Social Change - Part 3 - Minorities and Social change

Social Reality, Violence, Power and Change:
Social Change - Part 3 - Minorities and Social change

"Everybody is a minority of One that can change the world."- charlie777pt

Introduction

We are in an era of economic stagnation, the reinforcement of authority, lower wages, unemployment and social crisis in all countries, that have to accommodate and get used to the new ethnic minorities and the overall repercussions in the behaviors of the majorities where they will try to integrate.

The growth of racism and neo-Nazism minorities are attracting the majority to negative changes in society with arguments of "job stealing" and "welfare abuse" by the newcomers.
Social change is centered on four fundamental elements,a conflict related to norms, power relations, and the role of minority influence in the diffusion of behavioral innovations and alternative actions that could benefit the whole community.

"Change is the building of conformity, social regulation and uniformization" - charlie777pt

1- Conflito Social

The social normative conflict born from the reciprocity of opposing attitudes and behaviors is solved in negotiations for mutual benefits.
Real transformation in society is a significant social change, having long-term effects like the alternative views generated in social movements.
Conflicts can go from reactions for persuasive negotiations resolution to thedisruptive use of violence, closing the doors of an agreement.

We know that the conflict between a minority, which has consistent behaviors and structured messages, attracts the attention and appeals to the consideration of the majority, who will resolve them, clearing resistances and making adjustments to change and favor the integration of smaller dissident groups.
Nemeth in 1987 demonstrated that the type of position of a minority produces a cognitive dissonance in the majority, created by its logic nature that softens the conflict, making possible the negotiations of the concrete ways for change initiated by the confrontation.

"Being different makes you beautiful" - Nelsan Ellis

2 - Social Norms

Norms serve as a pattern of reference for social order and to facilitate social interaction as common rules for human coordination and cooperation.

Norms are the substantiation of stable conduct expectations, like the social rules defining a common sense in values, beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors and a regulator of social interrelationships.

Norms are like a framework or guidelines for the expected behavior in social interactions.
The Norms intermediate groups and individuals, for the structuration of society and the difference between and for human behavior in general. Values are individual and can be socially shared beliefs of desired ways of being and feeling.

Sociological studies reported four types of norms: folkways (conventions) , mores (morality), taboos (forbidden), and laws (justice).
Social control is a kind of convention to reward or punish what is considered "abnormal" conduct in human contact within a society.

It's deviant behaviors that make progress, against the convergence and unification of the normative context and it takes some time to the resolution of social pressures by the cognitive impact that will change the social order.
Ibanez in 1987 refers to the fact that every human being has the need to "assimilated conformity" forced by "resistant differentiation" opening ways for societal norm transitions.

3 - Power Relations

Social Influence is always surrounded by a visible and invisible relation with social power, where everybody as the possibility of influencing other person attitudes and correlated behaviors, that is not owned by the minority and majority.
One of the relations with power is the fear of being different the majorities impose, if people start following the behaviors they are criticizing in the minority.

"Sometimes, being different feels a lot like being alone. But with that being said, being true to that and being true to my standards and my way of doing things in my art and my music, everything that has made me feel very different... in the end, it has made me the happiest" - Lindsey Stirling

4- Minority role

Minorities are always the genesis and force driving social change and Ibanez found three hypotheses to define the minor group's influences:
a)- Minorities proposals for change are only viable if they represent social progress.
b) - Social regulating mechanisms reproduce and modify social reality.
c) - Even if the reality modifications are a product of the system, it's the minorities that detect the signs of change and show them to the majority. Minorities sometimes are not the genesis of change but are the ones announcing it making it the instrument for social change.

In the structure of interrelational conflict, the minority different views about social norms, must be propagated in cognitive messages to influence the majority, with persuasion and negotiations to lead to identification and acceptance.
Active minorities are innovative sources for the desired norms and attitudes supporting social evolution.
Change is the building of conformity and social regulation.

4.1 - Minorities that made a real influence.

Social movements are collective activities or events, designed to reinforce or to resist existing norms, societal conducts and individual attitudes (cognitive, emotional, and action-oriented levels).
Active minority struggles for the rights movements are very well known forms of influence to make the majority convert and internalize new attitudes, behaviors and social rules.

