Understanding Social Change

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Preface

T SHOULD come as no surprise that the years between the publication of the first edition and the current third edition of this book, 1997 to 2010, have seen rapid and accelerating rates of change in human relations, from the interpersonal to the international level. The

Internet and other pathways of electronic telecommunication continue to erode the traditional boundaries once separating people from one another. Globally, the seemingly unstoppable expansion of multinational organizations—corporations, agencies, and alliances—continue to standardize the way most of us behave, believe, consume, and even dream. Ours is an age in which the devastation of war and civil unrest in the Middle East, protests in Canada and Europe against corporate power, and the triumphs of Olympic competition in China can be observed in real time throughout the world.

Setting the Stage: A World United, A World Di ided During the early twenty-first century, humanity took a gigantic step toward creating a truly worldwide social system, thanks in large measure to innovations in transportation and communication technologies. This process, often referred to as globalization, is dramatically reflected in recent geopolitical events. For Americans and, in many ways, for people of all nations, the most traumatic of these events was the terrorist attack on New York City and Washington, D.C., on September 11, 2001. On that day, the people of the United States experienced a profound loss of life, of property, and—perhaps most enduring—of innocence. On that Tuesday morning in late summer, the apparently remote clashes between modernity and tradition, secularism and religious fundamentalism, and West versus East instantly became U.S. domestic concerns. Geographical distance could no longer insulate these competing worldviews and their champions from one another.

Just one decade earlier, the fall of Soviet Communism ended the half-century-long Cold War between competing visions of the ideal society. This largely unexpected event brought to an abrupt halt seventy years of experimentation with an alternative to capitalist democracy. In a manner parallel to the September 11 attack, a key cause of the collapse of the system was that the Soviet Union and the other Communist states of Central and Eastern Europe could no longer insulate themselves from the outside world. Through airports, seaports, radio broadcasts, TV satellites, telephones, and Internet connections, the capitalist culture and its “bourgeois” ways seeped in and insinuated themselves in the lives of ordinary citizens and their leaders. Ultimately, the governments of these states were not so much overthrown as they were cut adrift, isolated from and out of touch with those whom they supposedly represented.

International economic relations of the late twentieth century were transformed through the creation of several regional free trade agreements, including the still controversial North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). These treaties were soon followed by approval of

Weinstein, J. (2010). Social change. ProQuest Ebook Central <a onclick=window.open('http://ebookcentral.proquest.com','_blank') href='http://ebookcentral.proquest.com' target='_blank' style='cursor: pointer;'>http://ebookcentral.proquest.com</a> Created from capella on 2020-10-12 11:36:27.

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the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT). This treaty establishes for the first time a truly universal framework of rules and procedures governing international trade. Because numerous technical and political issues remain unresolved, it has not been fully implemented, even after nearly two decades. Nevertheless, the GATT is envisioned as the cornerstone of a coordinated world economy.

The turn of the twenty-first century also brought the first small, but significant, steps in solving the sixty-year-long dispute over Palestinian sovereignty. This conflict, which originated with the ending of colonial rule in the region, has had a profound effect on international and interethnic relations. It often has preoccupied the United Nations, and it has frequently been linked to terrorist bombings, kidnapping, and hijacking. If and how this conflict is to be resolved is undoubtedly a major determinant of future geopolitical relations in the region and in the world. The granting of mutual recognition by the Palestinian authority and the government of Israel in 1994, as stipulated in the 1993 Oslo Accords, was a key event in many ways. It clearly represented a potential improvement in international (and interethnic) relations; and, as stressed by the principal author of the accords, sociologist Terje Rod Larsen, it also demonstrated how the insights of social science can be applied to achieve important practical ends. Yet, the Oslo Accords did not end all hostilities by any means; in fact, they led to increasing hostility by the enemies of the negotiation process.

Despite the many setbacks, however, a so-called road map to a two-state solution has been agreed upon in principle. The election in 2008 of a new administration in the United States— the major third party to the conflict—led to the appointment of former U.S. senator George Mitchell, the region’s leading diplomatic expert, as special envoy. In the wake of these events, a policy shift toward active engagement in and support of the peace process appears likely. Thus, even amidst continuing violence and enmity, formal agreements and background events have now rendered only extremely difficult what was once thought to be absolutely impossible: peace in the Holy Land.

