Ogburn's theory of Cultural Lag

The general meaning of cultural lag is the stages of discrepancy among technological advances and to that of socio-political fra...

The general meaning of cultural lag is the stages of discrepancy among technological advances and to that of socio-political framework. The development and the growth of technology is very high and rapid that the society’s social relationships are not able to keep the same pace as that of the technology in the process of development.

The term cultural lag was coined by William F. Ogburn as the theoretical concept for the purpose of explaining the sociological aspects of the society. Ogburn had extensively explained and discussed the theory in his 1922 publication Social change with respect to culture and original nature. The culture was differentiated into two that is material and non-material culture which symbolized technologies as well as physical objects and ideas, values, beliefs, customs, norms, arrangements of social and law respectively. 

Ogburn’s theory suggests that phases of maladjustment erupts due to the struggle for adopting the contemporary situations related to the materials by the non-material culture. According to him the technology determines the society and also has independent great effects on the society. Cultural lag is the commonest societal phenomenon of material change and non-material resistance, which in turn create difficulty in the adaptation of the new technologies. 

Ogburn have postulated in the theory of cultural lag the four stages for technical development, which comprises of the invention, accumulation, diffusion, and the adjustment. The process of creating new forms of technology is called inventions which collectively contributions to the existing culture with the help of the knowledge and expertise in specified. Accumulation is the technological growth as rapid invention of new things promoting the accumulation process. The dispersion is the idea of culture to another bringing the new inventions together. The process of responding to the inventions by the physical objects of the culture in the society and trying to adapting it is called Adjustment, where any sorts of resistance evokes cultural lag. 

While formulating the theory of cultural lag Ogburn found through extensive analysis of the material culture that certain inherent dynamism is present in the course of technological growth, which accumulate the material culture. Also different sorts of material culture determine the counts of new inventions as a factor. The material culture or the technology is cumulative as well, since when a more efficient method or tool is found, the old one is replaced. However, the new method or tool must be consistent with the values and beliefs of the culture in which it is used.

There are various limitations regarding the theory of cultural lag, to start with the assumption that the change in material culture every time brings change in non-material culture is not totally true whereas there is simultaneous interaction among them. The reverse also takes place where the non-material factors influence the progress of the material factors. Secondly there is a difficulty in the process of determination of desirable kind of adjustment for the change. There is a view that the concept of cultural lag is inherently inclusive of valuation, where a standard measurement is established for the identification of pacemaker as well as of the laggard.

The critics of cultural lag have being constantly expressed the ambiguity of the concept and its efficiency in social change. According to Sorokin, Ogburn’s theory is a mild form of an economic interpretation of history, whereas the main critic of Ogburn’s theory, MacIver and Page have been put five important arguments against the cultural lag theory to criticize it. These arguments are as follows:

1. The distinction between material and non-material culture, as made by Ogburn, is not clear and workable one. What lags behind what? Where no such standard is available, we cannot rightly speak of a lag.
2. Material culture is nothing but civilization and non-material is the proper culture.
3. The term lag is not properly applicable to relations between technological factors and the cultural patterns or between the various components of cultural pattern itself.
4. The rate of change in the sphere of technology is always not uniform. Some technological articles advance too fast while the others remain behind. This situation is termed by MacIver and Page as ‘technological lag’.
5. For various types of disequilibrium or maladjustment different terms should have been used instead of lumping together indiscriminately in a single category. MacIver and Page have suggested four such terms:

• Technological lag
• Technological restraint
• Cultural clash, and
• Cultural ambivalence.

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To know more you can visit these significant topics:
CulturalLag, Cultural Pluralism, Cultural Relativism, Culture

Reference:

• Ogburn, W. F., (1922). Social Change. B. W. Huebsch Inc., New York.
• Ritzer, George and Ryan, J. Michael, (2011). The Concise Encyclopedia of Sociology. Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
• Turner, Bryan S., 2006.  The Cambridge Dictionary of Sociology. Cambridge University Press.
• Brinkerhoff, David B., White, Lynn K., Ortega, Suzanne T., and Weitz, Rose, 2011. Essentials of Sociology. Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.
• Rao, C.N. Shankar, 2006. Sociology : Primary Principles Of Sociology. S Chand.

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Related Questions:

William F. Ogburn’sTheory of Cultural Lag.

Theory of Cultural Lag.

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