SOCIAL CHANGE AS A CONSEQUENCE OF GROWTH

The above analysis of change related to cultural goals and means, and to the attendant changes in institutions or in attitudes and values. Western sociology, particularly American sociology, also paid attention to changes in demography and to other changes brought about in society by technological innovations. We shall briefly allude to them here.

Demographic Change

While structures have a relative permanency, the occupants of various statuses keep on changing, partly because structures allow only limited tenure to members, and partly because members either move out of their own volition or die out. Thus, replacement of members is a common element in all social structures. Along with replacement, there might also be an enlargement of membership for a variety of reasons, including in-migration (the size is also affected by out-migration, but negatively) and birth. These affect the population profile in terms of age and sex composition. The institutions associated with the recruitment function—such as marriage and family—are also affected; so is the process of socialization and even its content. The science of demography handles many of these changes; the sociological consequences of demographic change, however, remain the key concern of sociologists.

Demographic changes are also measured in terms of geographical space. As the size of the community increases, it also affects the locality, including the residential pattern. The creation of new communities or a change in the character of the community—from rural to semi-urban to urban—brings in several new features and problems. The process of urbanization, and later the process of industrialization, attracted the attention of social researchers, contributing to the understanding of these processes of change. There are studies of

1. migration of individuals and of communities;
2. transformation of communities from small to large, rural to urban;
3. linkages between communities, including the folk-urban continuum. Such studies paved the way for the development of sub-specialties within the discipline, such as rural sociology, urban sociology and industrial sociology. These specialities contributed both to the understanding of structures (for example, typology of rural and urban communities in terms of their internal structures) as well as and to the processes of change associated with them (for example, suburbation and conurbation processes); and
4. problems of social disorganization (for example, delinquency and crime, prostitution, slums and poverty).

Social Effects of Innovation

We referred to theories of change at the macro level. Some of these theories relate change in societies with changes in technology. The shift from a food gathering and hunting economy came with the technology of agriculture, for example. Such an invention affected not only the economy, but also the totality of the social organization. The kind of group activity required for a hunting expedition is vastly different from the activity connected with settled agriculture.

What we notice at the macro level, that is, at the level of humanity as a whole, moving from one technological era to another, can also be observed at the level of individual societies, or at the level of sub-systems. Changes occurring in one area initiate a series of changes in other areas of society, reminding us of the integrative character of culture. A culture is not only a sum total of its parts; it is an integrated whole linking its various parts both functionally and meaningfully. Relating such changes, William F. Ogburn and Meyer F. Nimkoff wrote: ‘The tractor caused farm labour to migrate to towns. The motion picture has influenced manners and morals. The electric light brought baseball at night.⁴ Crime was affected by the automobile. Television has reduced reading and conversation.’ They wrote this in 1958; several such examples can be added to this inventory of change brought about by the rapidly changing technologies.

Ogburn and Nimkoff identified three different forms of ‘inventional influences’, namely dispersion, succession and convergence.