Community Psychology
Society is constantly changing. Its various aspects are influenced by either internal or external factors which lead to its changes. Some of the factors include human interactions and relationships and natural causes. Thus, there are three major types of social changes in the community. They are planned spontaneous and unplanned social changes. The differences bring numerous alterations to the norm if the society, especially its culture. I come from a Latin American community. From my childhood, some transformations have occurred in my society. As the changes progress, the culture of my community, size, diversity, and industry change too.
My community, Latin America, occupies about 19.2 million square kilometers in America. We are mainly based in Mexico. Our population is about 642, 216,682. The Latin American culture is a mixture of other influences, for example, Spanish, Portuguese and French culture. Out ethnicity is a mixture of other races mainly the whites and Spanish nationalities. The main language spoken is English, but some are bilingual in English and Spanish. Others are multilingual, they speak English, Spanish, French, and Portugal. About 90% of the people in my community are Christians, mostly Roman Catholic. Major sport is soccer and football, but we play others like rugby, cricket, and tennis. We also love music, dance, and visual art. Our families are closely knit such that grandparents contribute to raising grandchildren. Economically, we major in agricultural production and export. However, mining is also practiced.
Changes have occurred in my society. Some of them are spontaneous, others planned and others unplanned. Planned social changes occur when organized activities influence change in society. Usually, it is a consciously and deliberately made attempt to bring changes. The action is taken usually includes controlling an aspect to influence another, directly causing alterations or indirectly slowing the speed of an aspect to achieve a certain desired outcome. A good example of planned social changes in my community includes educational projects, family planning plans, economic projects, and social programs. The government, non-governmental organizations, and other small groups are the agents who cause the changes to happen.
Spontaneous changes are alterations in society that occur as a result of the people affected by an event being the agents of change. Usually, it is a mild and uncontrolled alteration. It can happen through imposing it on people of motivating them to abstain or welcome the factor to be changed. Some spontaneous social changes in a community include changes in relationships caused by the use of technology. Others include changes in the names of people and professional behavior. A study done by the University of Pennsylvania (2015) showed that spontaneous changes in society can emerge from being non-existent to being popular without any external factors. Their study focused on the baby name Aiden which was ranked at 324 in the list of baby names by the Social Security Administration. However, after a decade the name became popular among the top 20 names for over five years. Therefore, they concluded that members in society can agree spontaneously on new social norms through changes in the social network.
Unplanned changes are alterations that take the form of a natural course. They are usually either accidental or outcomes of a sudden decision. No one has control over such changes but the people can control its effects. Some of the unplanned changes can be catastrophic while others are extremely beneficial. For example, in my community, when family planning concept was introduced, its expected outcome was to reduce the number of children that a family can effectively support, thus reducing the poverty level. However, some unplanned changes occurred too, for instance, there was a shift in the generational gap. There were very few infants, few children and teenagers, and many youths and old people. The direct impact of the plan caused an unplanned shift in the health, consumption, clothing, entertainment, and employment sectors. For instance, in the health sector, maternal care improved but some maternal facilities had to close because of a lack of clients. Moreover, some general practitioners moved to take care of youth and old, who were a big part of the population.
The best social change which fits my community is the planned social change. It is because numerous positive results have been reaped from the alterations. It is known that my community likes entertainment, especially watching television programs and listening to music. Therefore, various education communication strategies have been employed to bring social change to my community (Singhal & Rogers, 1994). For instance, rock music was used to promote sexual responsibility among teens. According to, early pregnancy is one of the persistent social problems in Latin America. The teenage band was used to perform to teenagers to inform them to abstain.
Moreover, according to Delgado and Veltmeyer (2017), the Latin American community had lost socialism which it wanted to reclaim the kind of socialism that prioritizes humans over everything else. The project’s strategy was to help the community through their participation to create a societal system of production and consumption. It was later achieved through the administration of power to the communal council instead of the elected Representatives. Thus, people enjoyed socialism.
In conclusion, society changes are constantly taking place and they affect the size, diversity, culture, and development of communities. In my Latin American community, numerous alterations have occurred and some continue taking place. Some of them were spontaneous social changes such as naming, others were unplanned changes for instance, and changes in maternal care while others were planned like re-introduction of socialism and education communication strategies.
References
Delgado W. R. & Veltmeyer, H. (2017). Development and Social Change in Latin America. 10.13140/RG.2.2.24614.11845.
Singhal, A. & Rogers, E. (1994). Planned Social Change: 379-397.
The University of Pennsylvania. (2015, February 2). How ‘spontaneous’ social norms emerge. ScienceDaily. Retrieved July 23, 2020, from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/02/150202160701.htm