2 Sociological Foundations of Education · 2.1 Sociological foundations of education
2.1.2 Culture, cultural lag and social change
Culture is the learned, shared way of life of a group; its material side changes faster than its ideas and norms (Ogburn's cultural lag), it spreads mainly by diffusion, and education both conserves culture and changes it.
- APPSC Paper I
- Standard level
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Core facts
- Culture, classic definition: E.B. Tylor, Primitive Culture (1871): the "complex whole" of knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom and habits acquired by man as a member of society.
- Other definitions to recognise:
- Herskovits: culture is the man-made part of the environment;
- Bierstedt: culture is what we think, do and have as members of society;
- Malinowski: culture is an instrument that meets human needs (functionalist view);
- D.N. Majumdar (with T.N. Madan): culture is the sum total of human achievements, material and non-material, passed on socially by tradition and communication;
- BRAOU (after Banks): the whole way of life of a society: language, customs, values, norms, tools, technologies, institutions.
- D.N. Majumdar wrote *Races and Cultures of India* (1944) (asked 2025). T.B. Bottomore wrote Sociology: A Guide to Problems and Literature (1962).
- Two parts of culture:
- Material: tools, buildings, machines, technology;
- Non-material: ideas, values, beliefs, customs, laws, language.
- Features: culture is learned (not inherited), shared, transmitted (mainly through language and communication), cumulative, changing and different in each society.
- Enculturation: a person absorbing his or her own culture into the personality from birth (2025 key). The term is credited to M.J. Herskovits (Man and His Works, 1948).
- Acculturation: change when two different cultures stay in continuous contact and one takes over traits of the other (classic memorandum by Redfield, Linton and Herskovits, 1936).
- Assimilation: the end point, when a group merges into the other culture and loses its separate identity.
- Cultural lag: W.F. Ogburn, Social Change with Respect to Culture and Original Nature (1922). Technology and material culture advance faster; non-material culture (customs, ethics, laws) changes slowly and lags behind. The gap is the lag (2025 key). It has a direct bearing on social change taking place at a slow speed (2025 key).
- Adaptive culture (Ogburn): the part of non-material culture that must adjust to new material conditions; this is the part that lags.
- Ogburn's four processes of cultural change: invention, accumulation, diffusion, adjustment.
- Diffusion: spread of a culture trait from one group or society to another (by trade, migration, conquest, media, education). The most important factor in cultural change (2025 key); invention / innovation is the internal source. Ralph Linton estimated that most of any culture's content is borrowed.
- Social change (MacIver and Page, Society): change in social relationships and the structure of society. Cultural change: wider, in ideas, values, art, technology. Kingsley Davis: social change is a part of cultural change.
- Social change is universal (no society is static) but not always progress.
- Indian terms (M.N. Srinivas): Sanskritisation (a lower caste copying upper-caste customs; first used in Religion and Society among the Coorgs of South India, 1952) and Westernisation (change under about 150 years of British rule); both developed in Social Change in Modern India (1966).
- Education and culture: education preserves, transmits, enriches and purifies culture (conservative and selective functions) and brings change (creative or progressive function). It is both a cause and an effect of social change.
- Dewey: "education is the fundamental method of social progress and reform" (My Pedagogic Creed, 1897); the school is a miniature / embryonic society (The School and Society, 1899).
- Kothari Commission (1964-66) sees education as the main instrument of social change; its report opens: "The destiny of India is now being shaped in her classrooms."
- UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity (2001): cultural diversity is as necessary for humankind as biodiversity is for nature; it is the common heritage of humanity.
Explained
1. Material and non-material culture with examples.
| Part | Examples | Speed of change |
|---|---|---|
| Material | mobile phone, tractor, dam, printed book | fast |
| Non-material | dowry custom, caste norms, family values, laws | slow |
| Ogburn's "adaptive culture" | the part of non-material culture that must adjust to new material things | lags |
- Both parts shape personality, and culture shapes gender and occupational roles too; but its effect is not the same on everyone, because each person meets it through different people (BRAOU).
- Vygotsky: culture is the prime determinant of a child's individual development.
- Every culture contains subcultures (by ethnicity, language, class, religion or region) that share the common traits.
2. Cultural lag in simple cases.
- Mobile phones and the internet reached every village, but rules of privacy, cyber ethics and online safety came years later.
- Ultrasound made it easy to find the sex of a foetus; the law and attitudes against sex selection followed slowly.
- New farm machines arrived while land laws and joint-family habits stayed old.
- In schools: the job market and technology change, but the curriculum, textbooks and exam methods change slowly (a curriculum lag). Reform commissions try to close this gap.
