Culture

Culture -- the broad field of ideas, values and beliefs that matter to people -- is another major source of social change, and religion is probably its clearest example. Because religious beliefs and norms have historically organised entire societies, changes in those beliefs have often transformed society as a whole; some scholars have even defined whole civilisations in religious terms. Max Weber's famous study, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, is the classic illustration of this idea: he argued that the religious beliefs of certain Protestant sects helped establish the conditions for modern capitalism. In the Indian context, the spread of Buddhism reshaped social and political life in ancient India, and the Bhakti movement had a lasting influence on medieval social structure, including the caste system -- though, as with any factor of social change, religion's impact is always shaped by the particular context it operates in, not automatic or uniform.

Changing ideas about the position of women offer a second clear example of cultural change driving social change. As women organised and struggled for equality in the modern era, they reshaped society in many domains -- and historical circumstance sometimes accelerated this: during the Second World War, women in several countries took up factory jobs, operating heavy machinery and manufacturing armaments, work that had previously been considered exclusively male, and this experience strengthened claims to equality that outlasted the war itself. A quieter but equally telling example lies in consumer advertising: because women make most everyday household purchasing decisions in urban settings, advertisers have become far more attentive to how women are represented, gradually shifting advertising away from being addressed almost exclusively to men. …