Social change

politics / social movements:
article on the Walker recall, and the Dem party being the graveyard of social movements...


3:00 - Attendance

 

Chapter 16 – Social Change, Modern & Postmodern Societies

SOCIAL CHANGE is transformation of culture and social institutions (structure) over time.

• happens all the time
  • speed depends on tech, cultural lag means ideas lag behind material changes
• soemtimes intentional, often unplanned
• controversial (relative)
  • usually does not benefit all categories equally
• some changes have bigger impact (matter more), fashion vs. computers

Causes

CULTURAL

• invention (new tech)
• discovery (understanding the world in new ways – plants as medicine)
• diffusion (Asian hip-hop dancers on bottom of p.485)
  • happens as people move, demographic shifts – map on p.486 shows that areas with more "long-timers" have less change – WHY often rural and inland???

TALK ABOUT BONDING AND BRIDGING?

Robert Putnam's "Bowling Alone" and internet culture extension

CONFLICT

• tension, deprivation

Are there any changes now being caused by conflict?

IDEAS

• religion (Weber), enlightenment philosophy
  Are there any ideas now causing change?

DEMOGRAPHY

• immigration, fertility, death

having fewer kids in industrial society changes meaning of children

living longer changes meaning of death

new ethnic groups change meaning (Catholic schools in Milwaukee)

INTENTIONAL SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

Can we think of any current movements?

Unions, NRA, pro-life, pro-choice, Vegans, green energy

Past movements?

Anti-nukes, civil rights,

• alternative
  • Promise Keepers, self-help movements
• redemptive
  • AA
• reformative
  • environmental,
• revolutionary
  • communists, right-wing libertarian militia

Claims-making (framing) – trying to convince the public

ofthen happens in political arena: naming a bill or act

Defense of Marriage Act vs. Respect for Marriage Act

THEORY

• deprivation theory (class)
• mass-society theory (scale, atomization)
• resource-mobilization theory (people, money, political opportunity)
• culture theory
• new social movements theory (international, broad)
• political-economy theory

For next time:

Read pp. 447-459

...

Social Movements

Stages:

1. emergence (lone nut)
2. coalesence
3. bureaucratization
4. decline

DISASTERS – unexpected

not only harm to people and property, but SOCIAL HARM, esp. When SOCIAL causes.

Examples of social harm of Katrina? Haiti earthquake? Tsunami/Nuclear plant?

3:20

MODERNITY

• Enlightenment values shape collective consciousness (cultural gene pool)
• • autonomy, liberty, reason, scientific progress, democracy...

• industrialization
• decline of small, traditional communities
• expansion of personal choice (consumption)
• increasing diversity, urbanization
• future-orientation

• Tonnies & Durkheim– loss of community (kinship/tradition) (gemeinschaft) (mechanical) rise of geselleschaft (association based on self interest and specialization) (organic solidarity – see "I"s on top of p. 497
• Anomie – normlessness, when moral authority wanes
• legal/rationalization (Weber) replaces tradition
• industrial capitalism (Marx) ascendant socio-economic system

Modernity as mass society (structural functionalism view)

prosperity and bureaucracy weaken traditional ties (e.g., charities began collecting at work rather than at home in residential neighborhoods, because most peoples' work ties are now stronger than their neighborhood ties)

As mobility increases -> scale increases

State expands from a local noble to larger welfare state and military industrial complex. Large bureacracies and a representative government in which money talks means that most people have little control.

Most people face anomie as a result of the decline of the community.

Modernity as class society (social conflict approach view)

Society faces increasing stratification, and concentration of wealth and power into smaller and smaller circles of elites.

Most people face alienation (feeling cut off or excluded) as a result of increasing exploitation by the powerful.

SO, whether you see change as progress depends on your underlying values

also the old and the new often coexist, it's a bit of a false dichotomy (no "golden age")...

3:40

POSTMODERNITY 

• the "information age" 

• de-urbanization

• globalization

• failure of modernity

• we are less idealistic about progress, 
• • science no longer holds all the answers because it implies a single correct vision of the world (so we are left with anomic relativism),
  • consequently cultural debates are intensifying, and institutions are changing.

3:50

• is there a need for a new, "21st century enlightenment?"  Do we need new values, to allow us to live differently in this new, post-modern environment?
• • seeing the world and ourselves from a new perspective?
  • sustainability
  • new insights into human nature, unsettling our intuitive sense of ourselves
  • most of our behavior is automatic responses, which means were are directly connected to the social and physical environment - not totally autonomous
  • we're not very good at long-term decisions
  • we're bad at understanding what makes us happy
  • moral and political critique of individualism now has scientific evidence
  • this does not mean repudiating the rights of the individual or underestimating free well
  • understanding that conscious thought is only a part of what drives our behavior, we become BETTER at excercising self control and distinguishing our needs from our wants.
  • we need a relationship with our own reactions - not to be a captive of them.
  • critical thought and analysis!
  • resist ethnocentrism and moral absolutism
  • so he's saying we need to develop a more collective orientation, by developing human empathy... people need to understand that a long-term cosmopolitan agenda may be more important than short-term individual gains...
  • "universalism" meaning all humans share a universal nature, entailing certain rights, entitlements, and capabilities...
  • What is progress? raises ethical concerns
  • Does "progress" = promoting human happiness/welfare?
  • success of the post-enlightenemtn project resutls in society being dominated by science, markets, and bureaucracy logics - leaving us with ethical implications about what ought to be done.  Rational rules, knoweldge, and profits as their own ends.
  • Rationality tells us how best to achieve a given end, but NOT what that end should be.
  • Foucault - the Enlightenment "has to be conceived as an attitude, an ethos, a philosophical life in which the critique of what we are is at one and the same time a historical analysis of the limits that are imposed on us, and an experiment of the possibility of going beyond them."

Industrial Modernity is based on rationalism, w/o regard to ends

Recognizing our frailities and limitations without rejecting our ability to shape our destinies and excercise self-control. We must distinguish between our needs and appetites.

Have a relationship with our reactions rather than be captive to them.

To resist the tendency to make right and true the familiar, and bad or wrong the strange.

What is the role of individual empathy in forming societal character?

It has drawn us closer to the enlightenment value of fairness (civil rights revolutions)

4:10 - Course evaluations

FOR NEXT TIME:

• Religious Ethnography due
• we will review for the Module 3 exam