In North America and throughout the world, laws and customs that not long ago limited one’s access to education, employment, and public facilities on the basis of ascribed statuses have been changed. Social relations everywhere are being transformed in response to movements promoting equality among ethnic groups and between women and men. These changes were profoundly affected by the election in November 2008 of Barack Obama, an African American, as the forty-fourth president of the United States.

For these and related reasons, concepts such as “exotic” and “outsider” are all but obsolete in this age of around-the-clock information services and satellite TV programming. With the appropriate connections, one can learn the intimate details of other people’s lives in the most remote corners of our cities, nations, and world—people who would have been complete strangers if social relations were still dependent on face-to-face contact, as in previous generations.

As these events unfold, it becomes increasingly obvious that, along with news of international agreements, the acceptance of diversity, and the tearing down of walls, another clear message is racing around our information superhighways: the message of social conflict and intergroup tension. As Western Europe moved ever closer to becoming a megastate with a common monetary unit, a flag, an anthem, and visa-free borders, Eastern Europe continued to

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break up into ethnically distinct ministates on generally unfriendly terms with one another. The United States, Canada, and Mexico have become a unitary trading bloc under NAFTA.

Yet the internal forces of ethnic and class conflict, political separatism, and official corruption are seriously challenging the integrity of these nations. Although enormous strides have been made in formally recognizing and protecting basic human rights, interpersonal and intergroup relations at home and abroad are still often guided by informal, but deeply held, values and habits that deny the full humanity of one’s neighbors and adversaries. People throughout the world are experiencing both more (and more intense) intergroup unity and more (and more intense) intergroup conflict.

For these and related reasons, social life has never been so complex, nor has it ever undergone such rapid, and rapidly accelerating, changes. These conditions are partly the result of our unprecedented capacity to control natural and human resources. Technological and sociological innovations since the 1960s have provided people with remarkable powers of cooperation. The activities of thousands, and even millions, of individuals are now routinely coordinated to achieve specific, predetermined goals in government, the private sector, and international diplomacy. These have made it possible to turn deserts into gardens, to wipe out traditional killer diseases such as smallpox and polio, and to reach the moon.

At the same time, such a high degree of control also carries the ever-present danger that things can become out of control in new and dangerous ways or fall under the control of the wrong people. Campaigns of ethnic cleansing, international organized crime cartels, family dissolution, nuclear reactor meltdowns, massive corporate fraud, government monitoring of our private affairs, and massive oil spills all are by-products of the same complexity and coordination that we point to with pride as evidence of progress.

This book is about these momentous and relatively recent changes in the human condition. It is premised on the understanding, shared widely among scholars in many fields, that people have never before so urgently needed the exceptional powers of cooperation they have developed. The kind of world that we leave to our children and grandchildren will be largely determined by how we use our new capacity to work together as individuals, groups, and nations.

These are times of great promise and of great danger. With the end of the Cold War, the threat of a worldwide nuclear holocaust has significantly receded. Yet thousands of armed warheads remain poised for firing in the arsenals of the United States and Russia. The technology to create weapons of ultimate destruction has now proliferated to remote and improbable regions: China, India, Pakistan, Iran, North Korea, Israel, and beyond. Political disputes left unresolved through two world wars and four decades of showdown and “brinkmanship” between Eastern and Western blocs continue to fester in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The gap between the have’s and the have-not’s nations is widening, financial crisis resulting from corrupt practices in the U.S. housing market and on Wall Street in 2007– 2008 instantaneously affected economies throughout the world. And social inequality is generally increasing within both the more and the less industrialized societies. In the United States, the only superpower remaining in the wake of the collapse of the USSR, more people are unemployed, homeless, and in prisons than at any time in recent history.

