Rev SM 1 Intro to Col Beh

Soc change, aka social development, is a general term which refers to a change in the nature, the social institutions, the social behavior or the social relations of a society, community of people, or other social structures

Soc change is any event or action that affects a group of individuals that have shared values or characteristics & the acts of advocacy for the cause of changing society in a normative way

Soc change is the alteration in the underlying structure of a social object or situation over a period of time

THERE IS PERVASIVE SOCIAL CHANGE; IN THE PAST, SOME SOCIETIES WERE STABLE / UNCHANGING FOR CENTURIES; TODAY CHANGE IS THE NORM & IT IS INCREASING IN PACE

In the contemporary world, everyone has experienced change, & people expect more, rapid change in the future

It must be remembered that rapid soc change is not the norm throughout history in that in many eras, esp the Mid Ages in Euro, or the the Chinese Dynasties from about 1 AD to the 1700s, life changed little for the common family

Understanding soc change means understanding the degree of any modification in the basic instits during a specific period as well as an understanding of what remains stable

Soc scientists note that soc change occurs in different soc structures at different rates

In our rapidly changing world, there are continuities from the long distant past such as major religious systems, gender / pairing customs such as monogamy, broad soc instit such as the military, etc.

The concept of cultural lag, as developed by conflict theorists, notes that cultures inevitably change at different rates, w/ some lagging behind others

Soc change encompasses everything from revolution & paradigm shifts, to narrow changes such as a particular cause w/in small town govt

EARLY THEORIES OF SOCIAL CHANGE WERE OFTEN CRITICAL OF IT & THOSE WHO FOMENTED IT

Theories of soc change examine the success or failure of different political systems, globalization, democratization, development & econ growth

Some soc changes that are beneficial to society, while others may result in negative side effects or consequences that undermine or eliminate existing ways of life that are considered positive

One of the earliest, albeit non scientific, beliefs about social change the idea of decline or degeneration, or, in religious terms, the fall from an original state of grace, connected w/ theology

Ancient philosophers developed the idea that there was little soc change & instead 'history' was comprised largely of cyclical change, a pattern of subsequent & recurring phases of growth & decline, & the social cycles

The idea of cyclical change persists into the modern era

CONTEMPORARY THEORIES OF SOCIAL CHANGE RECOGNIZE IT AS A NEW, COMPLEX, SOCIAL PHENOMENON THAT IS CENTRAL TO MODERN SOCIETY

Beginning in the late mid age, the idea of continuous social progress was recognized

While there are many important theory of social change, the two approached of social evolution & historical materialism are the predominant theories

Social evolution is a gradual process of social change whereby a society develops, increases in complexity, & offers it members a better quality of life

