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Some Clasiccal and Contemporary Approaches to Social Changes from Sociological Perspectives – Conceptual and (or) Ideological Differences

From the very beginning of sociology, social change has been both historical framework and the main subject-matter of sociological research. The aim of this article is to point out very important differences between classical and contemporary sociological theories of social change. For this purpose, main ideas of several classical sociologists of social change, such as Saint- Simon, Comte, Spencer, Marx and Weber were summarized and the new approaches to social change based on the work of two contemporary theorists P. Sztompka and A. So, were described. According to the theory of P. Sztompka, social change is viewed as a micro-level (local) phenomenon where the unit of analysis is a particular society. In his approach to society as a social field, Sztompka analyzed a social change through its form, consequences, awareness of change, driving forces, level of social fields and dimension of time. Contrary to this, the approach by A. So could be defined as a macro- level (global) approach which analyses the entire society in relation to its wider geographical, culturological and historical context, based on theoretical frames of neo- modern theory, new world system theory and new dependency theory. These two approaches may be used as an adequate theoretical and conceptual framework from which research instruments can be developed, without ideological limitations of previous, opposed sociological paradigms. As such, they could be operationalized in empirical research of social change, its factors and different consequences, offering a more suitable approach to social processes and changes in the 21st century.

sociology ; social change ; social development ; modernization ; progress ; world-system theory ; dependency theory.

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