Traditions of Research on the Diffusion of Innovation

TLDR

Theory is indispensable for grasping social processes, demanding both event awareness and a readiness to generalize them scientifically. The essay contends that theory‑building on social change has been impeded by approaches that derive change sources from the changing entity itself. Social change originates in events—internal or external—and cannot be inferred from the system’s conception; change processes are arrangements of such events. The abstract notes: “dent, chance resulting from chance.”.

Abstract

dent, chance resulting from chance. Theory in the sense of conceptions of relationships between kinds of events is an inescapable step in the comprehension of social processes, and we must assume that such comprehension in a scientific sense is possible. Theory, however, must be formulated in the light of an awareness of events, on the one hand, and, on the other, a readiness to accept them as manageable within the limits of a generalizing science. The argument of this essay is that theory-building for attacking the problem of change has been hampered in both evolutionist and functionalist analyses by an orientation that encourages the derivation of sources of change from the nature of the thing changing. Sources of change in societies are to be discerned in happenings, and whether the happenings are internal or external to a conceived system, they are not deducible from that conception. Processes of social change are conceptual arrangeabilities of events.82