Cultural Lag
The difference between material culture and non-material culture is known as cultural lag. The term cultural lag refers to the notion that culture takes time to catch up with technological innovations, and the resulting social problems that are caused by this lag. In other words, cultural lag occurs whenever there is an unequal rate of change between different parts of culture causing a gap between material and non-material culture. The term ‘cultural lag’ was first coined in William Fielding Ogburn’s 1920 in his book ‘Social Change.’
Cultural lag refers to the phenomenon that occurs when changes in material culture occur before or at a faster rate than the changes in non-material culture. Cultural lag refers to the nation that, culture takes time to catch up with technological innovations and that this lag causes social problems.
Defining cultural lag, Ogburn says, “the strain that exists between two correlated parts of culture that changes at unequal rates of speed may be interpreted as a lag in the part that is changing at the slowest rate for the one lags behind the other.” Citing various examples of cultural lag, Ogburn says people have changed the methods of soil cultivation but not the method of their land ownership. People have changed their housing patterns but not the lives they lead within them.
Cultural Lag Theory
Cultural Lag is the notion that culture takes time to catch up with technological innovations and that this lag causes social problems and conflicts.
Ogburn posited four stages of technical development:
1. Invention
2. Accumulation
3. Diffusion and
4. Adjustment
Key components
First of all, what is culture? For Ogburn, culture was the “social heritage” of things and ways of living inherited from those who came before us.
However, in his explanation of cultural lag, Ogburn carefully distinguished between two different parts of culture: material and non-material.
Material culture
Material culture is the physical objects that make up our culture. This includes things like buildings, clothes, art pieces, musical instruments, food and technology. Much of material culture changes quickly and frequently.
Non-material culture
Non-material culture refers to the unseen or intangible aspects of our culture, such as norms, laws, rules, religious ideas, and general worldviews. As you can imagine, these things take a long time to change.
Ogburn also distinguished between adaptive and non-adaptive forms of non-material culture. Some parts of non-material culture will change to keep up with material culture, while others will not.
For example, when factories became widespread and most people left their homes during the day for work, the function of the family as a working group was phased out.
This would be the adaptive form of non-material culture. However, some parts of the family’s function, such as emotional support, did not change—this would be a non-adaptive element of the family.
Causes
Ogburn wrote that three causes of social change would trigger cultural lag. The first is diffusion when some kind of technology or way of doing things enters a cultural ecosystem through globalization. The second is discovery when we stumble across resources or information that cause social change.
However, Ogburn thought that the most important catalyzer of change was the third type: invention. He said that invention combined existing cultural elements to form something new, such as combining the wheel and the steam engine to invent the train.
Naturally, as more technologies and tools exist, the possibility of different combinations increases. This is why Ogburn thought that the accumulation of material culture catalyzed invention. He also believed that this growth would be exponential.
This part of Ogburn’s theory has some strong empirical backing. A well-known theorem known as Moore’s Law states that technology develops at an exponential rate, with computer processing power doubling every two years.
With the advent of recent artificial intelligence technologies, that time frame has shortened so that computing power doubles every 3.4 months. Invention rates are indeed exponential.
The causes of social change are only one part of what causes cultural lag. We must also consider why it takes societies so long to adjust to these changes. Why are we not more expedient in changing our laws and norms to accommodate new technology?
Ogburn thought that non-material culture was actively resistant to change. He said worldviews and ideas are stubborn— on both an individual and societal level— especially compared to how fast technology changes.
Sometimes, individuals resist change out of fear of the unknown, and sometimes, governments find it too onerous to attempt to change longstanding bureaucratic policy.
With the constant introduction of new technologies, it is difficult for societies to decide how those technologies should be used, let alone put together a comprehensive set of laws and norms around their use. The examples below explore this challenge.
These examples illustrate the concept of cultural lag, where societal values, norms, and institutions struggle to keep pace with rapid technological and social changes, resulting in various challenges and disparities.
1. AI and Automation: Artificial intelligence has become so advanced that it can now replace human workers in many jobs. Familiar technologies such as automated factory machines and self-check-out in grocery stores have caused unemployment.
The economy and education system still have not shifted to reskill these workers and place them sustainably elsewhere in the workforce.
2. The Internet and digital divide: Almost 40 percent of the world’s population has never used the Internet or has no way to access it. Meanwhile, the average American uses the internet for under seven hours daily. This difference in access to technology between two groups is known as the digital divide.
As new internet-based technologies (like ChatGPT, for example) are released, those with the internet gain their benefits, while entire swaths of the global population fall further behind. The infrastructure to connect isolated populations to the Internet has not yet materialized.
3. Climate change and environment: The environment also provides a compelling example of cultural lag. New inventions that emit greenhouse gases or require massive resource use have entered the economy and started to impact global temperature.
So far, the global response has been too modest and subdued to prevent the disastrous consequences of global warming. International regulatory bodies are lagging behind the technologies and ways of living that are causing climate change.
4. Medical advancements and bioethics: Recent medical advancements, such as the ability for doctors to prescreen infants for genetic diseases and potentially engage in genome alteration, leave society with many questions that have yet to be answered.