- Ogburn saw the lag as a period of maladjustment that lasts until the non-material side catches up; the gap does not close as soon as a technology appears.
3. Enculturation, socialisation, acculturation: how they differ.
| Term | Who and what | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Enculturation | a child learns his own culture | a Telugu child learns Sankranti customs and the mother tongue |
| Socialisation | a person learns to be a member of society (norms, roles) | learning to wait in a queue, obey elders |
| Acculturation | contact between two cultures, borrowing traits | a tribal child in a city hostel adopts town dress and food habits |
| Assimilation | full merging, old identity lost | migrants who no longer use their own language |
Socialisation stresses social roles; enculturation stresses the culture of one's own group. The two overlap.
4. Sources of cultural change.
- Discovery: finding something that already exists but was unknown (fire, a new land, a law of nature).
- Invention: combining known things into something new (the wheel, the printing press, a new teaching method). Ogburn and Nimkoff divide inventions into material and social (a new institution, such as the panchayat or the cooperative society); Linton separates basic inventions from improving ones.
- Diffusion: borrowing from outside (yoga spreading to the West; English in Indian schools). Most traits of any culture come from diffusion, which is why textbooks call it the most important factor of cultural change.
- Accumulation: new traits are added faster than old ones are lost, so culture grows.
- Adjustment: the parts of culture adapt to each other; slow adjustment shows up as lag.
- Not one of Ogburn's processes: assimilation (that is a result of culture contact).
5. Factors of social change (textbook list).
| Factor | How it works | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Geographical (physical) | climate, earthquakes, floods, drought force migration and new habits | cyclone-hit coastal villages moving inland |
| Demographic | population growth, age and sex ratio | pressure on schools and jobs; more elderly |
| Technological | machines, transport, media (Veblen, Ogburn) | tractors, mobile phones, the internet |
| Economic | ownership, occupations (Marx gives it first place) | wage labour replacing jajmani ties |
| Cultural and ideological | new values, religion, reform movements | social reform against child marriage |
| Political and legal | laws, Constitution, government policy | abolition of untouchability (Art. 17), RTE Act 2009 |
| Educational | literacy, new knowledge, critical thinking | girls' schooling raising the age of marriage |
6. Theories of social change.
| Type | Thinker | Key idea or book |
|---|---|---|
| Evolutionary (linear) | Comte; Herbert Spencer; L.H. Morgan | three stages (theological, metaphysical, positive); simple to complex, "survival of the fittest"; savagery → barbarism → civilisation |
| Cyclical | Oswald Spengler; Arnold Toynbee | The Decline of the West (1918), rise and decline of civilisations; A Study of History, "challenge and response" |
| Cyclical | P.A. Sorokin; Vilfredo Pareto | Social and Cultural Dynamics (1937–41), sensate, ideational, idealistic cultures; circulation of elites |
| Conflict / economic | Karl Marx | class struggle; the mode of production (economic base) drives change |
Technological determinism: Veblen and Ogburn (technology drives change).
7. Education as conserver and as changer of culture.
- Every society expects its institutions (family, school) to do two things: perpetuate its culture and help bring social change (BRAOU).
- Conservative function: preserves the heritage, transmits it to the next generation (language, values, festivals, arts), and keeps society stable. BRAOU calls the school the "saviour of cultural traditions".
- Selective / purifying function: keeps what is good and drops harmful practices (superstition, untouchability, dowry).
- Creative / progressive function: adds new knowledge, develops scientific temper, prepares children for a changing world; education is an agent (instrument) of social change.
- Integrative function: brings different cultures together (unity in diversity), a link to national integration.
- Two-way relation: education is both a cause and an effect of social change. When society changes (industry, democracy), the school system changes too.
- BRAOU: culture is the wider term, and education is its basis; continuity with the past is kept by handing the social heritage to the new generation.
- In the sociological view, education is a cultural process (2025).
8. Cultural diversity (BRAOU, Unit 7).
- Cultural diversity: the variety of cultures in a region or institution, or the differences between groups in one society.
- The UNESCO Declaration (2001) moves from diversity to cultural pluralism, treats diversity as a factor in development, and says diversity can never be used to infringe human rights.
- Globalisation reduces the world's cultural diversity; migration increases diversity within a society.
- UNESCO figures quoted by BRAOU: about 96% of languages are spoken by only 4% of people; on average one language dies every two weeks.
- Cultural pluralism: groups keep their own identities while living together with equal respect; the Indian ideal of unity in diversity.
