Notes_240809_081734-2.docx

**Transforming Society Lecture 2** Social transformation - is a self-driven societal process that changes the living conditions of people and their ways of life and the way they view time and material and non-material things they have and wish to have. \- In this process, it changes our perception...

**Transforming Society Lecture 2** Social transformation - is a self-driven societal process that changes the living conditions of people and their ways of life and the way they view time and material and non-material things they have and wish to have. \- In this process, it changes our perceptions of the past and future and causes us to lose our connection to the past and undermine our ability to manage our lives, which forces us to invent new, more efficient ways to live, lead us to become more creative and innovative. \- This subject primarily explain the current situation and identify the forces that are pulling all people and states apart. **1.Cultural Values** Multiple cultures are residing on the earth side by side. Cultures are very distinct from each other so are their cultural values. And these differences are making our world full of diversity. Here are some facts about culture and cultural values which will definitely interest you. US is a melting pot of cultures. This country resided by multiple cultures because of its acceptance of people from various ethnicities and backgrounds with open arms into their land. **What is Culture** Culture - is the manifestation of combined thought process, ideas, customs, rituals and social conduct of a particular community of people. \- The knowledge, attitude, belief, goals, morals and values shared by society is considered as a culture altogether. \- Globally there are five major cultures that exist: 1\. Indosphere 2\. Western culture 3\. Islamic culture 4\. Sinosphere 5\. Arabic 6\. Tibetan culture **Types of Culture:** There are two types of culture which are existing in this world. Here are those: **1. Material Culture:** The cultures which are the manifestations of some physical objects, spaces and resources created by people of that particular culture. ex. Homes, schools, mosques, churches, temples, factories, offices etc. do get included in this. **2. Non Material Culture:** The all elements of a culture which are intangible (which cannot be touched, hold, felt or tasted) examples of it are morals, rules, values, languages, beliefs, arts, literature, music, social roles, customs, traditions and many more. **What are Cultural Values?** Cultural values are a series of principles and values passed on generation after generation by our ancestors. \- A values the entire cultural community decides their own way of life. Those ideas decide how a person of that culture will behave and how they will lead their lives. **Importance of cultural values:** If one can see beyond the tangible cultural aspects then can see the actual importance of it. 1.Culture works like the vein (ugat, vessels where blood flows) of the society through which the life flows. 2\. Cultural values bind people together which makes them strong and united. 3\. Cultural values makes people learn tolerance and understand brotherhood. \- which paves ( maglatag )the path of social harmony, economic improvement and physical well being of the community and the others. **Examples of culture:** \- culture has multiple examples which are quite different from other culture's examples in nature. Here are the examples which can be observed in any culture: - Norms - Rituals and Ceremonies - Languages - Holidays - Festivals - Pastimes - Food - Architecture - Crafts - Fashion - Lifestyle - Clothing - Traditional Economy - Arts - Belief - Knowledge - Religion - Forms of government - Social organization - Literature - Music and many more. **The impact of cultural values on the culture itself:** A culture is nothing without its values. The cultural values are considered as the spine of any organizational culture to which they belong to. \- It provide the right guidance to the people which results in positive performances and behaviour. \- It affect people's attitude towards life and their way to allocate resources and improves their life skills. \- Any organization, association or group is very much dependant on their organizational culture. \- That is why they put efforts and take time upon making their employees, customers and the general public understand their core values. \- An organization is made by its people and the people should take care of and abide by its values. **National cultural value differences:** National values - are the ideas shared by people regarding what is good and right for the society they live in. National values depend on the two approaches which are contrasting in nature but trying to solve the same societal issue. - Individualism vs. Collectivism - Power distance - Avoidance of uncertainty - Egalitarianism regarding gender - Attitude towards time and future - Doing vs. Being - Assertiveness - Humane attitude - Satisfaction vs. Control **Therefore:** Cultural values are constructing and improving our society for our betterments. **2. Environment**  As is evident in this photo taken in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake that devastated Haiti, changes in the natural environment can lead to profound changes in a society. Environmental changes are one of the many sources of social change. \- Slower changes in the environment can also have a large social impact. \- one of the negative effects of industrialization has been the increase in pollution of our air, water, and ground. With estimates of the number of U.S. deaths from air pollution ranging from a low of 10,000 to a high of 60,000 (Reiman & Leighton, 2010), pollution certainly has an important impact on our society. \- Climate change, a larger environmental problem, has also been relatively slow in arriving but threatens the whole planet in ways that climate change researchers have already documented and will no doubt be examining for the rest of our lifetimes and beyond. **3. Social Conflict: War and Protest** Change also results from social conflict, including wars, ethnic conflict, efforts by social movements to change society, and efforts by their opponents to maintain the status quo. The immediate impact that wars have on societies is obvious, as the deaths of countless numbers of soldiers and civilians over the ages have affected not only the lives of their loved ones but also the course of whole nations. To take examples: the defeat of Germany in World War I led to a worsening economy during the next decade that in turn helped fuel the rise of Hitler. One of the many sad truisms of war is that its impact on a society is greatest when the war takes place within the society's boundaries. For example, the Iraq war that began in 2003 involved two countries more than any others, the United States and Iraq. Because it took place in Iraq, many more Iraqis than Americans died or were wounded, and the war certainly affected Iraqi society---its infrastructure, economy, natural resources, and so forth---far more than it affected American society. 