A history student in Kolkata is studying two archives. The first holds police reports from nineteenth-century English factory towns, where poor migrants from the countryside gathered outside bakeries whenever bread prices rose and forced shopkeepers to sell at a 'fair price'. Officials called them a dangerous mob. The second holds Bengal family letters from the same century, showing households slowly taking up English schooling, dress and manners, alongside records of reformers who campaigned for years, through petitions and meetings, for the right of widows to remarry.
How would a sociologist classify, in that order, the households' new habits and the reformers' long effort recorded in the second archive?
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 1
The correct answer is Option (1) → Social change and social movement, respectively
Option (1) Social change and social movement, respectively — Correct. The households' slow shift to English schooling, dress and manners is westernisation, part of continuous and ongoing social change. The reformers' years-long campaign for widow remarriage was a sustained effort toward a specific goal, which makes it a social movement.
Option (2) Social movement and social change, respectively — Incorrect. This order reverses the two. Habits that shift slowly over time are social change, and the planned campaign with a set goal is the social movement.
Option (3) Social change in both cases — Incorrect. The reformers worked for years through petitions and meetings toward one specific goal. Such long and continuous effort by people is a social movement, so calling both social change misses it.
Option (4) Social movement in both cases — Incorrect. The households did not organise or aim at any goal; they slowly took up new habits. Such ongoing change, the sum of countless individual actions, is social change.
NCERT (2026-27): “Distinguishing Social Change and Social Movements |