Soc evol also tries to relate biological & soc change

See Also: Deviance

	THE CATEGORIZATION OF COLLECTIVE BEHAVIOR
	Early on in CB theory, i.e. in the 1800s, theorists noted the existence of crowd behavior that exhibited significantly different qualities from other forms of behavior known to social scientists.
	Gustave LeBon, a frightened aristocrat, interpreted the crowds of the French Revolution as irrational reversions to animal emotion
	In the 1900s, at the U of Chicago, Robert Park & Herbert Blumer saw crowds as emotional, but as capable of any emotion, not only the negative ones of anger & fear
	Social scientists now recognize that there are both compact & diffuse crowds
	Compact crowds are those whose participants are assembled in one place while diffuse crowds are those in in which the participants are not assembled in one place
	Turner & Killian's examples of diffuse crowds include stock market booms, panics about sexual perils, "Red scares" & more
	Some psychologists have suggested that there are three fundamental human emotions, fear, joy, & anger
	Smelser and others have proposed three corresponding forms of the crowd, including the panic, the craze & the hostile outburst, which today is usually called a riot
	In the panic, fear is the dominant emotion; in the craze, joy is the dominant emotion; in the riot, anger is the dominant emotion
	Park develop the categories of the public & the mass to distinguish btwn diffuse crowds concerned w/ issues or events from diffuse crowds concerned w/ mass media issues or events
	For Park, the public expresses a common emotion or response to various issues as a result of exposure to conversation, & thus every issue has a public
	For Park, the masses, or a mass, expresses a common emotion or response not as a result of conversation, but as a result of exposure to a mass media event whether it might be a TV report or just the diffuse knowledge that a widespread action is occurring
	Blumer recognized the final major form of CB in the social movements which are typically distinguished from a crowd, a public or a mass by the fact that they typically have a structure and persistence
	Because the field of CB is relatively, new the broad categories of crowds, publics, masses, & social mvmts are frequently re-categorized into other theoretical frameworks in order to highlight various qualities or theories of action
	There are EIGHT basic types of collective behavior examined by social scientists today, including: 1. Crowd Behavior a. Mass Suicides b. Mob Violence c. Riots 2. Non Consumer Fashions & Fads 3. Consumer Collective Behavior a. Fashions b. Fads c. Crazes d. Panics 4. Rumors 5. Public Opinion 6. Mass Hysteria a. Physical b. Sightings & Miracles 7. Terrorism 8. Social Movements
	Collective behavior occurs in so many forms that social scientists have reached few conclusions about its origins, development, and consequences
	Some investigators believe the pace of modern life and the growth of mass communications have increased the amount of collective behavior
	COLLECTIVE BEHAVIOR, ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR & INSTITUTIONAL BEHAVIOR
	While collective, organizational, & institutional behaviors have some common characteristics, & often overlap in practice, they are often distinct fields of inquiry
	Routine or institutionalized social behavior, including that carried out by any of the 10 social institutions (family, religion, politics, etc.), such as war, econ activity, family activity, media activity, political activity etc. is not collective behavior
	Many types of behavior are so common as to be regularized or institutionalized by society
	Park was one of the first social scientists to expand the realm of collective behavior beyond that of the crowd, recognizing the public itself as an important agent of social change
	For Park, many social changes begin with slow, cumulative shifts in public opinion, which end the old social patterns, & begin the new social patterns
	Herbert Blumer was Park's student, & he expanded the actors of collective behavior beyond the crowd to include the collectivities of social movements & the public
	For Blumer the FOUR actors or collectivities of collective behavior include 1. the crowd 2. the mass 3. social movements 4. the public
	Organizational behavior is not considered to be collective behavior & generally includes groups that are governed by established rules or procedures which have the force of tradition behind them
	In contrast to collectivities, org behavior often is governed by rules or laws such as Robert's Rule of Order or the rules of a bureaucracy
	Collectivities are not guided in a straightforward fashion by the culture, norms, ideology, etc. of the society
	Collectivities are informal in that they lack defined meanings, goals, procedures
	Institutional behavior is not considered to be collective behavior but generally is less organized than org behavior
	Institutional Behavior Family Play Religion School Work
	Institutional behavior is guided by the culture of the larger society
	CONTINUITY IN BEHAVIOR FOR CHANGE & SOCIAL CHANGE
	There is a continuum of behavior that ranges from individual behavior, to small group behavior, collective behavior, organizational behavior, institutional behavior, etc.
	Weller and Quarantelli propose a typology that ranges from "normal" or routine behavior to new behavior or social change
	1. Normal behavior generally occurs in organizations or institutions by well established social actors who follow well established norms
	2. Non-routine normal behavior occurs when normal social relations endure but norms emerge as occurs w/ hospital staff in a disaster where old actors establish relatively new norms
	3. Emergent, routine social behavior occurs when a new collectivity emerges & follows conventional norms
	An example of emergent, routine social behavior w/ a new collectivity can be seen in the historically recent rise of sports fans who are following the old norms of watching sports, but are emergent in the sense that they are a mass mvmt which is generating new attention & a new relationship w/ other institutions & actors
	4. Social change or new behavior occurs when there are emergent norms, actors & social relationships as when a new collectivity acts in new, unique ways establishing new norms in the process
	An example of emergent norms, actors, & social relationships can be seen in the Crusades or the civil rights mvmt
	For Blumer, social change is normal, as normal as the established social order in the sense that it is always occurring, but it is not normal in the sense that it occurs outside of the norms of society
	Social change is abnormal, in that it challenges, confronts or in some manner causes disruption in the established social order
	For Blumer a social movement: "... takes on the character of a society," developing a culture, a social organization, a new scheme of life
	For Blumer a social movements were not necessarily under the influence of custom, tradition, conventions, rules or institutional regulations
	For Blumer the examination of collective behavior is concerned with the way in which the social order comes into existence
	Collective behavior is "extra-institutional" in that it is outside of everyday social behavior which always takes place in one of the ten social institutions
	At first CB was considered the opposite of institutional behavior (IB).
	IB may be defined as people governed by norms, folkways, mores, and laws

