The main characteristics of the nature of social change are as follows:
1. Social change is a universal phenomenon:
Social change occurs in all societies. No society remains completely static. This is true of all societies, both primitive and civilised. Society exists in a universe of dynamic influences. The population changes, technologies expand, material equipment changes, ideologies and values take on new components and institutional structures and functions undergo reshaping. The speed and extent of change may differ from society to society. Some change rapidly, others change slowly.
2. Social change is community change:
Social change does not refer to changes in an individual's life or the life patterns of several individuals. It is a change which occurs in the life of the entire community. In other words, only that change can be called social change whose influence can be felt in a community form. Social change is social and not individual.
3. Speed of social change is not uniform:
While social change occurs in all societies, its pace is not uniform across societies. In most societies, it occurs so slowly that it is often not noticed by those who live in them. Even in modern societies, there seems to be little or no change in many areas. Social change in urban areas is faster than in rural areas.
4. Nature and speed of social change are affected by and related to the time factor:
The pace of social change is not uniform across ages or periods within the same society. In modern times, the speed of social change is faster today than it was before 1947. Thus, the speed of social change differs from age to age. The reason is that the factors that cause social change do not remain uniform as times change. Before 1947, there was less industrialisation in India, after 1947, India became more industrialised. Therefore, the speed of social change after 1947 is faster than before 1947.
5. Social change occurs as an essential law:
Change is the law of nature. Social change is also natural. It may occur either in the natural course or as a result of planned efforts. By nature, we desire change. Our needs keep on changing. To satisfy our desire for change and our evolving needs, social change becomes necessary. The truth is that we are anxiously waiting for a change. According to Green, ‘The enthusiastic response to change has become almost a way of life.”
6. Definite prediction of social change is not possible:
It is difficult to make any prediction about the exact forms of social change. There is no inherent law of social change according to which it would assume definite forms. We may say that on account of the social reform movement, untouchability will be abolished from the Indian society; that the basis and ideals of marriage will change due to the marriage laws passed by the government; that industrialisation will increase the speed of urbanisation, but we cannot predict the exact forms which social relationships will assume in future. Likewise, it cannot be predicted what our attitudes, ideas, norms, and values will be in the future.
7. Social change shows a chain-reaction sequence:
A society’s pattern of living is a dynamic system of interrelated parts. Therefore, a change in one of these parts usually affects the others and those beyond them, until it brings about a change in the whole mode of life of many people. For example, industrialism has destroyed the domestic system of production. The destruction of the domestic system of production brought women from the home to the factory and the office. The employment of women meant their independence from men’s bondage. It brought a change in their attitudes and ideas. It meant a new social life for women. It consequently affected every part of the family life.
8. Social change results from the interaction of a number of factors:
Generally, it is thought that a particular factor, such as changes in technology, economic development, or climatic conditions, causes social change. This is called monistic theory, which seeks to interpret social change in terms of one single factor. But the monistic theory does not adequately explain the complex phenomenon of social change. As a matter of fact, social change is the consequence of a number of factors. A special factor may trigger a change, but it is always associated with other factors that make the triggering possible. The reason is that social phenomena are mutually interdependent. None stand out as isolated forces that bring about change of themselves. Rather, each is an element in a system. Modification of the vale part influences the other parts and these influence the rest, until the whole is involved.
9. Social changes are chiefly those of modification or of replacement:
Social changes may be broadly categorised as modifications or replacements. It may be a modification of physical goods or social relationships. For example, the form of our breakfast food has changed. Though we eat the same basic materials which we ate earlier, wheat, eggs, and corn, but their form has changed. Ready-to-eat cornflakes, breads, omelets are substituted for the form in which these same materials were consumed in yesteryears.
There may also be modifications of social relationships. The old authoritarian family has become the small equalitarian family, and the one-room school has become a centralised school. Our ideas about women’s rights, religion, government, and co-education have changed today.
Change also takes the form of replacement. A new material or non-material form supplants an old one. Horses have been replaced by automobiles. Similarly, old ideas have been replaced by new ideas. The germ theory of medicine has replaced older views of the cause of disease. Democracy has replaced aristocracy.
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