Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/52

36 and momentously prevalent in its similar repetitions, such as social valuations, institutions, customs, etc. This associating, apprehension of which makes the word "society" appear to be "virtually a verbal noun," is the "social process" in the most important and fundamental sense of that phrase; and the varieties, modes, or classes of activity that become thus socially momentous are the social "processes" or subdivisions of the "process." The social phenomena are processes in the sense of activities; this is their nature and essence, not alone when they are undergoing change and transformation, but also when most established and unchanging.

Second: With changing conditions these activities change, and—what is of main importance—there are general types of change in social activities. These may be referred to as social processes, although the more specific phrase "types of social change" contributes more to clearness and accuracy. These types of change are general in that they apply to the different varieties of social activity; for example, the most diverse social activities may become either more or less prevalent, more or less similar in their individual repetitions, more or less imposing and effective as conditions affecting other activities, etc. To identify and describe these types of change is a second phase of the task of sociology.

Third: Explanation consists in describing the conditions of a phenomenon with recognition of their comparative importance as determinants of the phenomenon explained; and there are recurrent forms of conditioning which are effective in eliciting the different varieties of social activity, and which correspond to the types of social change. These forms of conditioning are separable into four groups, to be enumerated later. Moreover, conditions are both phenomena and relations, and relations are as real as things, and as necessary to describe. And among the conditions of any given social activities are other social phenomena, and the direct products of social activities; these interest the sociologist both as conditions of social phenomena and as themselves social phenomena to be explained in their turn, while non-social phenomena, such as climate, etc., interest him as