Revision summary
Ogburn’s Social Change (1922) distinguished material and non-material culture. Cultural lag is the slower movement of law and morals behind invention. The concept travelled from sociology into culture-contact and applied anthropology. It fits new technology before new ethics, including in development settings. It fails if meaning is treated as a mere lagging part.
Model answer
Introduction
William F. Ogburn argued that the parts of culture do not change at one speed. Cultural lag is the delay of non-material rules behind material invention.
Body
Ogburn’s claim
- In Social Change (1922) William F. Ogburn split culture into material objects and the non-material field of law, family, and belief.
- Material culture, especially technology, often moves first; family ethics, property law, and ritual catch up later, and that gap is cultural lag.
- His examples included industry, the automobile, and delayed legal and moral adjustment, a sociology that anthropologists borrowed for culture-contact studies.
Use and criticism
- Lag helps explain why IVF, the internet, or a dam can exist before kinship and compensation rules are ready, including in Indian tribal displacement.
- Leslie White and other evolutionists liked the material lead; Franz Boas and later interpretive writers warned that meaning is not a slow caboose on a technological engine.
- Lag can sound too mechanical if religion and law are treated as mere leftovers, so the term is a diagnostic, not a whole theory of culture.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD T[Material technology] --> L[Cultural lag] N[Law family belief] --> L L --> A[Adjustment or strain]
Conclusion
Ogburn named cultural lag as the delay of norms behind technology. The idea is still useful for law and kinship after new machines, if it is not turned into a one-way material destiny.
Quick related
Students also ask
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Critically examine Arjun Appadurai's conceptualization of the global cultural economy.
Next question on this syllabus topic (2023 · Q8(a)). View answer →
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Did Ogburn invent the material and non-material split?
The split is older in anthropology. His specific claim is the lag of the non-material behind the material.
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Is every social problem a cultural lag?
No. Inequality and power can block adjustment. Lag is one diagnosis, not all of social change.
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