Social change, in sociology, the alteration of mechanisms within the social structure, characterized by changes in cultural symbols, rules of behaviour, social organizations, or value systems.

Throughout the historical development of their discipline, sociologists have borrowed models of social change from other academic fields. In the late 19th century, when evolution became the predominant model for understanding biological change, ideas of social change took on an evolutionary cast, and, though other models have refined modern notions of social change, evolution persists as an underlying principle.

Social change in the broadest sense is any change in social relations. Viewed this way, social change is an ever-present phenomenon in any society. A distinction is sometimes made then between processes of change within the social structure, which serve in part to maintain the structure, and processes that modify the structure (societal change).

The originality of the Marxian theory of social development lay in its combination of dialectics and gradualism. In Marx’s view social development was a dialectical process: the transition from one stage to another took place through a revolutionary transformation, which was preceded by increased deterioration of society and intensified class struggle. Underlying this discontinuous development was the more gradual development of the forces of production (technology and organization of labour).

Marx was also influenced by the countercurrent of Romanticism, which was opposed to the idea of progress. This influence was evident in Marx’s notion of alienation, a consequence of social development that causes people to become distanced from the social forces that they had produced by their own activities. Romantic counterprogressivism was, however, much stronger in the work of later 19th-century social theorists such as the German sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies. Tönnies distinguished between the community (Gemeinschaft), in which people were bound together by common traditions and ties of affection and solidarity, and the society (Gesellschaft), in which social relations had become contractual, rational, and nonemotional.

Émile Durkheim and Max Weber, sociologists who began their careers at the end of the 19th century, showed ambivalence toward the ideas of progress. Durkheim regarded the increasing division of labour as a basic process, rooted in modern individualism, that could lead to “anomie,” or lack of moral norms. Weber rejected evolutionism by arguing that the development of Western society was quite different from that of other civilizations and therefore historically unique. The West was characterized, according to Weber, by a peculiar type of rationality that had brought about modern capitalism, modern science, and rational law but that also created, on the negative side, a “disenchantment of the world” and increasing bureaucratization.

 
Émile Durkheim believed that as societies advance, they make the transition from mechanical to organic solidarity. For Karl Marx, society exists in terms of class conflict. With the rise of capitalism, workers become alienated from themselves and others in society. Sociologist Max Weber noted that the rationalization of society can be taken to unhealthy extremes.