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When a new technology or innovation is introduced, it takes a bit of time for our behaviors and laws to adjust to it. Imagine what it must have been like when the first car was invented; how much work needed to be done to pave roads and carve out meaningful traffic laws.
Key components
First of all, what is culture? For Ogburn, culture was the “social heritage;” the things and ways of living that we inherit from those that came before us.
However, in his explanation of what cultural lag is, Ogburn was careful to make a distinction between two different parts of culture: material and non-material.
Material culture
Material culture is the physical objects that make up our culture. This includes things like buildings, clothes, art pieces, musical instruments, food and technology. Much of material culture changes quickly, and frequently.
Non-material culture
Non-material culture is the unseen or intangible aspects of our culture: things like norms, laws, rules, religious ideas, and general worldview. As you can imagine, these kinds of things take a lot of time to change.
Ogburn also distinguished between adaptive and non-adaptive forms of non-material culture. Some parts of non-material culture will change to keep up with material culture, while other parts will not.
For example, when factories became widespread and most people left their home during the day for work, the function of the family as a working group was phased out.
This would be the adaptive form of non-material culture. However, some parts of the function of the family, such as emotional support, did not change—this would be a non-adaptive element of the family.
Definition
Modern culture is made up of so many different interlinked parts—different ideas, places, symbols, technologies, foods, dances, lingo—and none of these things are changing at the same rate. Ogburn saw all the different parts of society as deeply interlinked.
Therefore, when one part of culture changes, the rest of society will have to adjust to accommodate the change. That period of misalignment between the change taking place and the adjustment of the rest of society is what cultural lag is.
At its most basic, cultural lag is the period of adjustment to a change in some part of society.
The concept of cultural lag is most commonly used to refer to societal adjustment to a new technology, but its original definition is much broader.
Any change that would require a period of adjustment would qualify as cultural lag, moving in any direction between material and non-material culture, or even staying within one part of culture.
For example, there can be changes within material culture that causes lag specifically in another part of material culture. For instance, the widespread use of electric vehicles when there is not yet a convenient infrastructure for charging them.
Cultural lag within two parts of non-material culture is also possible—consider that women are now encouraged to join the work force, even as research still shows that they bear the brunt of the responsibility for housework and childcare.
There can also be a lag of material culture behind non-material culture. For example, when advanced theories in the field of astronomy can’t be evaluated because our machinery for viewing the stars isn’t yet powerful enough.
All of these forms of cultural lag are possible, but Ogburn thought that a change in material culture forcing a change in non-material culture was the most common. Most modern examples of this phenomenon follow this framework, including the examples provided below.
Given how variable instances of cultural lag can be, it is an incredibly common phenomenon. However, Ogburn thought that most instances of cultural lag were so slight that they were imperceptible in the long run.
After all, new inventions and changes to our physical reality happen every day, and they mostly don’t cause too much trouble, if any at all.
However, Ogburn also made the sinister prediction that some instances of cultural lag would have such a drastic effect as to threaten universal disaster.
Causes
Naturally, as more technologies and tools come into existence, the possibility for different combinations among them increases. This is why Ogburn thought that the accumulation of material culture was a catalyst for invention. He also thought that this growth would turn out to be exponential.
This part of Ogburn’s theory has some strong empirical backup. There is a well-known theorem known as Moore’s Law which identified that technology develops at an exponential rate, with computer processing power doubling every 2 years.
With the advent of recent artificial intelligence technologies, that time frame has shortened so that computing power doubles every 3.4 months. Invention rates seem to be indeed exponential.
The causes of social change are only one part of what causes cultural lag. We must also consider why it takes societies so long to adjust to these changes. Why are we not more expedient in changing our laws and norms to accommodate new technology?
Ogburn thought that non-material culture was actively resistant to change. He said that worldviews and ideas are stubborn— on both an individual and societal level— especially in comparison to how fast technology changes.
Sometimes individuals resist change out of fear of the unknown, and sometimes governments find it too onerous to attempt to change longstanding bureaucratic policy.
With the constant introduction of new technologies, it is difficult for societies to even decide how those technologies should be used, let alone put together a comprehensive set of laws and norms around the use of the technology. The examples below explore this challenge.
Examples
These examples illustrate the concept of cultural lag, where societal values, norms, and institutions struggle to keep pace with rapid technological and social changes, resulting in various challenges and disparities.
Implications
Social inequality and conflict
Access to newly introduced technologies is, of course, not universal. The groups that are more exposed to new inventions will adjust more quickly to the change than those who have not yet had the chance to access it. Therefore, the more exposed groups feel the change less acutely.
Differing experiences among social groups can also lead to disagreement on how to tackle it. As the examples illustrated, many instances of cultural lag include a lack of consensus on how to manage new technologies.
This lack of consensus can lead to social conflict, as those with differing opinions clash on questions of profound importance for them.
Educational disparities
A large part of adjusting to societal change is ensuring that schools are teaching students the relevant skills and information needed to thrive in a changed world.
If the curricula offered in schools does not account for new technologies, inventions, and ways of doing things, students will be ill-prepared to navigate the world.
This manifestation of cultural lag is self-reinforcing—schools struggle to adjust to the way the world has changed, and as a result students themselves are unable to adjust to the ways that the world has changed. Every school is different, so this manifests in vastly different educational outcomes across the country.
Anxiety and stress
It can be quite distressing for anyone, in any context, when things change very quickly; especially of things are changing both quickly and profoundly.
Trying to manage using a new computer you are unfamiliar with, or using an automated kiosk for the first time can be overwhelming.
Further, if these changes are happening on a large scale—where you are facing very new technologies very frequently, this can be deeply distressing. Anxiety may be a blunt result of cultural lag.
Identity crises
We define our identities in relation to our outside world, deciding where we belong and why. When the outside world—both materially and culturally—is changing rapidly, it can be difficult to relate to the new world that we have been presented with.
Saul McLeod, PhD
BSc (Hons) Psychology, MRes, PhD, University of Manchester
Saul McLeod, PhD., is a qualified psychology teacher with over 18 years of experience in further and higher education. He has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Clinical Psychology.
Grace RamseyJournalistMaster in Public Policy (MPP), Harvard UniversityGrace Ramsey will graduate in May of 2023 with a Master’s in Public Policy from Harvard University. She is a freelance writer and journalist, writing on global poverty and American drug policy.
Grace RamseyJournalistMaster in Public Policy (MPP), Harvard University
Grace Ramsey
Journalist
Master in Public Policy (MPP), Harvard University
Grace Ramsey will graduate in May of 2023 with a Master’s in Public Policy from Harvard University. She is a freelance writer and journalist, writing on global poverty and American drug policy.
