Change: master processes of change and social movements

Social change occurs due to in-built laws of society e.g., (evolution) and occasionally due to deliberate efforts on the part of groups of people who look for change in a desired direction or who organize to resist a change.

Master processes of change

The term “processes of social change” refers to processes such as industrialization, urbanization, and modernization. All societies are undergoing these changes without any group specifically responsible for promoting them. They may be called the mater processes of change.

Social movements

Social movements are launched by certain agents to produce change in desired direction. Historically, movements or mobilizations of a group of people for a certain social or political cause have been a major factor in social change. The examples are movements for adult suffrage, movements for democratic rights, national liberations struggles, peasant movements, workers movements, environmental movements, and peace movements. Movements may carry out (demand for formation of smaller states) or resist a change (establishing a nuclear plant or a big dam). Sociologists have used two theories, namely resource mobilization theory and conflict theory, to explain the rise and fall of social movements. While the structural functionalists employ the resource mobilization theory the Marxists use the conflict theory. The latter may explain the peasants and workers movements better than the structural functional theory which focused on religious, nationalistic and political changes based on factors other than class contradictions. Success of such movements had wider significance for various institutions of society.