Pabna University Of Science & Technology

Department Of Public Administration

COURSE NAME:Introduction To Development Studies
Course code: PA-3204

An Assignment On
Social Change & Development

Submitted by: Submitted To:

Sangida Rahman,
Name:
Assistant Professor,
Zahid Ibn Hasan Department of Public Administration,
Asif Abdullah Pabna University of Science and
Technology.
Md. Sohel Rana
Md.Mahmudul Hasan khan Nishan
Roll:171901,171902,171904,171905
Session:2016-17

30.09.2020

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S.N. Cotent name PAGE NO.
1 Abstract 3

2 Development 4

4 Introduction 4

5 Meaning & Definations 5

6 Dimentions of Development 6-7

7 Factors of Development 8-9

8 Social change 10

9 Introduction 10

10 Meaning 11

11 Definations 11-12

12
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF SOCIAL CHANGE 13

13 Theories of social change 14-15

14 Conclusions 15
15 References 16

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Abstract
A multitude of meanings is attached to the idea of development; the term is complex. It is a
bout building active and sustainable communities based on social justice and mutual
respect.This paper presents development,various dimentions, factors of development. This
paper also discusses social change & theories.

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 Development
Introduction
Development theories do not provide a comprehensive explanation of development as
„development‟. For example, development does not refer to one particular perspective on
social, political and economic betterment. Instead, it is a hybrid term for a myriad of
strategies adopted for socio-economic and environment transformation from current states to
desired ones (Pearson, 1992).
Most development programmes are designed and implemented without giving attention to
the exact needs of the grassroots level.
The aim of this paper is to consider the relationship between development theories and the
grassroots. It defines the meaning of development and describes development theories with
great attention to the grassroots. Finally, it discusses gender and development.

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Meaning & Definations
Development is a process that creates growth, progress, positive change or the addition of
physical, economic, environmental, social and demographic components. In other words,
Development means “improvement in country’s economic and social conditions”. More
specially, it refers to improvements in way of managing an area’s natural and human
resources. In order to create wealth and improve people’s lives.

There are numerous definitions of development. Different authors have advanced more or
less the same arguments pertaining to this rather wide concept. Below, are some of
commonly used definitions:

TAYEBWA (1992:261) states that development is a broad term which should not be limited
to mean economic development, economic welfare or material wellbeing as per Tayebwa,
development in general includes improvements in economic, social and political aspects of
whole society like security, culture, social activities and political institutions.

According to TODARO (1981:56) refers to development as a multi-dimensional process

involving the reorganization and reorientation of the entire economic and social systems.

According to PERROUX (1978:65), defines development as "the combination of mental and

social changes among the population which decide to increase its real and global products,
cumulatively and in sustainable manner."

ROGERS (1990:30) adds "development is a long participatory process of social change in

the society whose objective is the material and social progress for the majority of population
through a better understanding of their environment"

Development does not just involve the biological and physical aspects of growth, but also the
cognitive and social aspects associated with development throughout life. By better
understanding how and why people change and grow, we can then apply this knowledge to
helping people live up to their full potential.

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Dimentions of Development
There are some core dimensions of development. These are briefly described below;

a. Spiritual development:
Spiritual development is the development of the personality towards a religious or spiritual
desired better personality. Spiritual development, in essence, is to believe in something
beyond the material universe and to develop an awareness of realities beyond the confines of
time and space. ... Spiritual development is increasingly aligning God's purposes for the
world with our story.

b. Human development:
Human development is defined as the process of enlarging people's freedoms and
opportunities and improving their well-being. Human development is about the real freedom
ordinary people have to decide who to be, what to do, and how to live. The Human
Development Index (HDI) is a statistical tool used to measure a country's overall
achievement.

c. Social development:
Social development theory attempts to explain qualitative changes in the structure and
framework of society, that help the society to better realize aims and objectives. Social
development is about improving the well-being of every individual in society so they can
reach their full potential. The success of society is linked to the well-being of each and every
citizen. Social development means investing in people. It requires the removal of barriers so
that all citizens can journey toward their dreams with confidence and dignity. It is about
refusing to accept that people who live in poverty will always be poor. It is about helping
people so they can move forward on their path to self-sufficiency.