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With these issues in view, this book brings the concepts and principles of social science to bear in an examination of (1) the major causes and conditions underlying our current situation and (2) the main choices and options we face as we strive to shape our individual and collective futures. The general perspective is sociological and, to a lesser extent, anthropological. But it also incorporates many ideas familiar to political scientists, economists, and geographers. The perspective directs our attention to collective phenomena such as values, norms, institutions, organizations, and populations. And, as the chapter titles indicate, our emphasis is on sociocultural dynamics: the fact that collective life, especially today, occurs in the context of ever-changing processes and systems.

As this perspective on change developed over the past two hundred years or so, researchers have crafted a distinctive way of analyzing the forces of globalization, ethnic conflict, social inequality, and related trends, one that differs from, yet complements, the approaches of journalists, historians, novelists, and other commentators. Three distinctive aspects of the perspective are featured in the following pages: (1) its scientific orientation, (2) its focus on cooperation and conflict, and (3) its superorganic character.

Whether applied by physicists or sociologists, the scientific method combines empirical research with theory building. Its ultimate goal is to explain observed events in a way that is faithful to the facts as we understand them, but always with reference to past experience, as embodied in laws and generalizations. Unlike journalism and other approaches, however, social science is not concerned with biographical details and personalities as such. Rather, it seeks regularities and patterns that extend beyond specific circumstances. In this way, it can account for what we observe and help to anticipate similar occurrences in the future.

With human relationships as their subject matter, however, social scientists have always found it especially difficult to develop unbiased and complete accounts of the phenomena they study. Although well aware of the need to avoid subjectivity and partisanship, they must nevertheless focus on the very issues that most people feel most strongly about and over which it seems natural to take sides: social inequality, autocratic rule, nationalism, religious movements, and the like. These methodological problems, too, are part of the story of social and cultural change.

In their concern with cooperation and conflict, social scientists seek to discover the conditions under which people work together toward common goals and the factors that lead them to act independently or at cross-purposes. History is viewed as alternating episodes of order and disorder, and society is characterized as a dialectical system, punctuated by rhythms of intergroup conflict and alliance, assimilation and differentiation.

A persistent theme has emerged and reemerged in the attempt to trace the causes and consequences of such processes, one that is especially relevant in today’s problematic world. This is that the course of sociocultural change depends crucially on the intentional actions of people who mean to bring it about (or to prevent it). Unlike mechanical systems or organic evolution, society and culture develop in response to purposeful activity aimed at affecting their development. In this respect, the social scientific perspective stresses choice and decision making as the keys to the future. History does not unfold, nor does it simply happen: it is created by human beings, as they sit around conference tables and kitchen tables, deciding among the practical and moral alternatives that life presents them. Thus, sociocultural

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evolution is a superorganic process. It certainly includes physical and biological factors, but it is also directed in significant ways by goal-oriented actors. With the application of the very special superorganic item, technology, we can in fact override physical and biological influences or change their direction more or less at our discretion.

A Value Premise: Social Science for Democracy Taken together, these three features—the combination of observation with theory, the focus on conflict and cooperation, and the recognition that change in human systems has an intentional, superorganic aspect—add up to a definite program, one that originated in late-eighteenth- century France, in the midst of democratic revolution. This is the program of social science for democracy. It is an orientation that sees research on social and cultural change not as an activity to be pursued merely as an end in itself to satisfy our curiosity or as a form of intellectual entertainment but rather as a contribution to the education of informed publics, groups of people with common interests who can exert influence on their representatives in government and industry. The program was developed particularly in the United States during the twentieth century by a distinguished line of scholars that includes John Dewey, Robert Ezra Park, W. E. B. Du Bois, Ralph Linton, Robert Lynd, C. Wright Mills, and Seymour Martin Lipset.

Democracy in this context refers to a system of self-rule in which members of society as a whole, not a small privileged elite, make the major decisions that will determine how and in what direction their institutions, customs, and basic beliefs will be altered (or preserved). In a narrow sense, democracy is a type of government that has several specific forms: direct, representative, parliamentary, and so on. More broadly, it is a method of collective management that applies to the workplace, the household, and other social relations beyond the voting booth and political parties.

