7 Main Factors which Affect the Social

Change in Every Society

By Saheb D
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Social Change characterizes every society. However its direction, speed and nature are affected
by several factors.
Main factors which affect social change can be discussed a follows:
1. Natural Factors:
Natural forces and factors play an important role in unifying or disintegrating the society.
Although human beings have made tremendous progress during the last 150 years or so, yet they
have not been able to wield full control over the nature.
A storm, earthquake, flood, drought, disease and similar natural events even today can disrupt the
social system. Natural calamities like floods, earthquakes, draughts, famines and other natural
disasters always force changes in the social conditions and life of the affected people.
On the one hand these factors and forces act as a source of big loss for the victims; on the other
hand these initiate efforts aimed at rapid reconstruction and development. As such, the natural
factors can on the one hand, cause havoc in physical conditions of social life, these may also
affect the social conditions in a positive way.
Large scale floods in Pakistan in August 2010 inflicted very heavy losses on more than 10
million people of the country. At the same time, these gave rise to very comprehensive human
attempts at socio-economic reconstruction and development. Haiti is now getting rebuilt after the
devastating earthquake of 2010.
2. Geographical Factors of Social Change:
The geographical conditions always affect the social system and act as factors of social change.
The cultural life of the people depends upon the physical environment. Progress also depends
upon the availability of natural resources, their exploitation and how are these being recouped
and preserved.
The climate always affects the socio-economic activities of the people. For instance, there is little
economic activity at both poles (North and South) due to intense and long spells of cold the

speed of social change remains negligible. On the other hand, there is always an intense activity
in temperate regions (neither too cold nor too warm), and consequently the speed of social
changes is quite fast.
It is necessary to remember that physical environment changes slowly and in a society social
change can come at a fast rate. As such geographic factors are not the sole determining factors of
social change.
Social Change never comes due to any single factor. During the last several countries there have
been no appreciable change in the physical environment of Europe and yet during the same
period a big social change came in European societies under the impact of the technology
revolution of the 20th century.
3. Biological Factors:
Biological factors also affect social change. Biological factors are those factors which determine
the structure, selection and hereditary qualities of generations. The human element is ever
changing. Each new generation is different from previous generation. It is different in form, ideas
and in many other ways from the one gone before.
Darwin and Spencer are of the opinion that each generation and its members have to compromise
with the physical environment. Only those persons survive in the struggle for life who are fit and
are able to live, or those, in other words, who have the ability to face the physical conditions. The
weak ones get destroyed. The process of the survival of the fittest affects the social organization.
4. Demographic Factors:
The Demographic factors always influence the process and nature of Social Change. The
population increase or decrease always brings social problems. When the birth-rate in a society
exceeds death-rate, population begins to rise. A constantly rising population gives birth to
poverty, unemployment, disease and several other related problems.
On the other hand, a low birth-rate means leads to decrease in the size of the population. When
population is low, there are fewer skilled hands available and the country cannot make full use of
the natural resources. The social conditions deteriorate the size of families shrink and it affects
the social relations.
Even the sex ratio of in a society greatly influences social order. When in a society the number of
women is more than men, the custom of polygamy sets in. On the contrary, if there are more men
than women, it often gives rise to polyandry. When women outnumber men, dowry system
becomes common, when men outnumber women the custom of bride valuation starts.
Falling ratio of females in society always creates a dangerous imbalance in society. Population
always influences social institutions, relations, social structure, values and ideals. Demographic
factors have large and profound bearing on the society as well as on the process of social change.

5. Socio-economic Factors:
The economic factors constitute an important factor of social change. Marx said that the entire
social structure of a country is determined by economic factors i.e the means of production and
distribution of material means of production and distribution. When there are changes in the
means of production i.e the material productive forces of society, it is always changes the social
organization.
The birth of the institutions of marriage and family took place under the influence of the means
of production of material means of livelihood. With the birth of family wealth and possessions
became important.
When the society graduated to agricultural stage, the social organization grew more complex.
People settled down at a particular place for raising crops. Life became stable and located and
the villages came into being. Agriculture gave rise to allied industries. With the division of
labour the society got divided into several classes. The institution of kingship and feudalism was
born during this period.
The agriculture stage gave way to the industrial stage. In the era of Industrial revolution several
inventions came to be made and machine system of production came into existence. All this
brought about drastic changes in the social set-up.
The problem of housing cropped up in the cities. Urbanisation came into play. The problem of
maintaining law and order and the need for providing civic amenities came to very big. More and
more ways of entertainment came to be developed.
The joint family system suffered a decline and the nucleus family came to be the basic social
unit. Women also became a work force. Male-female relations got changed when women also
started working in factories, offices and shops.
The condition of women got ameliorated in developed societies. The social values, norms and
traditions underwent a big change. Thus, socioeconomic factors have been and continue to be
fundamentally important factors of social change but these are not the only determinants of.
6. Cultural Factors:
The cultural factors also play a role in bringing about social change. Our social life depends upon
our beliefs, ideas, values, customs, conventions, institutions and the like. When there is a change
in these, it influences the social life. For example, let us (consider the system of marriage. To
begin with, the ceremonies were religious and people regarded marriage as something sacred and
irrevocable.
Today we hold a different view. Marriage is held be good for personal comfort. It has affected
the thinking in favour of irrevocability of marriage and consequently the number of divorcees
has registered a big increase.