	RATIONAL & NON RATIONAL MOTIVATIONS IN CB
	As the study of CB developed, social scientists came to understand that people cast aside norms and acted on emotion or suggestibility or unsocialized impulses as opposed to the standard norms of IB
	Early in the study of CB, some social scientists stressed rational calculation
	Early in the study of CB, some social scientists proposed that CB took place under the governance of emergent norms
	Today, some social scientists propose that CB occurs because individuals find solidarity of voice for an amorphous norm, & develop a shared definition of right & wrong
	People riot, etc. because they find a new definition of right and wrong
	Emergent norms may include the redefinition of right and wrong as seen when the public became convinced that segregation was wrong
	Perhaps the simplest case of CB is permissiveness, where actors see wrong behavior as permissible under the circumstances
	Only in the case of looting do people come to accept the logic that they are taking what is rightfully theirs, and yet opportunities to steal always exist
	Under normal, non-looting conditions the opportunity to steal exists, but norms are not redefined to make it acceptable
	Passengers on the Titanic defined panic as unacceptable & defined a sense of necessity of heroic behavior
	More complex CB requires emergent norms that are permissible and obligatory as in the case of war, the environment, etc.
	People come to act collectively when the conditions or event are sufficiently outside the range of ordinary happenings so that people turn to others for help and support in interpreting and responding
	People come to act collectively when there is a ready availability of pre-existing social groups that act collectively outside of the norm
	People come to act collectively because people tend to form ad hoc groups on basis of some recognizable informal, or minimal grouping
	CB is distinctive from other types of soc beh because it requires more complex decision making & communications than individual behavior because of the necessity of a complex division of labor & coordination of labor
	CB is distinctive from other types of social behavior because the use of pre-existing communication networks such as in the community, or the mass media is essential
	CB is distinctive from other types of social behavior because problems of communication and coordination, etc. are much greater for sustained than for transitory action
	EXPLANATIONS OF COLLECTIVE BEHAVIOR
	1. Contagion theory focuses on special psychological mechanisms including moods, attitudes, communications
	2. The emergent norm perspective focuses on emergent definition of the situation, how actors create meaning & rules
	3. Value-added theory integrates functional theory into an analysis of collective behavior & assumes that col beh is functional / useful for society
	4. The assembly-sociocybernetic-symbolic-interactionist/behaviorist (AS-SIB) holds that behavior converges because of the common meaningful interpretations or instructions created by participants & other
	5. Individualist theories assume that collective behavior comes from w/in the individual & sees individual motivations as the key to understanding why collective behavior occurs
	6. Convergence theory focuses on characteristics and predispositions which individuals bring to the situation
Link	Figure on a Model of Collective Behavior by Turner & Killian
	A Model of Collective Behavior demonstrates that Precipitating incidents justify the emergence of a norm which justifies extra-institutional action, i.e., outside of the normal channels & that a precipitating incidents justify or stimulate the interaction of pre-existing groups or ad hoc formations give pre-existing conditions of feasibility & timeliness

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Figure on a Model of Collective Behavior by Turner & Killian

A Model of Collective Behavior demonstrates that Precipitating incidents justify the emergence of a norm which justifies extra-institutional action, i.e., outside of the normal channels & that a precipitating incidents justify or stimulate the interaction of pre-existing groups or ad hoc formations give pre-existing conditions of feasibility & timeliness

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Outline on Why the Middle & Working Classes Have Not Organized

External
Links

- Project: Why People Don't Get Involved

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THE MID & WKING CLASSES HAVE NOT ORGANIZED BECAUSE:

[Note that all of these reasons are intertwined & influence each other]

1. COMPETITION MAKES SACRIFICE FOR THE GROUP DIFFICULT

The mid & wking classes have not organized because the present socio economic political system (SEP Sys) makes it hard to sacrifice for the group, the greater good, when you are fighting for survival

2. THERE IS A LACK OF KNOWLEDGE ABOUT THE REASONS TO ORGANIZE, & HOW TO ORGANIZE

The mid & wking classes have not organized because the non upper classes lack basic knowledge of the workings of the SEP Sys

See Also: The Theories of the Social Sciences