Soc205T. Social Change & Social Institutions. Summer 2002 Instructor: Jan Abu Shakrah

Transcription

1 Soc205T. Social Change & Social Institutions. Summer 2002 Instructor: Jan Abu Shakrah Study Guide E: Collective Behavior & Social Change Reading: Andersen & Taylor. Sociology: Understanding a Diverse Society, 2e. Chapter 22: Collective Behavior. Learning Objectives: Define collective behavior and describe its characteristics. Describe crowds and the factors that explain their emergence and behavior, including social control agents and panic. Identify riots, their types, and the theories that explain why they occur and why they stop. Describe the major forms of collective preoccupation, including fads, fashion, hysterical contagion, and scapegoating. Identify the broad types of social movements personal transformation, reform or radical social change, and reactionary. Identify the conditions under which social movements emerge. Apply and assess the theories explaining the development of social movements, including resource mobilization, political process, and new movement theories. Appreciate the effects of globalization and diversity on social change. Chapter 23: Social Change. Learning Objectives: Define social change and describe its major characteristics. Apply and assess the major theories of social and global change functionalist and evolutionary, conflict, and cyclical theories. Identify the causes of social change, including collective behavior, social movements, cultural diffusion, inequality, technological innovation, population, and war. Grasp the social consequences of modernization including the shift from community to society, the development of mass society and bureaucracy, and pronounced social inequality and sense of individual powerlessness. Identify and apply the major global theories of social change, including modernization theory, world systems theory, and dependency theory. Explain how diversity can cause social change and how social change in turn can affect diversity. Video Lesson #25: Collective Behavior and Social Movements. Synopsis: This lesson shows that significant social change is capable of occurring and has taken place through collective behavior and social movements. Different types of social movements are shown, including revolution, reform movement, and conservative movement. Focus Points: [These focus points are designed to help you get the most from the video segment of each lesson. Review them, and then watch the video. You may find the program useful on the worksheets or your term project.]

2 1. Distinguish between collective behavior and social movements. Give examples of each. What is the difference between a radical social movement and a reform movement? Give examples of each. 2. What is the goal of revolutions? How were the American, Bolshevik, French, and Maoist Revolutions different from each other? What did they all have in common? 3. What conditions must be present in a society for a reform movement to be effective? Identify four major reform movements in recent American history, and describe the extent to which they reached their goals. 4. Describe how society s awareness of environmental issues has changed over time. How successful has the environmental movement been? What types of organizations and activities have been involved in this movement? Video Lesson #26: Social Change. Synopsis: This lesson shows the inevitability of social change and presents social change as a historical process as well as an on-going process affecting our lives now and in the future, examining social changes occurring on different levels of social organization. Focus Points: 1. Illustrate how social change affects human relationships. Compare examples of social change that occur from outside and from inside a society or culture, especially emphasizing the Penan people and the automobile in the comparison. 2. What are some examples of both the positive and negative effects of social change, especially changes caused by science and technology? What is a negative effect of social change as it relates to the invention and use of antibiotics? Using the example of the telephone lineperson, explain how social change can affect our work and our lifestyles. 3. How do individuals help bring about change? Be able to recognize examples. What makes a person able to maintain his or her determination to effect change? Assignments Worksheets 9 and 10 (25 points each) Due: July 31 st Mailed assignments should include a self-addressed, stamped envelope (SASE), so that I can return them with timely feedback. ed assignments should have properly labeled worksheets and question numbers (preferably with at least a word or phrase that will identify the question you are answering). Be sure to to my home address: jabushak@aracnet.com. Assignments dropped off to my office must be picked up from the Student Pickup Box at the Front Desk of the SS Building within a week. Make sure your name is on all assignments. See syllabus for details. Contact me if you have any questions.

3 Name: Worksheet 9. Collective Behavior and Social Movements. 25 points. Due: July 31 st. 1. What is collective behavior, and what distinguishes it from other forms of social behavior? 2. What does emergent norm theory explain about crowds? 3. Describe the social structure of a panic. 4. Empirical research suggests that riots are a multitude of small crowd actions. Explain what that means. 5. What social conditions are likely to give rise to riots?

4 6. Why do riots stop? 7. Describe the social process of hysterical contagion. What social conditions are likely to give rise to this collective phenomenon? 8. Under what social conditions is scapegoating most likely to occur? 9. Explain the difference between a social change movement and a reactionary movement. Give examples to clarify your answer. 10. Describe the four elements necessary for a social movement to start.

5 Name: Worksheet 10. Social Change. 25 points. Due: July 31 st. 1. How does multidimensional evolutionary theory account for social reversals? 2. Explain why, if Marx s prediction of worldwide revolution never happened, his work continues to be of interest to sociologists. 3. If you applied the cyclical theory of Sorokin and Caplow to U.S. society, in what phase idealistic culture, ideational culture, or sensate culture would you say it is? Explain. 4. Describe an example of cultural diffusion you have noticed in your own life. Explain from where and how the diffusion occurred. 5. Describe the culture of simulation Turkle refers to in her study of life on the Internet.

6 6. What are the major features of a shift from a Gemeinschaft to a Gesellschaft society? 7. What are the characteristics of mass society? 8. Using David Riesman s theory of the three orientations of personality linked to social structural conditions, explain why modernization tends to produce other-directedness. 9. Describe world systems theory. 10. How does dependency theory explain the underdevelopment of African countries?