nor leave to go to the bathroom during class. All of those rules for behavior have changed. The norms for student behavior no longer require that students arrive on time, stay for the whole class, or even attend at all. This is also part of an institutional change. As a teacher, I may lament the “good old days,” but as a sociologist, I can analyze these changes only if I see them in a social context. I don’t discuss them as good or bad, right or wrong, positive or negative. I simply characterize them as changes in roles or norms.

It has also seemed to me that the whole climate of higher education has changed. When I went to college in California in the 1970s, people in that state thought that higher education was so important to the society that they paid for it. That’s right, there was no tuition at the state schools. We did have to pay a few “fees” that amounted to a couple of hundred dollars a year. But no tuition. I graduated from college with no student loans. Because it was essentially free, people went to college because they wanted to, not because they felt they had to. While many students were in college to “better themselves,” the phrase meant more than getting a better paying job. There were lots of jobs available at respectable wages for high school graduates. While discussions about the “relevance” of a college education were certainly underway, it was still commonly assumed that the purpose of a college education was to improve ones mind. To learn about art and literature; to understand government, history, and economics.

Today, at most public universities, the emphasis is on job training rather than education. Engineering, computer science, and business are the most prestigious majors. Students want (need) a major that leads to a job. English majors want to become teachers or journalists, political scientists focus on public policy, and sociology majors plan to go into the criminal justice system. These shifts suggest a change in the values and beliefs embedded in the educational institution. “Being educated” is no longer a valued goal; being well trained for a profession is. We believe that people should pay for their own educational experience because they, not society, will be the primary beneficiaries. State funding is cut and students must shoulder more and more of the costs for schooling. Training becomes more important than learning because getting a job is necessary to pay off student loans. Getting a degree rather than an education becomes the primary goal.

ANALYSIS

As a sociologist, I observe changes in the behavior of students and the societal supports for education. I begin my analysis by describing those changes in terms of patterns, the roles, norms, beliefs and values that make up the educational institution . That means we begin with institutional change. This puts the changes I’ve observed in a social context so I can understand why the changes occurred and, perhaps more importantly, what they might mean for the future. While this task can be limitless and endless, I can make it manageable by focusing on only a few elements. I’ve put these elements into Diagram I. Take a few minutes to study Diagram I. This diagram is the framework for my analysis of a social change in the educational institution. Diagrams are helpful because we can see the overall structure of the analysis.

When looking for causes of change in the educational institutional, one of the places to start is by looking at changes in other institution. As you read in last week’s lecture, all of the institutions in a society are connected and a change in one produces changes in the others. Many sociologists, especially those who use conflict or Marxist theory, believe that most social change begins with changes in the economic institution and in the material conditions in a society. As I look at the changes in the economic institution described by Harper & Leicht, I can see that needs of the modern economy have changed during the last thirty years. In the 1970s most workers were employed in an industrial economy with a growing service sector. The shift from industry to service required a lot of innovation and people who could think about things in new ways. Reading was most important way to acquire knowledge. The jobs that most people had required them to be present during specific hours. Hence the norms for students – reading many books and showing up for class on time. By the year 2000, students needed to fit into a postmodern/information age economy. Reading is less important than knowing how to surf the web and people can increasingly do work any time and any place. The old norms are no longer relevant. Specialization in new fields becomes more useful than general knowledge about the social or physical world (idealistic cause). There is too much knowledge available anyway because of our new technologies (material causes). No one can know it all but we can all look up anything we need to know. Students are trained to find information rather than generate knowledge. Values and beliefs about education change.

Changes in technology, a material factor, plays a key role in my analysis. The new technologies developed and in widespread use since 1970 are truly astonishing. When I was in college, there were no personal computers (only hard to access mainframes), no internet, no cell phones, or palm pilots. No MP3, not videos, DVDs, or Game Boys. All of these have become a part of our lives in the last 30 years. No wonder education has changed! When our culture (and remember that technology is a part of culture) changes this dramatically, institutions change also.

What about the future? What are consequences of the changes in the educational institution I’ve described? There are many directions, many possibilities. I’ve picked just one for my diagram. Since professors assign fewer books, fewer books are purchased (material cause). This has led to a consolidation of the publishing industry with fewer publishers. All the small ones have been absorbed by bigger ones. This means less diversity in ideas available to a wide audience (change in the nature of ideas at the cultural level). However, more ideas are available to us on the internet (a material condition) and students are better prepared by specialization for jobs in the information age (material condition, individual level). My diagram allows me to see connections between institutions, elements of culture, and the causes of social change. I can generate explanations and make predictions about the future using sociological concepts and ideas.