9. Terms of culture contact.
| Term | Meaning | Name linked |
|---|---|---|
| Ethnocentrism | judging other cultures by one's own, thinking it superior | W.G. Sumner, Folkways (1906) |
| Cultural relativism | understanding a culture in its own terms | Franz Boas |
| Culture shock | confusion on entering an unfamiliar culture (a tribal child in an urban hostel) | Kalervo Oberg |
| Great / little tradition | classical literate culture vs folk village culture | Robert Redfield; McKim Marriott (universalisation, parochialisation, 1955) |
- Subculture: a group's own variant within the main culture. Counter-culture: a group that openly rejects the main values (Theodore Roszak, 1969).
- Universalisation (Marriott): local customs flow upward into the great tradition; parochialisation: the great tradition flows down and takes local forms.
Common traps
- ✗ "Enculturation is learning another culture." ✓ Enculturation = learning one's own culture; acculturation = borrowing from another culture through contact.
- ✗ "Cultural lag means non-material culture changes faster." ✓ Material culture changes faster; the non-material part lags.
- ✗ "Cultural lag was given by Sorokin or MacIver." ✓ W.F. Ogburn, 1922.
- ✗ "Cultural lag goes with change at high speed." ✓ It reflects slow change in customs, values and laws.
- ✗ "Innovation is the main factor of cultural change in textbooks." ✓ The usual key is diffusion (borrowing), with invention as the internal source.
- ✗ "Races and Cultures of India is by M.N. Srinivas or Bottomore." ✓ D.N. Majumdar (1944). Srinivas: Sanskritisation, dominant caste; Bottomore: a sociology guide (1962).
- ✗ "Discovery and invention are the same." ✓ Discovery finds what exists; invention makes something new from known parts.
- ✗ "Ethnocentrism was coined by Marx." ✓ W.G. Sumner, Folkways (1906).
- ✗ "Migration reduces diversity within a society." ✓ Migration increases it; globalisation reduces world diversity.
- ✗ "Social change and cultural change are the same; every change is progress." ✓ Social change = change in social relationships, a part of cultural change (Kingsley Davis); change is not always progress.
Quick revision
- Tylor 1871 "complex whole"; Herskovits: man-made part of environment; Bierstedt: think, do, have.
- Majumdar: Races and Cultures of India (1944); culture = sum total of achievements.
- Material (fast) vs non-material (slow); Ogburn's cultural lag, 1922; adaptive culture lags.
- Ogburn's processes: invention, accumulation, diffusion, adjustment.
- Diffusion = borrowing; key factor of cultural change (2025).
- Enculturation (own culture, Herskovits) vs acculturation (contact) vs assimilation.
- Cyclical: Spengler, Toynbee, Sorokin, Pareto; linear: Comte, Spencer, Morgan; Marx: economic.
- Sanskritisation (1952) and Westernisation: M.N. Srinivas.
- Education conserves, purifies and changes culture; both cause and effect of change.
- UNESCO 2001: diversity as necessary as biodiversity; Kothari: "destiny … in her classrooms".
Go deeper: Deeper (beyond what APPSC Paper I usually asks)
Deeper Advanced
1. Ogburn's argument in brief. Culture has a material part and a non-material part; inside the non-material part, the adaptive culture (laws, customs, organisations) has to adjust to new material conditions. Because people resist new values, vested interests defend the old, and the adaptive culture needs time to see the need, the adjustment comes late. Ogburn's own example was the time it took for workmen's compensation laws to follow the spread of factory machines and industrial accidents in the United States.
2. Criticism of cultural lag.
- It assumes the material side always leads and culture follows; sometimes ideas lead (a new religion or a constitution can drive technology and economy).
- The split between material and non-material is not sharp: a machine embodies ideas.
- It is hard to measure "how much" lag exists.
3. Diffusion schools in anthropology.
- British (extreme) diffusionists: G. Elliot Smith and W.J. Perry traced much of world culture to ancient Egypt.
- German-Austrian culture-circle (Kulturkreis) school: F. Graebner and W. Schmidt.
- American historical school: Franz Boas and his students studied diffusion within culture areas.
- Modern view: diffusion is selective; a society borrows what fits its needs and changes it on the way (for example English as a language of opportunity in Indian schools, used side by side with the mother tongue).
4. Teachers and cultural change. A teacher is a transmitter of culture and an agent of change: he or she uses the child's home language and culture as a bridge (culturally responsive teaching), corrects superstition through science, and models democratic values. Theodore Brameld's reconstructionism goes further: the school should lead society towards a new social order.
Practise this topic. Questions on Culture, cultural lag and social change, with answers explained.
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