d. Cultural development:
Cultural Development refers to the strategic planning and implementing of strategies to
leverage your community's unique cultural assets for the economic and cultural benefit of the
community as a whole. It is culture that makes us specifically human, rational beings,
endowed with a critical judgement and a sense of moral commitment.

e. Political Development:
The first is that development is synonymous with modernization, thus political development
can be defined as political modernization. ... Ultimately, political development can be
defined as an increase in national political unity and an increase in political participation.
Broadly, the development of the institutions, attitudes, and values that form the political
power system of a society. Political development has been defined in many ways that reflect
the passage of societies' and analysts' preoccupations.

f. Economic Development:
Economic development is the growth of the standard of living of a nations people from a
low-income (poor) economy to a high-income (rich) economy. When the local quality of life

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is improved, there is more economic development. When social scientists study economic
development, they look at a lot of things. They want to know about the way economic
development is discussed by historians. They also want to know how development is
happening today. They may want to know why people invest more money in some places
than in others. They also want to know why people are better at making things to sell in
some countries rather than others.

g. Ecological development:
Ecological development is defined as a process of environmental improvement by different
organisms. It comprises the topic areas of environmental and climate conservation,
preservation of biodiversity and landscapes, land management and regional development as
well as mobility and traffic systems. Social production and ecology. The environmental
dimension deals with the fragility of ecological and biophysical systems, and their different
functions, under a hazardous condition, to suffer damage and deterioration. However, the
environmental dimension needs to receive further attention, as it may provide specific
insights also for mid- to long-term effects, and especially in the context of climate change.

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Factors of development
Development is not purely an economic phenomenon but rather a multi-dimentional process
involving re-organization and re-orientation of entire economic & social system,development
experts indicate four main factors of development,these are factors are depicted in following;

Economic Political
Development Development

Social Administrative
Development Development

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In a nutshell description of these major factors of development in following;
I. 1.Economic Development
Economic development covers those factors, such as; raising national income, reducing
poverty as well as more equitable distribution of wealth etc.
II. Social Development
Social development means bridging about improvement in the social being of the people. It
lays stress on provision of health services, education, housing & cultural amenities etc.
III. Political Development
Political development refers the capacity of political system to deal with its own fundamental
problems more effectively while responding to the changing political demands of the people.
Such as, voting memberships, freedom of speech and expression.
IV. Administrative Development
Administrative development covers both the development of the administration and
administration of development. Such as, e-governance, good governance & PPE etc.

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 Social change
Introduction
Permanence of human society is an illusion. Human society is in an ever-changing process,
growing, decaying, renewing and adjusting itself to new-found ideas, inventions and ways of
living. The concept of social change was introduced by August Comte, a Frenchman, known
as founding father of Sociology. Later on, the concept of social change was further refined and
developed by Herbert Spencer, Karl Marx and a number of other sociologists. No human
society is static and at the same time it is difficult to predict the forms and directions of social
change. The reason is that the factors which cause social change do not remain uniform always.
The population changes, expansion of science and technology, ideologies and social values
take on new forms, and as a result of that social structure, social system, and social institutions
change their functioning.

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Meaning
The word 'change' immediately brings to mind something different from yesterday or past.
Change is the irrefutable law of nature. It may be or may not be visible but all things are
changing at varying paces. There are changes in physical environment, flora and fauna, water
table, so on and so forth. Similarly, social environment which has been created by human
beings themselves is continuously in the process of change.
Therefore, Social change refers to an alteration in the social structure of a social group or
society which, according to, International Encyclopaedia of Social Science (IESS. 1972), are
the change in the nature, social institutions, social behaviour’s or social relations of a society.
The alteration may occur in norms, values, cultural products and symbols in a society. This
alteration in the structure and function of a social system, institutions and patterns of
interaction, work, leisure activities, roles and other aspects of society can be altered over the
time as a result of the process of social change.