By these standards, effective democratic participation can be achieved only to the extent that those responsible for the conduct of purposeful social and cultural change, the citizenry, are well informed about how the social world operates. In nondemocratic systems, from ancient patriarchies to contemporary autocracies, it is to the regime’s advantage to keep a populace essentially ignorant of the details of group dynamics, stratification, and political influence. But when people are charged with their own destinies, such ignorance is intolerable. The knowledge that nonpartisan, scientific research can provide is, thus, viewed as a tool for democracy.

In Central and Eastern Europe, in the developing countries of the Third World, and in poor neighborhoods everywhere, people are currently engaged in massive and difficult struggles to establish self-rule in the wake of decades and centuries of one-party autocracy, imperialism, economic exploitation, and racism. For these reasons, social scientists have again placed a high priority on assessing democracy’s prospects. Numerous books and articles address classic questions with renewed urgency: Are people meaningfully involved in the decisions that affect their lives? Are their options being limited or controlled by others with more power, wealth, and prestige? What are the consequences of elite rule in a world in which the privacy- invading technologies of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four seem primitive? Such

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questions indicate that democracy remains a crucial social ideal, especially today when our choices, and the extent to which they are truly ours, can be so consequential.

The large-scale social organizations that characterize modern life do not run themselves. Rather, those who participate most actively in their operation run them. Unfortunately, most people most of the time are prone not to participate to the maximum, and they are even less likely to seek greater control. The result, as Roberto Michels noted in the 1920s, is the ever- present threat of oligarchy—rule by the few. The antidote, if indeed there is one, is the creation of informed, active publics who understand the stakes involved in letting someone else make their decisions for them.

This book is written in the social-science-for-democracy spirit. My goal is to introduce you to a way of thinking and a body of literature that will help improve your powers as a citizen, so that you can pursue the choices you are (or should be) free to make more effectively. But being a citizen today, whether we like it or not, also means being involved in the lives of people in parts of the world that our parents may have never thought about and from segments of society with whom they might never have associated.

Now that Western civilization has entered its third millennium, there are approximately seven billion members of the species Homo sapiens on this planet. Less than one-third of them live in the industrialized nations of Western Europe and North America, but all have been deeply affected by the spread of modern, Western culture. This is the main fact of contemporary history: virtually anywhere one goes in the world today, Euro-American values, beliefs, and practices have made a lasting impact. If praise is to be given for the material progress and technological advance that distinguish our era, a large share of it is due to the West. If blame is to be placed for a century and more of war, depression, conquest, racism, imperialism, and dehumanization, the West is also the leading candidate.

Those who study social and cultural change today are deeply concerned about the costs and benefits of the spread of modernization. This book shares and reflects this concern. Whether one calls the current era “postmodern,” “postindustrial,” “postliterate,” or “postacademic,” there is a strong consensus among sociologists, anthropologists, and other scholars that these are indeed revolutionary times. In particular, many argue that the advantages of modern culture have diminished, whereas its liabilities have increased to such an extent that it is ripe for significant alterations. It may have been a progressive force in the past, but—the feeling is ominous—it is now becoming a largely reactionary influence.

Change is in the wind. The values of materialism, conquest, and egoism served to energize Western culture during its rise to industrial and political prominence. But today these values are undergoing a major reassessment, as the negative impacts of modernity are increasingly experienced in environmental degradation, financial crisis, civil and international conflict, and a growing sense of lost spirituality. As one would expect, some people welcome these changes, and others hope to resist them. But regardless of the final outcome, the next decades are likely to bring continued debate over the “decline of the West”: is it real or just a fashionable slogan in intellectual circles, in the process of being recycled for the third time in the last hundred years? How did Europe come to exert such influence on social relations everywhere? What are the alternatives to a modern, Western, global culture?

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In considering how social scientists answer these questions, this book explores the impact of recent, as well as longer-term, trends and transforming events on contemporary society. These include the dramatic shift from primary to secondary and tertiary relations, the rise of capitalism and the socialist alternative, the reinvention of democracy and the autocratic reaction, the Holocaust and its aftermath, the decolonization of the Third World, and civil rights movements in the United States and elsewhere.

Each of these trends and events has many important things to teach us, most of which can only be touched on in a brief survey such as this. However, one main lesson should be clear and obvious from the discussion that follows: we can no longer innocently treat some human beings as inherently inferior to others. Some individuals and groups may wish to continue structuring social relations, as in the past, on the assumption that certain groups are naturally meant to lead and others to follow; but there are simply too many dissident voices, historical precedents, and practical obstacles to allow such sentiments to prevail unchallenged.

