Social Reality: Violence, Power, and Change Factors determining Change -Part 1 - Lite version

**"Life is change"** - charlie777pt

Introduction

In our lives, there are events and situations that influence the equilibrium and identity like the changes of our bodies, situations, places, attitudes, opinions, behavior, and habits.

1 - Change by Resistance and Resistance to Change

Change has the two opposite sides of a coin, one with the individual and collective Resistance against it, and in the other with Resistance as the way to change unsustainable situations in society. Change is always between the equilibration of two forms of Resistance for or against it. Participation has been stolen from us to benefit financially or politically a small class of capital owners and politicians that retain and rule about the wealth and decision power in postmodern societies. Social change challenges the power distribution and relations, by participation and engagement, to facilitate change processes for social, political and economic justice. The factors involved in change can be personal , situational, cultural, social, economical or technological. ![change-factors-en.jpg](https://steemitimages.com/DQmYx4EoExgEnkgAzb4sLpRYVrkqu9DZbexLgXYTtv8g1Cp/change-factors-en.jpg)

2- Personal factors

Personal factors are part of the process of change like modifying habits or values in day-to-day life in aspects like success or feeling control on reality.

2.1 - Success

Strodtbeck and Mann in 1956 defined success as the individual capacities to climb the ladder of social mobility. The need for success was studied by Mclelland in 1961-65 by a test that could determine the self-motivation to be successful, and the environmental influences. They connected success with socialization related to the parent's trust or their strengthen needs for success that are reflected in the child tendencies for achievement. They also found a correlation with the parents social status and the degree of success and another factor he called "extra determination" connecting economic wealth with social mobility, and the tendency to ascend socially and have a better feeling of relationships with other people. Later experiments proved that the closed focus on personal characteristics didn't take into account situational factors of change.

2.2 - Control

The feeling of control in an adaptation to change is the power we sense that we can handle events in reality, or become impotent for our lack of getting what we want. Control and impotence can come from the inside(individual) or from the outside (contextual) and produce a depressive state(by impotence) not only by lack of control but as well if the change is not desired. Control was associated with a strong feeling of identity that diminishes the influence of stressing events in consciousness, giving a sense of domination of reality. The attribution of responsibilities augments our sociability and physical health, making the individual feels self-attributed control on real events.

3- Situations

This set of factors related to the situation show for example how aging changes our ways to react to the surrounding events. For example, old people that can be more affected by natural catastrophes, are the ones that take less into account the advice of the official authorities. Aging changes the way we react to situational factors by the diminished physical mobility, slower reaction times, and increasing sensorial and perceptual disturbances, with disorientation. Getting old is being more exposed to death in the family and friends, unemployment, loneliness, and on the other side society has stereotypes of age related to incapacities and unwillingness to change or lack of knowledge.

4- Culture

Change is related to the various components of culture that do not follow a linear or regular change. Mead in 1953 said that changing food supply in some societies from local and natural to imported goods didn't change the regular habits, except that in the initial food was shared so they didn't check the stock, and when they changed they had to verify the stocks because this new system needed vigilance for quantities. When a society changes from fascist to democratic there is no global change of mentalities at the structural and the cultural level, but two types of contradicting ideologies for or against the preconized change.

5- Tech and Economy

In industrial societies, technology development and economic growth are less studied as factors that influence change, but have a profound impact on life, communication with others and contextual implications. Doob in 1975 defined 7 factors that happen the process of change:

How a person is controlled by the way he/she is fixated on the influences of his/her Past, Present or Future.
The role of the state in providing satisfaction for people's needs.
The personal sense of control over life and events.
Patriotism
Influence of scientific thought in rational thinking
The nature of social attitudes
The refusal of ancient values and beliefs

This makes difficult any clear analysis of its complexity and impossible compartmentation.

6 - Society

We have seen that there are inside and outside factors influencing change. The endogenous factors have to do with the way society values, legitimate or disapprove social conducts. Values influence change in two ways, with stabilization and absorption in the social order, or with refusal, that can stop or delay it. The exogenous factors are contingencies forcing groups and organizations to find new ways to solve them (social intelligence). So today the accelerated growth of populations, the shrinking of economic living standards, and world hunger are destabilizing the World and showing the urgent need to equilibrate these elements (that the states are not solving). These elements are not easily isolable, and change has both internal and external influences, resulting in the impossibility to define the fundamental causes of the transformations, a difficult phenomenon to analyze and compartmentalized with a multitude of events influencing the evolution of human adaptation, conditioned by the various personal, situational, and socio-economic-cultural factors. The next post will be more abstract and complex, being more turned on for scholars or students of all sorts.

Last posts in this series on Social Reality: Violence, Power and Change Introduction:

Social Reality: Violence, Power and Change

A - Violence:

An Introduction to Violence The Concepts of Violence, Aggression, and Aggressiveness The Theories on Violence The influencers of Violence -Part One - Culture and Social Context The influencers of Violence -Part Two - Social , Cognitive and Environmental Factors The ascend of Today's Violence

B -Power:

What is Power? - Introduction The Nature of Power

The Dynamics of Power:

The Effects and Consequences of Power

C - Change:

Change and Culture The Theories and Concepts of Change Factors determining Change - Part 1 - Lite version - this post

Articles from the next series of posts about Social Reality, Violence, Power and Change: C - Change:(cont.)

Factors determining Change - Part 2 - Complex version The Ways of Change A Social Change

References consulted:

Les concepts fondamentaux de la psychologie sociale - Gustave-Nicolas Fischer La psychologie sociale - Gustave-Nicolas Fischer The social-violence dynamics, Power, change - Gustave-Nicolas Fischer, Planeta / ISPA, 1980 Gustave-Nicolas Fischer is Professor of Psychology and Director of the Psychology Laboratory at the University of Metz. French, J. R. P., and Raven, B.H. (1959). The bases of social Power. Raven, B. H. and Rubin, J. Z. (1976). Social psychology: People in groups Castel, R. The metamorphoses of the social question. Voices, 1998. Moscovici, S. (1976). Social influence and social change. London: Academic Press Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison Festinger, L. (1954). A theory of social comparison processes. French, J. R. P., Morrison, H. W., and Levinger, G. (1960). Coercive Power and forces affecting conformity Dahl, R.A. (1957), The Concept of Power. Giddens, Anthony, Capitalism and Modern Social Theory: An Analysis of the Writings of Marx, Durkheim and Max Weber, 1971. Grabb, Edward G., Theories of Social Inequality: Classical and Contemporary Perspectives,1990. Weber, Max, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, 1968. Lewin, K. (1948) ‘Action Research and Minority Problems’, in G.W. Lewin (ed.), Researching Social Conflicts , New York: Harper and Row Parsons, T. (1966). Societies: Evolutionary and comparative perspectives. Levy, A. (1986) Second-order planned change: Definition and conceptualization, Organisational Dynamics, Vol, 15, Issue 1, pp. 5, 19-17, 23 Watzlawick, P., Weakland, J.H., Fisch, R. (1974) Change: Principles of Problem Formation and Problem Resolution. New York, Norton.

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