Overview

Social processes are the dynamic patterns of interaction through which individuals, groups, and societies create, maintain, and transform social order. These processes include cultural transmission, group dynamics, deviance, socialization, and the collective forces that drive social movements and change. Together, they shape how people relate to one another and how society evolves over time.

Key Themes and Concepts

• Culture: Shared beliefs, values, norms, symbols, and practices. Includes material and nonmaterial culture, subcultures, countercultures, and cultural diffusion.
• Socialization: The lifelong process of learning social norms and roles. Primary agents include family, peers, school, media, and religion.
• Social Interaction: Patterns of behavior between individuals or groups. Includes symbolic interactionism, impression management, and dramaturgical analysis (Goffman).
• Groups and Organizations: Primary vs. secondary groups, formal organizations, bureaucracy (Weber), leadership styles, and group conformity (Asch, Milgram).
• Deviance and Social Control: Behavior that violates social norms. Includes labeling theory, strain theory, control theory, and formal/informal sanctions.
• Collective Behavior: Spontaneous social actions like crowds, riots, rumors, and panics. Often precedes more organized movements.
• Social Movements: Organized efforts to enact or resist social change. Includes reform, revolutionary, resistance, and new social movements (e.g., civil rights, feminism, environmentalism).
• Social Change: Shifts in cultural, economic, or political systems driven by innovation, conflict, diffusion, or technological development.

Quick Tip

Social processes are the engine of societal transformation. From learning norms to challenging the system, individuals and groups constantly engage in actions that reinforce or reshape society. Recognizing these processes helps us understand both stability and change in social life.