ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the significance of the rate of social change for the processes of societal development in general and for modernization in particular. The rate of change is the speed at which the various elements of culture and social structure emerge, disappear, or are replaced by other elements. A crucial distinction has to be made between the rate of change as measured by quantitative indicators and the rate as experienced by participant observers in the given social environment. Identifying the subjective experience of change as cognitive dissonance explains its unsettling psychosociological effect. The discrepancy between internalized norms and the norms actually implemented, too, is often advantageous, because it puts the entire norm system into a new perspective. Understanding the actor’s experience of change helps shed light on the dynamics of change processes. The discrepancy between the image of the social world as internalized during socialization and the world actually confronted lends considerable momentum to human behavior.
