Watch the film and write a 3-4 page paper about of the film answering the three questions below (the most important question is #2. I
want to know what YOU learned and what YOU think):
- What was it about (what country, what population, what was the issue)?
- What did you learn? This is not a summary of the film. I want to know what you learned about the world, about social change.
- How you can connect what you learned from the film to what you have learned in a class on social change? Use specific examples of things we have read in the text or that we have discussed in class.
When you log into the chat session on 7/22 you will be broken up into groups based on the film that you watched. Together you will present your film to the class. This is in-class group work.
- Left Behind in America:https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/left-behind-america/
10~c~r~w-Hill Companies, 2001 Social Change lI ;3. Social ChangeHughes-Kroehler-Vander Zander: Sociology - The Core, Sixth Edition o I Hughes-Kroehler-Vander I 13, Social Change Zander: Sociology - The Core, Sixth Edition ! Text © The McGraw-Hili Companies, 2001 l Collective Behavior Social Movements Looking to the Future A World of Change hen the World's Columbian Exposition opened in Chicago in 1893, 74 prominent Americans tried their hands at forecasting the future. What would the world be like in 1993? One expressed the prevailing view that in 1993 the railroad would still be the fastest means of travel. Another was convinced that mail in 1993 would still travel by stagecoach and horseback rider. A few forecasters enthused about air travel-or, more precisely, "balloon travel." None of the 1893 forecasters apparently antici- pated the automobile, let alone the cell phone, the Internet, a world of 6 billion people, the publication of a map of the human genome, or the globalization of both our economy and our environmental problems. Then, as now, forecasters fell victim to two fundamental problems in attempting to predict the future. First, change is so much a part of our lives that we take it for granted, oblivious to or unimpressed by much of it; during the 1880s a number of Europeans had already pro- duced experimental gasoline-powered cars, but the 1893 forecasters either did not know about the primitive "horseless carriages" or else did not deem them to be important. Second, a "rearview-mirror effect" operates in which re- cent events color and dominate our thinking about the future; the railroads were developing feverishly in the 1880s and 1890s, so it took lit- tle imagination to predict that they would be- come faster and more widespread in the future (Cornish,1993). The study of social change is an attempt to understand and predict changes in the world. In this chapter, we will look at sources of social change and at social change in both the United States and developing countries. We will consider collective behavior, includ- ing explanations of crowd behavior. We will examine types and causes of social move- ments, and we will end with a look into the future. Students Doing Sociology: The Un- TV Experiment Doing Social Research: Social Change: Can We Predict the Future? Issues in Focus: What KeepsPeople Involved it! Social Movements? Box 13.3 Box 13,1 Box 13.2 Varietiesof CollectiveBehaviQr Preconditionsfor CollectiveBehavior Explanationsof Crowd Behavior Causesof SocialMovements Typesof SocialMovements SocialRevolution Terrorism Sourcesof SocialChange Perspectiveson SocialChange SocialChange in the United States SocialChange in DevelopingNations r-~ughes-Kroehl:r-vander -, Zander: SociologV - The Core, Sixth Edition 13. Social Change Text © The McGraw-Hili Companies, 2001 436 Sociologists refer to fundamental alterations in the patterns of culture, structure, and social be- havior over time as social change. It is a process by which society becomes something different while remaining in some respects the same. Consider the enormous transformations that have taken place across American life over the past 60 years. We have restyled many of our most basic values and norms: racial upheaval, a sexual revolution, computer and communica- tions breakthroughs, and a new national identity as a world power have remolded our national life (Manchester, 1993). In the early 1930s, the U,S. population was less than half its present size. Rural America lacked electricity, and its roads were dirt. In foreign affairs we were an in- sular, second-class power, although Americans themselves were an ardently patriotic people. Welfare and divorce were shameful. Pregnancy made even married women uncomfortably self- conscious, and maternity clothes were designed to "keep your secret." Manliness was prized, and patriarchal authority was vested in men as heads of families, Had there been a watchword then, it would have been "duty." Today that watchword would more likely be "rights": civil rights, women's rights, gay rights, welfare rights, children's rights, animal rights, the right to life, the right to choose, the right to protect, and the rights of the disabled. Social change has a tremendous impact on our lives. Let us begin our discussion of it by ex- amining some of its sources. We will go on to consider perspectives on social change and to describe social change in the United States and developing nations. Sources of Social Change Social change confronts people with new situa- tions and compels them to fashion new forms of action. Many factors interact to generate changes in people's behavior and in the culture and structure of their society. Sociologists iden- tify a number of particularly critical factors, the impact of which differs with the situation and the time and place. In this section we will con- sider the physical environment, population, conflict over resources and values, supporting norms and values, innovation, diffusion, and the mass media. ,6 Physical Environment If humans are to survive, they must achieve a working relationship with their environment. Among the chief adaptive mechanisms avail- able to a population are social