What should we be allowed to test for? If a disease is found, should we be able to alter the genes of that child to remove it? Should we be able to use this technology to edit genes in pursuit of specific aesthetics or abilities in newborns?
In November 2018, Chinese biophysicist He Jiankui announced that the first genetically altered humans had been born—two twin girls. He removed a gene from their DNA in an attempt to create genetic resistance to HIV and reported that they were both born healthy.
However, He Jiankui’s actions met widespread backlash, revealing the gap between our technology's capabilities and our underdeveloped thinking on regulating it. This is a clear case of cultural lag.
5. Cryptocurrency and taxation/regulation: Cryptocurrency is a relatively new form of digital asset. Its function is based on digital technologies, allowing verified online purchases without a bank. As the use of these digital currencies becomes more mainstream, regulation measures have lagged.
A likely cause is that lawmakers or the general public do not understand this technology, which makes creating tax interventions and regulatory bodies quite difficult.
6. Social media and big data: The effect that recent technological innovations have had on privacy is a perfect example of cultural lag. Suddenly, the technologies and websites that many of us use daily were able to collect vast swaths of data on our activities.
Cultural lag manifested in a common lack of awareness among users about what data was being collected, how, and for what purpose.
Once people realized on a broad scale what was happening with their personal data, there was an even more prolonged lag in response—both in terms of individual-level changes in behavior to protect personal data and government-level regulations of what kind of data can be used and how.
7. Remote work: Following the COVID-19 pandemic, 44% of British people work from home for at least part of the workweek. In February 2020, only 5.7% of the population worked exclusively at home. Considering this vast change in the landscape of working location and how quickly that change happened, it is unsurprising that some symptoms of cultural lag have accompanied that change.
Traditional methods of tracking productivity, supervising employees, and billing work hours are not as viable in a remote work context, and businesses are still adjusting their management styles to fit the new normal.
8. Online voting: Voting by paper ballot is arduous and expensive for government agencies. The technology for online voting is available, and it is much cheaper and more convenient for voters and administrative agencies.
However, laws to regulate the use of digital voting technologies are not in place, and public trust in these technologies is not at a point where widespread implementation is feasible.
Neither the U.K. nor the U.S. uses online voting, and conversations around voter verification and election verification with these technologies abound.
9. Autonomous vehicles: The technology for autonomous vehicles is already widely available and in the testing stages. However, the typical laws used to regulate driver behavior on the road become obsolete when a computer drives.
In 2018, the first recorded fatality involving a self-driving car (owned and operated by Uber) spurred questions not only about the safety of self-driving cars but also about culpability in the event of a traffic accident. Was the safety driver at fault? Was Uber at fault? These questions highlight the gaps in legal thinking that need to be filled to adjust to the reality of coexisting with autonomous vehicles.
Further, as vehicles become fully autonomous (meaning no safety driver is behind the wheel), the computer that operates the car may find itself in situations where it must make a moral decision. If there is a pedestrian in the street and the car must either hit and kill the pedestrian or turn and crash into a wall, killing the passengers, what should it do? Does it matter how many people are in the car?
Does it matter if the pedestrian was jaywalking? These questions do not have a legal answer, a sign of cultural lag.
10. Remote medical services and licensing: In the United States, the laws around the practice of medicine usually require that a medical provider be licensed in the state where the patient is physically located during the appointment. During COVID-19, many states waived this requirement.
However, these waivers have since expired, even as the reliance on telemedicine continues—a phenomenon that is unlikely to reverse. This leaves patients in absurd situations, such as driving hours to park just over the state border to make a remote appointment from their car.
Long-term, sustainable legal solutions to the telemedicine licensing crisis do not yet exist, highlighting that society has yet to adjust to this change in culture.
CRITICISM
Ogburn’s theory of cultural lag has been accepted by some and criticised by many sociologists. Some of the criticisms are:
1. Davis says the aspects of culture cannot be divided into material and non-material. Hence, the division is not scientific.
2. MacIver opines that the term ‘lag’ is not appropriate to explain the imbalance between the two aspects of culture.
3. Sutherland and Woodward opine that Ogburn is guilty of oversimplifying the process of social change.
However, it is acknowledged that an intimate relationship exists between society and culture. Both are closely interwoven and all cultural change involves social change. Culture is dynamic. Culture itself is a force behind social change. Culture influences our social relationships, beliefs, and values and the character of technological change. Several sociologists have highlighted the determining role of culture in affecting social change. Some of the critical effects are:
1. Culture decides the direction and speed of social change. The nature of culture determines the rate of change. If culture is conservative, the rate of social change becomes slow and if culture is dynamic and adaptive, then the rate of social change becomes speedier.
2. Culture determines the rate of economic growth and the nature of the economy. In his Sociology of Religion, Max Weber opined that a society's economy is a product of its practical ethics.
3. Culture also decides the nature of technological change. The use of technology depends on culture. Similarly, our beliefs, values, and ideals correspond to technological changes.
4. The learner opined that the process of change and modernization depends on individual characteristics, which are the product of culture.
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