Chapter 16, Social Change

Key Terms

global interdependenceA state in which the social, political, financial and cultural lives of people around the world are intertwined such that one country’s problems are part of a larger global situation.

globalizationThe process of ever-increasing “cross-border flows of goods, services, money, people, information, and culture.”

social changeAny significant alteration, modification, or transformation in the reorganization and operation of social life.

InnovationThe invention or discovery of something new--an idea, a process, a practice, a device, or a tool.

basic innovationsRevolutionary, unprecedented, or ground-breaking inventions that serve as the cornerstones for a wide range of applications.

improving innovationsModifications of basic inventions that improve upon the originals- that is, to make them smaller, faster, less complicated, or more efficient, attractive or profitable.

hypertextAllows readers to pick and choose among highlighted key words and follow links to related documents that are stored in computers around the world.

dearth of feedbackA situation in which not enough critical readers and listeners evaluate material before it is used by the popular media.

cultural baseThe number of existing inventions.

inventionA synthesis of existing inventions.

simultaneous-independent inventionsSituations in which the same invention is created by two or more persons working independently of one another at about the same time.

adaptive cultureThe portion of the nonmaterial culture, that adjusts to material innovations.

cultural lagA situation in which adaptive culture fails to adjust in necessary ways to material innovation.

technological deterministSomeone who believes that people have no free will and are controlled entirely by their material innovations.

paradigmsThe dominant and widely accepted theories and concepts in a particular field of study.

anomalyAn observation or observations that a paradigm cannot explain.

globalization-from-aboveA term describing the Internet's ability to connect those people around the world with educational, economic, and political advantages, excluding those who are not so advantaged.

globalization-from-belowInterdependence at the grassroots level that aims to protect the environment, enhance ordinary people's access to basic resources, democratize political institutions, and ease tensions and prevent violent conflict between power centers and authority structures.

social movementA situation in which a substantial number of people organize to change, to resist change, or to undo change in some area of society.

regressive or reactionary social movementsSocial movements with the goal of turning back the hands of time to an earlier condition or state of being sometimes defined as a golden era.

reformist movementsSocial movement that target some specific feature of society as needing change.

revolutionary movementsSocial movements that seek broad, sweeping, and radical structural changes to a society’s basic social institutions or to the world order.

counterrevolutionary movementsSocial movements that seek to maintain a social order that reform and revolutionary movements are seeking to change.

objective deprivationA condition that applies to those who are the worst off or most disadvantaged- people with the lowest incomes,least education, lowest social status, fewest opportunities, and so on.

relative deprivationA condition that is measured, not by objective standards, but by comparing one group's situation to that of those who are more advantaged.

terrorismAnxiety inspiring and violent actions taken by a clandestine or semi-clandestine individual, group, or state-supported actors for idiosyncratic, criminal or political reasons.

resource mobilizationA situation in which a core group of sophisticated strategists work to harness the disaffected person's energies, attract money and supporters, capture the media’s attention, forge alliances with those in power, and create an organizational structure.