organization and technology. Hunting and gathering, horticul- tural, agricultural, and industrial societies all present different types of adaptations. Should the environment change for any reason, those who have evolved a given type of adaptation must respond by making appropriate institu- tional changes, fashioning new forms of social organization and new technologies. Droughts, floods, epidemics, earthquakes, and other forces of nature are among the ever-present re- alities that alter people's lives. as we noted in Chapter 12, human beings have a tremendous impact on ical environment. ,6 Population Changes in the size, composition, and distribu- tion of a population also affect culture and so- cial structure. In Chapter 12 we discussed the implications of population growth. Nearly all such growth will occur in developing nations in the coming decades, with resource use in those parts of the world also increasing astronomi- cally. The graying of the population is a princi- ple factor in the United States, with Social Se- curity, Medicaid, and health care costs soaring; those 85 and over are the fastest-growing part of the population. G I Hughes-Kroehler-Vander I 13. Social Change Zander: Sociology - The Core. Sixth Edition ! Text © The McGraw-Hili Companies, 2001 A 'world of A Clashes over Resources and Values Conflict is a basic source of social change. The end result of conflict is not a simple quantitative mixing of the groups in contlict, but a com- pletely new entity. Who could have foretold in 1870 the South that eventually emerged from the contest between the Reconstructionists and their opponents? Who could have foretold in 1965 the nation that would emerge 35 years later after a decade of social turbulence? And who can fore- tell today the ultimate form of the societies that arose in eastern Europe and the former Soviet empire following the collapse of communism? Old orders continually erode and new ones arise. A Supporting Values and Norms A society's values and norms act as "watchdogs" or "censors" permitting, stimulating, or inhibit- ing certain innovations. It is interesting to com- pare our readiness to accept technological inno- vations with our resistance to changes in religion or the family. For example, we continuously de- bate changes in sexual behavior norms, while re- sistance to the lightbulb, the automobile, and the airplane disappeared almost immediately. Our use of the word "inventor" reflects this cultural bias. The inventor is one who innovates in mate- rial things, whereas the inventor of intangible ideas is often called a "revolutionary" or "radi- cal," words with sometimes odious connotations. A Innovation A discovery represents an addition to knowl- edge, whereas an invention uses existing knowledge in some novel form. Thus, a discov- ery constitutes the perception of a relationship or fact that had not previously been recognized or understood. Einstein's theory of relativity and Mendel's theory of heredity were discoveries. In contrast, the automobile-an invention-was composed of six old elements in a new combi- nation: a liquid gas engine, a liquid gas recepta- cle, a running-gear mechanism, an intermediate clutch, a driving shaft, and a carriage body. Innovations-both discoveries and inven- tions-are not single acts but combinations of existing elements plus new elements. The greater the number of cultural elements from which innovators may draw, the greater the fre- quency of discovery and invention. For exam- ple, glass gave birth to lenses, costume jewelry, drinking goblets, windowpanes, and many other products. Lenses in turn gave birth to eye- glasses, magnifying glasses, telescopes, cam- eras, searchlights, and so on. Such develop- ments reflect the exponential principle-as the cultural base increases, its possible uses tend to grow exponentially. A Diffusion Diffusion is the process by which cultural traits spread from one social unit to another. Diffu- sion is a people process and hence is expedited or hindered by the social environment. Simply because a trait is functionally superior does not necessarily ensure that individuals will adopt it. Much depends on the network of relationships that tie people together in patterns of meaning- ful communication and influence (Strang and Tuma,1993). Diffusion is often overlooked. We point with pride to what other societies have acquired from us, but we often neglect to note what we have gained from them. Yet a global economy combined with the fact that our society is com- posed almost entirely of immigrant groups means that everything we use and do can be traced to other societies or cultures. As an illus- tration, consider the following now classic ac- count of the cultural content in the life of a "100 percent" American written as satire by an- thropologist Ralph Linton (1937:427-29): [DJawn finds the unsuspecting patriot garbed in pajamas, a garment of East Indian origin; and lying in a bed built on a pattern which originated in either Persia or Asia Minor. He is muffled to the ears in un-American materials: cotton, first I HugheS-Kr~ehler-vande:~~1 Change ~- Zander: Sociology - The Core, Sixth Edition ~e'~CGraw-Hill Companies, 2001 -10 Sodal domesticated in India; linen, domesticated in the Near East; wool from an animal native to Asia Minor; or silk whose uses were first discovered by the Chinese. . . . If our patriot is old-fashioned enough to ad- here to the so-called American breakfast, his cof- fee will be accompanied by an orange, domesti- cated in the Mediterranean region. He will follow this with a bowl of cereal made from grain domesticated in the Near East .... As a side dish he may have the egg of a bird domesticated in Southeastern Asia or strips of the flesh of an animal domesticated in the same region. . . . "" The Mass Media Diffusion is facilitated by the instant flooding of information across national, class, ethnic, and economic boundaries by means of the mass media. According to one view, the media func- tions as a kind of giant hypodermic needle, dis- charging endless propaganda into the passive body