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 have studied the effect of war on politics and the economy. War can change a nation's political and economic structures in obvious ways, as when the winning nation forces a new political system and leadership on the losing nation. Other political and economic changes brought by 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 so. However, the truce soon dissolved after prices began to rise and wages did not. Labor-management conflict resumed and became very intense by the end of the war. This conflict in turn forced European political and business leaders to grant several concessions to labor, which thus achieved gains, however limited, in political and economic power. Labor's participation in the war effort helped it win these concessions. As a historian summarized this connection, By the end of the war, labor's wartime mobilization and participation had increased its relative power within European societies. As a result, and despite the fact that endeavors to reward labor for its wartime cooperation were, in general, provisional, partial, and half-hearted, it was nonetheless the case that labor achieved some real gains. (Halperin, 2004, p. 155) Other types of nonobvious social changes have resulted from various wars. For example, the deaths of so many soldiers during the American Civil War left many wives and mothers without their family's major breadwinner. Their poverty forced many of these women to turn to prostitution to earn an income, resulting in a rise in prostitution after the war (Marks, 1990). Some 80 years later, the involvement of many African Americans in the U.S. armed forces during World War II 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). **4. Social movements** have also been major forces for social change. Despite African American involvement in World War II, racial segregation in the South ended only after thousands of African Americans. \- People have putting their lives on the line for their cause, engaged in sit-ins, marches, and massive demonstrations. The Southern civil rights movement is just one of the many social movements that have changed American history. **Explanations of social change** One way of explaining social change is to show causal connections between two or more processes. This may take the form of determinism or reductionism, both of which tend to explain social change by reducing it to one supposed autonomous and all-determining causal process. A more cautious assumption is that one process has relative causal priority, without implying that this process is completely autonomous and all-determining. What follows are some of the processes thought to contribute to social change: **1.Natural environment** Changes in the natural environment may result from climatic variations, natural disasters, or the spread of disease. For example, both the worsening of climatic conditions and the Black Death epidemics are thought to have contributed to the crisis of feudalism in 14th-century Europe. Changes in the natural environment may be either independent of human activities or caused by them. Deforestation, erosion, air pollution, and contemporary climate change belong to the latter category, and they in turn may have far-reaching social consequences. **2.Demographic processes** Population growth and increasing population density represent demographic forms of social change. Population growth may lead to geographic expansion of a society, military conflicts, and the intermingling of cultures. Increasing population density may stimulate technological innovations, which in turn may increase the division of labour, social differentiation, commercialization, and urbanization. This sort of process occurred in western Europe from the 11th to the 13th century and in England in the 18th century, where population growth spurred the Industrial Revolution. On the other hand, population growth may contribute to economic stagnation and increasing poverty, as may be witnessed in several developing countries today. **3.Technological innovations** Several theories of social evolution identify technological innovations as the most important determinants of societal change. Such technological breakthroughs as the smelting of iron, the introduction of the plow in agriculture, the invention of the steam engine, and the development of computers and the Internet have had lasting social consequences. **4.Economic processes** Technological changes are often considered in conjunction with economic processes. These include the formation and extension of markets, modifications of property relations (such as the change from feudal lord-peasant relations to contractual proprietor-tenant relations), and changes in the organization of labour (such as the change from independent craftsmen to factories). Historical materialism, as developed by Marx and Engels, is one of the more prominent theories that gives priority to economic processes, but it is not the only one. Indeed, materialist theories have even been developed in opposition to Marxism. One of these theories, the "logic of industrialization" thesis by the American scholar Clark Kerr and his colleagues, states that industrialization everywhere, including in the mid-20th-century communist countries, has similar consequences. **5.Ideas** Other theories have stressed the significance of ideas as causes of social change. Comte's law of three stages is such a theory. Weber regarded religious ideas as important contributors to economic development or stagnation; according to his controversial thesis, the individualistic ethic of Christianity, and in