Professional Documents
Culture Documents
• Gerhard Lenski
•
Hunting Gathering
Industria
Cyclic theories
• Societies pass through a series of
stages but instead of ending in a
final stage societies return to the
starting point for another round.
• Societies go through a cycle of birth ,
growth and decline.
•
Processes of Social Change
• William F. Ogburn described the three
processes of social change;
1.Discovery
2.Invention
3.Diffusion
• A discovery is a shared human
perception of an aspect of reality
which already exists.
• A reality becomes part of culture only
after its discovery.
• A discovery becomes a factor in
social change only when it is put to
use.
• When new knowledge is used to
develop new technology vast
changes follow.
• An invention is a new combination or
new use of existing knowledge.
• Diffusion is the spread of culture
traits from group to group.
• It is a two-way process
• FACTORS IN THE RATE OF CHANGE
• Isolation and contacts
• Traditional and homogenous Vs
modern and heterogeneous
• Looking and not looking for new
innovations and technologies.
• Progress and looking to the future Vs
Fate and looking to the past.
• The culture base, accumulation of
knowledge and material available
to an inventor.
Effects of social changes
• William F. Ogburn distinguished three
social effects of invention.
•
• Dispersion
• Succession
• Convergence
•
•
•
• Dispersion is Multiple effects of a single
invention
• For example, many effects of
automobile,
•
• Succession , the derivative social effects
of a single invention.
• Steam Engine to industrialization to
Urbanization to Nuclear Family to More
Social Mobility to Class Consciousness
•
• Convergence , coming together of
the several effects of different
invention. For Example,
• Computer technology + Sand
Rainbowing by dredging ships +
under water survival made Palm
Island possible.
•
•
Cultural Lag
• Concept was developed by Ogburn
(1922).
• The time interval between the arrival
of a change and the completion of
the adaptation it requires.
• A cultural lag exists whenever any
aspect of the culture lags behind
another aspect which it is related.
• The concept applies to differing rates
of change within a society.