• An extraordinary minority influence was the cause of the civil rights movement in the US in the decades of the 50s and 60s, supporting equal rights for all citizens despite their race, resulting in the Civil Rights Act in 1964 to stop public segregation.
• The suffragette movement, in the UK in the early 20th Century which sought to gain the right to vote for women and change their role in society, with the help of an important and charismatic woman Emmeline Pankhurst, the leader of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU).

The norms of the majority are a massification of rules for compliance, but there will be always a person or a smaller group that stop validating the existing attitudes, behaviors or points of view about reality adaptation.

"I think being different, going against the grain of society is the greatest thing in the world" - Elijah Wood

A part of Minority influence is their actions to explicit their Motives to be perceived and acting selflessly and showing the aspects that are of common interest to the majority.
In the next posts, we will finish the subject of Social Change, with the exciting analysis of the minorities and communities of Decentralization and the Blockchain.

Hommage à Serge Moscovici / "Minority Influence and Fashion"

Last posts in this series on Social Reality: Violence, Power and Change
Introduction:

Social Reality: Violence, Power and Change

A - Violence:

An Introduction to Violence
The Concepts of Violence, Aggression, and Aggressiveness
The Theories on Violence
The influencers of Violence -Part One - Culture and Social Context
The influencers of Violence -Part Two - Social , Cognitive and Environmental Factors
The ascend of Today's Violence

B -Power:

What is Power? - Introduction
The Nature of Power

• Part I - The Notions of Power
• Part II -The Dimensions of Power
• Part III -The Foundations of Power

The Dynamics of Power:

• Part 1 - The Legitimacy of Authority
• Part 2 - The Models of Leadership
• Part 3 - Characteristics of Leadership
• Part 4 - The Relation in Leadership
• Part 5 - Decision-making and Leadership

The Effects and Consequences of Power

• Part 1- Philosophical Rally on the Matrix of Power
• Part 2 - Deprivation
• Part 3- Submission
• Part 4- Corruption
• Part 5 - Resistance
• Part 6 - Power in Cyberspace

C - Change:

Change and Culture
The Theories and Concepts of Change
Factors determining Change

• Part 1 - Lite version
• Part 2 - Complex version

The Ways of Change

• Part 1 - Concepts and Theories
• Part 2 - The Process of of Attitude Change

A Social Change

• Part 1 - Innovative Change by Minorities
• Part 2 - Minorities as Social Influence
• Part 3 - Minorities as Social Change- this post

Articles from the next series of posts about Social Reality, Violence, Power and Change:
C - Change:(cont.)

A Social Change

• Part 4 - The minority of Decentralization and the Blockchain

Conclusion - The Series that changed to a Saga

References consulted:

Les concepts fondamentaux de la psychologie sociale - Gustave-Nicolas Fischer La psychologie sociale - Gustave-Nicolas Fischer The social-violence dynamics, Power, change - Gustave-Nicolas Fischer, Planeta / ISPA, 1980 Gustave-Nicolas Fischer is Professor of Psychology and Director of the Psychology Laboratory at the University of Metz.

French, J. R. P., and Raven, B.H. (1959). The bases of social Power.
Raven, B. H. and Rubin, J. Z. (1976). Social psychology: People in groups
Castel, R. The metamorphoses of the social question. Voices, 1998.
Moscovici, S. (1976). Social influence and social change. London: Academic Press
Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison
Festinger, L. (1954). A theory of social comparison processes.
French, J. R. P., Morrison, H. W., and Levinger, G. (1960). Coercive Power and forces affecting conformity
Dahl, R.A. (1957), The Concept of Power.
Giddens, Anthony, Capitalism and Modern Social Theory: An Analysis of the Writings of Marx, Durkheim and Max Weber, 1971.
Grabb, Edward G., Theories of Social Inequality: Classical and Contemporary Perspectives,1990.
Weber, Max, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology,1968.
Lewin, K. (1948) ‘Action Research and Minority Problems’, in G.W. Lewin (ed.),Researching Social Conflicts , New York: Harper and Row
Parsons, T. (1966). Societies: Evolutionary and comparative perspectives.
Levy, A. (1986) Second-order planned change: Definition and conceptualization, Organisational Dynamics
Watzlawick, P., Weakland, J.H., Fisch, R. (1974) Change: Principles of Problem Formation and Problem Resolution. New York, Norton.