Definitions
From the middle of nineteenth century onwards, a large number of sociologists have tried to
define social change. Some often-quoted definitions of social change are:

August Comte: Societies progress through a series of predictable stages based on the
development of human knowledge.

Anderson and Parker: Social Change involves alterations in the structure or functioning of
social forms or processes themselves.

Davis: By social change it is meant only such alterations as occur in social organization, that
is, structure and functions of society.

Gillin and Gillin: Social changes are variations from the accepted modes of life; whether due
to alteration in geographical conditions, in cultural equipment or composition of the
population, etc.

Ginsberg, M.: By social change, I understand a change in social structure e.g. the size of
society, the composition or balance of its parts or the type of its organization.

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Koening, S.: Social change refers to the modifications which occur in the life-patterns of
people.

Lundberg and Others: Social change refers to any modifications in established patterns of
inter-human relationships and standards of conduct.

MacIver and Page: Our direct concern as sociologist is with social relationships. It is the
change in these relationships which alone we shall regard as social change.

Mazumdar, H.T.: Social change may be defined as a new fashion or mode, either modifying
or replacing the old, in the life of people, or in the operations of society.

Merrill and Eldredge: Social change means that a large number of persons Social Change:
Concept are engaging in activities that differ from those which they or their immediate and
Factors Involved in Social Change forefathers engaged in sometime before.

Smelser, Neil J.: Social change is the alterations of the way societies are organized.

In fine, Social change is way human interactions and relationships transform cultural
and social institutions over time, having a profound impact of society.

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HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF SOCIAL CHANGE
Several ideas of social change have been developed in various cultures and historical periods.
Three may be distinguished as the most basic: (1) the idea of decline or degeneration, or, in
religious terms (2) the idea of cyclic change, a pattern of subsequent phase of growth and
decline, and (3) the idea of continuous progress. These three ideas were already prominent in
Greek and Roman antiquity and have characterized Western social thought since that time.
The concept of progress, however, has become the most influential idea, especially since the
Enlightenment movement of the 17th and 18th centuries. Social thinkers advanced theories on
the progress of human knowledge and technology.
Auguste Comte's “religion of humanity”Learn about Auguste Comte's positivist philosophy
and his attempts to establish a “religion of humanity.”
Progress was also the key idea in 19th-century theories of social evolution, and evolutionism
was the common core shared by the most influential social theories of that century.
The most encompassing theory of social evolution was developed by Herbert Spencer, who,
unlike Comte, linked social evolution to biological evolution. According to Spencer, biological
organisms and human societies follow the same universal, natural evolutionary law.
Evolutionary thought also dominated the new field of social and cultural anthropology in the
second half of the 19th century.
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were highly influenced by evolutionary ideas. The Marxian
distinctions between primitive communism, the Asiatic mode of production, ancient slavery,
feudalism, capitalism, and future socialism may be interpreted as a list of stages in one
evolutionary development.
The originality of the Marxian theory of social development lay in its combination of dialectics
and gradualism. In Marx’s view social development was a dialectical process: the transition
from one stage to another took place through a revolutionary transformation.
Émile Durkheim and Max Weber, sociologists who began their careers at the end of the 19th
century, showed ambivalence toward the ideas of progress. Durkheim regarded the increasing
division of labour as a basic process, rooted in modern individualism. Weber rejected
evolutionism by arguing that the development of Western society was quite different from that
of other civilizations and therefore historically unique.
The work of Durkheim, Weber, and other social theorists around the turn of the century marked
a transition from evolutionism toward more static theories.
The study of long-term social change revived in the 1950s and continued to develop through
the 1960s and ’70s. Neo-evolutionist theories were proclaimed by several anthropologists.
Unlike 19th-century evolutionism, neo-evolutionism does not assume that all societies go
through the same stages of development. Instead, much attention is paid to variations between
societies as well as to relations of influence among them.
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THEORIES OF SOCIAL CHANGE
Social Change refers to the modifications which take place in life patterns of a people. It occurs
because all societies are in a constant state of disequilibrium. Early sociologists viewed the
cultures of primitive peoples as completely static.
But this view was abandoned with the appearance of scientific studies of pre-literate culture.
Anthropologists now agree that primitive cultures always underwent changes, although at a
very slow pace, which initially gave the impression of their being static and stationary.
All modern sociologists unanimously express their agreement on the naturalness and
inevitability of Social change in each human society. However, at the same time they project
and advocate various theories of Social Change. Each theory seeks to explain the nature and
reasons and scope of Social Change in a particular way. Following are the most important
theories of social change:
1. Cyclic Theory:
Many of our present day thinkers have put forward the cyclic theory of social change. These
include Spengler, Vacher-de-Lapouge, Vilfredo Pareto, F. Staurt Chopin, Sorokin and Arnold
J. Toynbee. Spengler is of the view that like day and night, society too has a pre-determined
course which includes its birth, growth, maturity and decline. J.B. Bury has also contributed
to this idea. On the basis of analysis of some of the great civilizations like Egyptian, Roman
and Greek civilizations, he came to the conclusion that all these civilization saw its decline
due to cyclical theory. Vilfredo Pareto is of the view that social change is due to political
circumstances. He feels that vigorous politicians try to capture power by disturbing the existing
social order but with the passage of time it becomes impossible to vigorously pursue the
change and they try to use their energies for maintaining status quo. This status quo is tolerated
till such time when new aristocracy does not come to the forefront to disturb the existing order.
Therefore, he believes that disturbing social order and maintaining status quo is in a cyclical
order and thus inevitable.
2. Auguste Comte’s Stage Theory:
Comte said that society has passed through three stages namely theological, metaphysical and
positive. In the theological stage society, they believed in supernatural powers and accepted
the idea that these powers controlled our social behaviour. During the second stage i.e. the
metaphysical stage his ideas about supernatural powers changes and from god he came to
abstraction and tried to explain social behavior through abstraction. In the third stage which is
called positive stage, everything is being empirically studied and all this is going on in a
cyclical order.
3. Karl Marx’s Theory of Social Change:

