ABSTRACT
The concept of social change may refer to two kinds of phenomena—alteration in the structure of the society, or alteration in persons and relations within the structure, while still leaving the general structural principles as before. This latter process may be termed social movement. The importance of studies of social movement has come to be realized more clearly in recent years. In particular, analysis has been made of the degree of spatial mobility in a society expressed, for example, in the relation between kinship and residence, exhibited in the developmental cycle of family or domestic group life. But such studies have, as a rule, been made on a synchronic basis. By using quantitative data of distribution of households of various composition and reported data of a genealogical and other attributed order, inferences have been drawn about the way in which members of a family arrange their domestic affairs over time. Such inferences are very plausible, but they are essentially an interpretation of process over time by comparison of phenomena at one period of time. To give such inferences more validity it is advisable to examine material at two different periods of time. This enables one to see how far the distribution at the later period represents an actual and not merely an imputed social movement. The analysis in this chapter has this aim.
