Structure and Meaning: Implications for the Analysis of Social Change

Ever since the system-model of functionalism has been accused of being unable to adequately cover the phenomenon of social change, many functionalists have tried to convince their audience of the opposite. Eloquent revisions of the model have been constructed in an attempt to systematically explain the pervasive phenomenon in modern industrial society. Functionalists have attempted to analyse change by tracing its pattern of influence within the social system and by noting the reactions of total systems to exogenous sources of change. They have further related these analytic perspectives to the process of institutionalization. However, even though an analysis of change requires an historical approach, the basic assumptions of functionalism remain conspicuously ahistorical.1 The functionalist approach may view social systems as processual entities moving through history ('moving equilibria') but the actual mode of analysis focuses more upon the effects of change rather than upon explaining the historical dynamics of change itself. Conflict models offer an alternative out of the dilemma of the functionalist approach, but a critical assessment reveals that they too are limited. The conflict models that have been proposed offer a possibility for introducing the historical dimension into the analysis of change, but they share the limitations of the system-model in that they tend to restrict their analyses to only structural change. By failing to deal with the role of meaning the impact of the historical perspective is seriously limited. As we shall try to demonstrate in this paper, it is only through an analytic distinction between structure and meaning, which in turn is viewed within an historical context, that an adequate model of social change can be derived. It will not be necessary to discuss the models of functionalism and conflict theory in detail here. Rather, we will assume the reader's