Social Change and Collective Behavior
What this domain covers
This domain tests why societies change, how crowds and movements behave, and which theories explain them. Expect questions on modernization, world-systems theory, crowd theories, movement typologies, and classic contrasts such as Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft.
Core rules and concepts
- Sources of change: technology, ideology, conflict, demographic shifts, diffusion, and environmental pressure. Cultural lag (Ogburn) names material change outpacing norms.
- Modernization and dependency theory versus world-systems theory (Wallerstein's core, semiperiphery, periphery) explain global inequality differently.
- Tönnies: Gemeinschaft (personal, communal) versus Gesellschaft (impersonal, associational). Durkheim: mechanical solidarity (similarity) versus organic solidarity (interdependence through division of labor).
- Crowd theories: contagion (Le Bon: crowds spread emotion irrationally), convergence (like-minded people gather), and emergent norm (Turner and Killian: participants construct new rules in the situation).
- Value-added theory (Smelser) lists conditions for collective behavior: structural conduciveness, structural strain, generalized belief, precipitating factors, mobilization, and operation of social control.
- Movement types (Aberle): alternative (change individuals), redemptive (radical personal transformation), reformative (limited social change), revolutionary (total transformation).
- Relative deprivation explains unrest among people whose expectations outrun their conditions; resource mobilization stresses organization and funding; the political process model stresses opportunity.
Worked example
An alarm sounds in a lecture hall. Nobody moves at first, then students watch each other and gradually establish that leaving is appropriate. Because the response was negotiated on the spot rather than transmitted from the crowd, emergent norm theory fits better than contagion.
Traps that cost marks
- Choosing contagion whenever a crowd appears; emergent norm often fits better.
- Confusing reformative with revolutionary movements.
- Treating relative deprivation as absolute hardship.
- Mixing up Gemeinschaft/Gesellschaft with mechanical/organic solidarity.