Sociologists and historians have characterized the nineteenth century as the Age of Democratic Revolution. But, as we understand it today, the immediate impact of those revolutions was geographically limited and, in many cases, temporary. In addition, the prevailing concept of self-rule was restricted to the narrow political affairs of urban middle classes. With the benefit of more than a century of ferment and hindsight, it is obvious that our era will see democracy put to its greatest test, in a universal and complete sense.

I write this book in the hope that it encourages you to look more closely at the social relations in which you participate, through additional reading, further courses in social science, and your own research on change. The skills and knowledge you thus acquire will, I believe, help prepare you to take an active part in creating a world that truly reflects the human interest.

Organization of the Text This book consists of fourteen chapters, divided into five parts. The parts are ordered cumulatively, with the earlier chapters focusing on concepts and principles and the later ones applying these in specific contexts. Each part is preceded by a brief introduction that ties together the main themes of the succeeding chapters. Within most of the chapters there is a chronological ordering, a look at societies of yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Most also have a comparative dimension, especially along First, Second, and Third World lines.

As the discussion proceeds, certain key trends and historical eras are examined and reexamined from different points of view. For example, several chapters mention the establishment of imperial and colonial ties between Europe and the rest of the world. Insights from Orwell’s world of Nineteen Eighty-Four are also included in each part. And four critical episodes are used to illustrate or amplify points throughout the book.

Part I is about the social scientific approach to change: its origins, its main principles, and its distinctive perspective on contemporary events. Chapter 1 is a general introduction, and chapter 2 focuses on the master concept of evolution.

Part II analyzes change into its three main components, each corresponding to a chapter (3, 4, and 5, respectively): demography, culture, and social systems.

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Part III (chapters 6 through 8) examines the “engines” of change, the activities that drive us from one era to the next: social movements, revolutions, and technological innovations.

Part IV consists of three chapters (9 through 11) on change at the macrolevel. These are the large-scale trends—urbanization, social conflict at the social and intersocietal levels, and market forces—that have made our world so complex and dynamic.

Part V (chapters 12, 13, and 14) looks ahead with a discussion of planned change: organized programs such as international development projects and broader movements such as the emergence of world government.

Each of the chapters has endnotes, and all but the first and last contain brief endof-chapter summaries. An extensive reference list follows chapter 14, and the text is illustrated throughout with photos, figures, and tables.

Acknowledgments I express my thanks to my students Maya Barak, Cathy Collins, Karen Schaumann, Ivy Forsythe-Brown, Jennifer Corwin, and Maria Marlowe for their assistance in preparing this book, and to Marcello Truzzi—who passed away during the preparation of the second edition —Fatos Tarifa, Joanna Scott, Liza Cerroni-Long, Raouf Hanna, Susan Rabinowitz, and Larry Reynolds for their comments on the previous two editions. A faculty research fellowship granted by the graduate school of Eastern Michigan University afforded me the opportunity to complete earlier drafts of this manuscript with a semester’s leave from my teaching duties.

I am especially grateful for the suggestions of the editorial reviewers, whose well- considered comments made this a much more accurate and more interesting book: York Bradshaw, Indiana University; James Copp, Texas A&M; Richard Flacks, University of California, Santa Barbara; John Gagnon, State University of New York, Stony Brook; and Frank J. Weed, University of Texas, Arlington.

It has been a pleasure and a true learning experience to have worked with Rowman & Littlefield in bringing out the second and third editions. Dean Birkenkamp initiated the project that eventuated in the second edition shortly before leaving R&L. Alan McClare saw that edition through to production and was closely involved throughout the preparation of the third; I worked closely with him during production, and he exercised great care and concern to ensure that the technical aspects of the book would be as close to perfect as possible. It came as a shock and a very sad loss when I learned that Alan died suddenly in November 2009. He will be greatly missed.

No book of this scope could possibly be a solo effort, but I alone assume responsibility for all errors of commission and omission.

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