Describe the factors that influence the social change.

Some of the most important factors of social change are as under:

(i) Physical Environment: Certain geographic changes sometimes produce great social change. Climate, storms, social erosion, earthquakes, floods, droughts etc., definitely affect social life and induce social change. Human life is closely bound up with the geographical conditions of the earth.

Human history is full of examples that flourishing civilizations fells prey to natural calamities. The distribution of population over various regions, the variations in the population densities, the agricultural production, flora and fauna the joys and hardships - all indicate a change when a change in the physical environment occurs.

(ii) Demographic (biological) Factor: Broadly speaking, demography is concerned with the size and structure of human population. The social structure of a society is closely related with the changes in the size, composition and distribution of population. The size of the population is based mainly upon three factors - birth rate, death rate and migration (immigration and emigration).

(iii) Cultural Faction: It is an established fact that there is an intimate connection between our beliefs and social institutions, our values and social relationships. Values, beliefs, ideas, institutions are the basic elements of a culture. Certainly, all cultural changes involve social change.

Social and the cultural aspects are closely interwoven. Thus, any change in the culture (ideas, values, beliefs etc.) brings a corresponding change in the whole social order. Social institutions cannot live on life shells within which life is extinct.

(iv) Ideational Factor: Among the cultural factors affecting social change in modern times, the development of science and secularization of thought have contributed a lot to the development of the critical and innovative character of the modem outlook. We no longer follow many customs or habits merely because they have the age old authority of tradition. On the contrary, our ways of life have increasingly become on the basis of rationality.

(v) Economic Factor: Of economic influences, the most far-reaching is the impact of industrialization. It has revolutionized the whole way of life, institutions, organizations and community life. In traditional production systems, levels of production were fairly static since they were geared to habitual, customary needs. Modern industrial capitalism promotes the constant revision of the technology of production, a process into which science is increasingly drawn.

(vi) Political Factor: State is the most powerful organization which regulates the social relationships. It has the power to legislate new laws, repeal old ones to bring social change in the society Laws regarding child marriage, widow remarriage, divorce, inheritance and succession untouchability.