Social Change During Industrialization

Our society undergoes a constant, compelling force of change due to the natural process of advancement and variation. We presuppose and designate certain behaviors and attitudes as change transpires between society and its inhabitants. With this change in socialization, structural patterns, norms, and power relations also transition and alter. The epoch of industrialization is an example of this social-technological transformation. Utilizing conflict theory and functionalist theory, different aspects of social change during industrialization will be deconstructed and analyzed.

A social change experienced by my grandmother of eighty six years old during industrialization was that of family gender relations. She noticed that roles of mother and father had slightly altered. Female roles had been further constructed to a more concentrated "caregiver/housewife" role, while fathers were head of the household and "breadwinners" of the family.

A conflict theorist (such as Marx and Weber) would explain and blame this change of family relations, in terms of a change in power relations, ultimately resulting from an embedded, structuralized system of inequality. This is a social change of society transforming into a more "gendered" society, further emphasizing the fact of what a conflict theorist would describe as a class struggle. From this conflict arises inequality where the ability to maintain the status quo is crucial in sustaining this unbalance.

A functionalist theorist (Durkheim) would give an explanation of the altering of female and male roles as a natural process towards progress. The progress being society does indeed require specific roles in order for function to transpire throughout; in continuation of equilibrium to take place. A functionalist would describe a gendered society not as an inequality in society, but as an evolution and adaptation in search of roles with function and purpose. Females and males would be seen as two positive extremes, which hold an interdependent relationship of preservation and maintenance of society.