particular Calvinism, partially explains the rise of the capitalist spirit, which led to economic dynamism in the West. **6. Social movements** A change in collective ideas is not merely an intellectual process; it is often connected to the formation of new social movements. This in itself might be regarded as a potential cause of social change. Weber called attention to this factor in conjunction with his concept of "charismatic leadership." Charismatic leaders, by virtue of the extraordinary personal qualities attributed to them, are able to create a group of followers who are willing to break established rules. Examples include Jesus, Napoleon, and Hitler. In later social theory, however, the concept of charisma was trivialized to refer to almost any popular figure. **7. Political processes** Changes in the regulation of violence, in the organization of the state, and in international relations may also contribute to social change. For example, German sociologist Norbert Elias interpreted the formation of states in western Europe as a relatively autonomous process that led to increasing control of violence and, ultimately, to rising standards of self-control. According to other theories of political revolution, such as those proposed by the American historical sociologist Charles Tilly, the functioning of the state apparatus itself and the nature of interstate relations are of decisive importance in the outbreak of a revolution: it is only when the state is not able to fulfill its basic functions of maintaining law and order and defending territorial integrity that revolutionary groups have any chance of success. Each of these processes may contribute to others; none is the sole determinant of social change. One reason why deterministic or reductionist theories are often disproved is that the method for explaining the processes is not autonomous but must itself be explained. Moreover, social processes are often so intertwined that it would be misleading to consider them separately. For example, there are no fixed borders between economic and political processes, nor are there fixed boundaries between economic and technological processes. Technological change may in itself be regarded as a specific type of organizational or conceptual change. The causal connections between distinguishable social processes are a matter of degree and vary over time. ***Social and Cultural Change Process*** The fundamental components that define the social and cultural change process are: 1\. Discovery 2\. Innovation 3\. Diffusion 4\. Acculturationm 5\. Modernization. \- Discovery element is observed when society adopts regularly new changes in the existing socio-cultural pattern that can further occur in any aspect of the society, such as technology, philosophy, politics, culture, or economics. \- Innovation is the application of knowledge to create new ideas and techniques to make social change possible. Therefore, it is dependent on the level of human creativity in society and people's adaptability to new inventions. \- Diffusion relates to the adaption of a particular set of attributes of another society by the individuals of a particular society when they regularly contact each other. \- Acculturation is the process of continuous development in two or more cultures when they influence the behaviour patterns of each other through continuous direct contact. The phenomenon is mostly observed when a specific culture is influenced by modern culture and begins to adapt its norms and values. \- Modernization happens when society completely transforms itself according to the dominant ideas, lifestyles, and ways of communicating of the present time. Thus, modernization utterly changes the language, customs, ideas, and even the personal preferences of the people of the society under transformation. **Factors of Social and Cultural Change** As there are certain dimensions of social and cultural change, there are some prominent factors that bring about the changes in society. These include: 1\. Economy 2\. Technology 3\. Education 4\. Demography 5\. Natural Calamities \- The economic pattern of the society has a great influence on the behaviour of the society. Therefore, any significant change in a subsistence economy can lead to a change in the existing social and cultural patterns. For example, the hunting culture of primitive societies has transformed into today's modern industrialization process due to continuous economic changes. Thus, any changes in the economic aspect of society consequently lead to changes in all other aspects of society. \- Technology is the systematic knowledge of using different tools and machines to reduce human efforts in doing a particular task and make their lives more comfortable. Today's era is mostly called the technological era, when machines have replaced humans in almost every field of life. Such technological changes in the means of production, communication, transportation, etc., have led to urbanization and structural changes in the behaviour of societies. Education - Is another intervening variable in the process of social and cultural change as it is often regarded as an agent in the process of change that changes the attitude of the people living in a society. Similarly, education can eliminate many prejudices, narrow idles, and misunderstandings in society and thus promote collective efforts of individuals to adopt modern ways of living, which directly increases the speed of social change. \- Demography The comprehension of human populations in terms of qualitative or quantitative terms is called demography which also provides a great estimation of different compositions in the society based on gender, age, race, language, etc. These factors largely influence the behaviour pattern of society by impacting government policies and social movements. There are some other factors as well that cause socio-cultural change and are often categorized as physical factors. These include: \- Natural Calamities like famine, flood, cyclones, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes,s, and war, etc. The primary reason why these factors are important is that they are directly linked to the vast changes in the size, location, and population of the society. Therefore, there are many historical instances when a particular civilization was wiped out as a result of natural disasters, and a new civilization emerged.