The view regarding the issues (children born out of marriage) has undergone a change. Today all
western societies have been living with children born to unwed mothers and children belonging
to broken families. In India, the mad love of a male child and the short-sighted view of girl-child
as a burden have together given rise to the evil and inhuman and dangerous, practice of female
feticide. The pressures of modern industrial culture have forced the people to practice small
family norms.
The relations between the parents and children have undergone a big change. The new love and
need for working couples has acted j as a source of big change in family relations and culture.
Thus, socio-economic and cultural factors always act as big and formidable factors of social
change.
7. Science and Technology as factors of Social Change:
In contemporary times science and technology happens to be the most important factor of social
change. New scientific inventions and technologies always greatly influence the social life.
Ogburn and Nimkoff rightly observe, The most wonderful and universal phenomenon of
modern life is not capitalism, but science and technology and capitalism is only its by product.
Mechanisation brings changes in the economic structure and relations. This leads to a change in
old values, norms and ideals. Technology brings about changes in the physical environment and
the material culture of each society which in turn gives birth to social change.

Social Conflict
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 just one of many 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. In a less familiar example, the deaths of so many soldiers during the American Civil War
left many wives and mothers without their familys major breadwinner. Many of these women
thus had to turn to prostitution to earn an income, helping to fuel a rise in prostitution after the
war (Marks, 1990). [12]
Social movements have also been major forces for social change. Racial segregation in the South
ended only after thousands of African Americans, often putting their lives on the line for their
cause, engaged in sit-ins, marches, and massive demonstrations during the 1950s and 1960s. The
Southern civil rights movement is just one of the many social movements that have changed
American history, and we return to these movements later in the chapter.
CONFLICT THEORY

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Conflict theory emphasizes the role of coercion and power in producing social order. This
perspective is derived from the works of Karl Marx, who saw society as fragmented into groups
that compete for social and economic resources. Social order is maintained by domination, with
power in the hands of those with the greatest political, economic, and social resources. When
consensus exists, it is attributable to people being united around common interests, often in
opposition to other groups.
Marx theorized that the work of producing consensus was done in the "superstructure" of
society--which is composed of social institutions, political structures, and culture--and what it
produced consensus for was the "base," the economic relations of production (Read more about
Marx's theory of base and superstructure here). Following on the heels of Marx, Italian scholar
and activist Antonio Gramsci argued that consensus to rule is achieved in large part through
cultural hegemony, which refers to the dominant group's ability to attain consent to their rule
through ideas, norms, values, and beliefs.
According to conflict theory, inequality exists because those in control of a disproportionate
share of societys resources actively defend their advantages. The masses are not bound to
society by their shared values, but by coercion at the hands of those in power. This perspective
emphasizes social control, not consensus and conformity. Groups and individuals advance their
own interests, struggling over control of societal resources.
Those with the most resources exercise power over others with inequality and power struggles
result. There is great attention paid to class, race, and gender in this perspective because they are
seen as the grounds of the most pertinent and enduring struggles in society.
Whereas most other sociological theories focus on the positive aspects of society, conflict
perspective focuses on the negative, conflicted, and ever-changing nature of society. Unlike
functionalists who defend the status quo, avoid social change, and believe people cooperate to
effect social order, conflict theorists challenge the status quo, encourage social change (even
when this means social revolution), and believe rich and powerful people force social order on
the poor and the weak. Conflict theorists, for example, may interpret an elite board of regents
raising tuition to pay for esoteric new programs that raise the prestige of a local college as selfserving rather than as beneficial for students.
Whereas American sociologists in the 1940s and 1950s generally ignored the conflict perspective
in favor of the functionalist, the tumultuous 1960s saw American sociologists gain considerable
interest in conflict theory. They also expanded Marx's idea that the key conflict in society was
strictly economic. Today, conflict theorists find social conflict between any groups in which the
potential for inequality exists: racial, gender, religious, political, economic, and so on. Conflict
theorists note that unequal groups usually have conflicting values and agendas, causing them to
compete against one another. This constant competition between groups forms the basis for the
ever-changing nature of society. Critics of the conflict perspective suggest that it glosses over the
complexities and nuances of everyday life and relationships of power.