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Karl Marx’s theory of social change is also called deterministic or single factor theory of social
change. According to this theory there is only one factor and not many factors are responsible
for bringing social change. According to Karl Marx, economic factor is the only factor
responsible for bringing social change. Marx believed that except economic factor all other
factors are useless and superfluous and sometimes even harmful. He also believed that religion
was the opium of the people and it distracted masses from hard realities of life. For Marx, all
ideas change with economic ideas and so also the living standard of the people. Not only this
but for Marx, social changes which are being witnessed in the society are nothing but due to
continuous class struggle. A class struggle is always going on between the rich and the poor,
between the employer and the employee.
4.Structural-Factor Theory:
According to this theory each function of the society directly and positively influences the
other. Every social function is complementary and none is exclusive. Therefore, they believe
that changes in functions are reasons behind social change. This theory is supported by Parsons
and Merton.

5.Theory of Religion:
There are many who refute Marx’s theory of economic determinism for social change. They
feel that no doubt economic considerations play a considerably important role but they feel
that there are many other considerations as well according to them, more than economic
consideration are religious considerations. Max Weber contributes to the idea that religion is
responsible for bringing about social change. From history, he quotes that emergence of
Hinduism, Islam, Christanity or Judaism brought considerable social changes and thus they
give more importance to religion rather than to economic aspects of life for change.

Conclusions:
Social changes are rapidly coming and in fact their occurrence is inevitable. But what is the
rate of social change. A change may occur in different societies or in the same society at
different times. It is more or less impossible to decide about the rapidity of change and
determine whether change is faster than the other.

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References:
Barnett, T. (1988). Sociology and Development. London: Routledge.
Turner and Hulme (1997) Governance, Administration and Development; Make the State
Work.. Houndmills, Basingstoke Hampshire: Macmillan Press Ltd
Traditional Development Theories have failed to Address the Needs of the majority of People
at Grassroots Levels with Reference to GAD,Dr. Reem Abuiyada, International Journal of
Business and Social Science ,Vol. 9 • No. 9 • September 2018 doi:10.30845/ijbss.v9n9p1

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