This marks the beginning of the final section of the course. In this section we will address many of the factors or basic elements sociologists see to be involved in social change. First we will discuss change in a very general sense and look to some of the very broad theoretical approaches that have come from the examination of international social change. Next we will study the basic elements of the society -- its population. Growth in the population and interaction of numbers with the resources where the population lives is one of the key driving factors in social change as the people attempt to solve problems posed by the conflict between unlimited growth and limited resources.
One the the important modern day outcomes of growth has been the development of the urban place and the industrialized society. These two structural changes have forever altered how we relate to one another and to our societies. Finally we will take a look at the way growth has altered the way we organize ourselves. We will see that we have gone from relationships based upon informal personal interactions to increasingly formal, structural interactions.
Unit 12: Social Change
Unit 13: Population growth and change
Unit 14: Industrialization and urbanization
Unit 15: Organizational growth and change