Chapter 18. Social Movements and Social Change
18.3 Social Change
William Little and Ron McGivern
The dynamics of collective behaviour and social movements are just two of the forces driving social change, which is the change in society created through social movements as well as external factors like environmental shifts or technological innovations. Essentially, any disruptive shift in the status quo, be it intentional or random, human-caused or natural, can lead to social change.
In other chapters of the textbook, various causes of social change have been discussed. Karl Marx explained social change as a product of struggles and inequalities over the control and distribution of resources in societies. Emile Durkheim described the increasing specialization and differentiation of social institutions as a product of the increased “moral density” of populations (i.e.,increased contact and interaction among people) and corresponding competition for scarce resources. Max Weber emphasized the introduction of rationalization and technology as processes of organizational efficiency that had profound effects on all areas of life. Other chapters will discuss the effect of population dynamics and ecological processes on social change.
This chapter ends by focusing on the impact of technological innovation on social change.
What is Technology?
It is easy to look at the latest sleek tiny Apple product and think that technology is only recently a part of our world. But from the steam engine to the most cutting-edge robotic surgery tools, technology describes the application of science to address the problems of daily life. Students might look back at the enormous and clunky computers of the 1970s that had about as much storage as an iPod Shuffle and roll their eyes in disbelief. But chances are 30 years from now today’s skinny laptops and sleek Bluetooth speakers will look just as archaic.
Technology is therefore not merely a product of the modern era. For example, fire, stone tools and aquaculture were important forms of technology developed during the Stone Age. Archaeological evidence shows early humans innovating on their stone tools from the earliest sharpened stones to Levallois stone knives to geometric microliths (Clark, 1969). Just as the availability of digital technology shapes how people live today, the creation of stone tools changed how premodern humans lived, adapted to changes in the environment and climate, and how well they ate.
From the first calculator, invented in 2400 BCE in Babylon in the form of an abacus, to the predecessor of the modern computer, created in 1882 by Charles Babbage, technological innovations often follow lines of development which make advancements on previous iterations. These define technological lineages that have profound effects on human society.
For example, White (1962) describes the adoption of the stirrup in early medieval Europe from China as an event that revolutionized warfare and created the conditions f