Nature of Culture and The Change
It is the nature of culture which directs social change. There are cultures around the world which encourage social change in technology, others in biological factors of the individual, and some in other cultural factors. The Western culture directs social change towards industrialization, The Western advanced societies lay their cultural emphasis upon technological and industrial expansion. Our culture encourages our activities toward a new phase of life and that is developing stage of agriculture, industry and education, Most of the cultures encourage technological development but there are a few East African cultures which undergo faster changes in the social implications of non-material culture, So the structure of a society on its patterns of normative behavior will determine social changes slowly or rapidly and in any field of life first. A culture keeping its dogmatic values hardly changing, will show changes hardly in attitude and in- the application of material objects, On the other hand, the other not holding its cultural values as stagnant, is likely to accept social changes in technology and other environmental factors
Resistance to Cultural Change
- Cultural Lag. One aspect (especially technological) of culture goes ahead of the others (especially social) due to fast innovations in the former and thus the latter remains unadjusted. See detail in the next chapter.
- Economic Factor. Economic factors may hinder in culture change in the respect that one wants to live in modern building or buy an automobile but cannot, due to insufficiency of economic resources.
- Isolation. Geographical, religious or social factors may prevent the people of a culture from being aware of “new” things.
- Punishment. Some of the changes are not encouraged by the society and those who adopt are punished. Such changes are usually against the cultural values.
- Difficulty in Learning. Some of the new changes may be difficult for the people to understand, hence may not be adopted