CULTURAL LAG

Cultural Lag is a common societal phenomenon due to the tendency of material culture to
evolve and change rapidly while non-material culture tends to resist change and remain
fixed for a far longer period of time. Due to the opposing nature of these two aspects of
culture, adaptation of new technology becomes rather difficult. This distinction between
material and non-material culture is also a contribution of Ogburn's 1922 work on social
change.
9. Cultural Lag creates problems for a society in a multitude of ways. Where new
technologies are considered. For example, the advent of stem cell research has given rise
to many new, potentially beneficial medical technologies; however these new
technologies have also raised serious ethical questions about the use of stem cells in
medicine.
The birth rate (technically, births/population rate) is the total number of live births
per 1,000 of a population in a year.[
Mortality rate, or death rate,[1] is a measure of the number of deaths (in general,
or due to a specific cause) in a particular population, scaled to the size of that
population, per unit of time

A Definition of Migration
The definition of the word can be "the movement of people from one place to another".
There are two main types of migration: first, internal migration, i.e. migration within one
country, and secondly international migration, which means the movement from one country to
another.
A good example of internal migration is the movement from East Germany to West Germany,
which causes big problems for East Germany. A good example of international migration is the
movement from third-world countries to Europe or America.
The next question is: What makes people migrate from one place to another?
The reasons for migration can be divided into two main aspects, the so-called "push" and "pull"
factors.
Push factors are those in their old place which force people to move. For example, there may be
civil wars or wars in general in the country, but political or religious oppression, climate changes,
lack of jobs or simply poverty are all important push factors.
Pull factors are factors in the target country which encourage people to move; these include
peace and safety, a chance of a better job, better education, social security, a better standard of
living in general as well as political and religious freedom.

Cultural Lag
The role played by material inventions, that is, by technology, in social change probably received
most emphasis in the work of William F. Ogburn. It was Ogburn, also, who was chiefly
responsible for the idea that the rate of invention within society is a function of the size of the
existing culture base. He saw the rate of material invention as increasing with the passage of
time.Ogburn believed that material and non-material cultures change in different ways. Change
in material culture is believed to have a marked directional or progressive character. This is
because there are agreed-upon standards of efficiency that are used to evaluate material
inventions. To use air-planes, as an example, we keep working to develop planes that will fly,
higher and faster, and carry more payloads on a lower unit cost. Because airplanes can be
measured against these standards, inventions in this area appear rapidly and predictably. In the
area of non-material culture, on the other hand there often are no such generally accepted
standards. Whether one prefers a Hussain, a Picasso, or a Gainsborough, for example, is a matter
of taste, and styles of painting fluctuate unevenly. Similarly, in institutions such as government
and the economic system there are competing forms of styles, Governments may be
dictatorships, oligarchies, republics or democracies.
Economic system includes communist, socialist, feudal, and capitalist ones. As far as can be told,
there is no regular progression from one form of government or economic system to another. The
obvious directional character of change in material culture is lacking in many areas of nonmaterial culture. In addition to the difference in the directional character of change, Ogburn and
others believe that material culture tends to change faster than non-material culture. Certainly
one of the imperative aspects of modern American life is the tremendous development of
technology. Within this century, life has been transformed by invention of the radio, TV,
automobiles, airplanes, rockets, transistors, and computers and so on. While this has been
happening in material culture, change in government, economic system, family life, education,
and religion seems to have been much slower. This difference in rates of cultural change led
Ogburn to formulate the concept of culture lag. Material inventions, he believed bring changes
that require adjustments in various areas of non-material culture.Invention of the automobile, for
instance, freed young people from direct parental observation, made it possible for them to work
at distances from their homes, and, among other things, facilitated crime by making escape
easier. Half a century earlier, families still were structured as they were in the era of the family
farm when young people were under continuous observation and worked right on the homestead.
Culture lag is defined as the time between the appearance of a new material invention and the
making of appropriate adjustments in corresponding area of non-material culture. This time is
often long. It was over fifty years, for example, after the typewriter was invented before it was
used systematically in offices. Even today, we may have a family system better adapted to a farm
economy than to an urban industrial one, and nuclear weapons exist in a diplomatic atmosphere
attuned to the nineteenth century. As the discussion implies, the concept of culture lag is
associated with the definition of social problems. Scholars envision some balance or adjustment
existing between material and non-material cultures. That balance is upset by the appearance of
raw material objects. The resulting imbalance is defined as a social problem until non-material
culture changes in adjustment to the new technology.