Subjective experience of social change in individual development

Until recently social change processes were usually studied at a macro level, focusing on social, political and economic phenomena such as changes in social institutions, political power, or economic disparities. However, such changes are not independent of individual behaviour (or vice versa). Therefore, the interrelations between social change and individual action need to be studied in more detail. Macro level changes cannot be explained by psychological theorizing, and individual behaviour cannot be explained by sociological theorizing; however, both perspectives can be fruitfully connected in order to understand possible interrelations between social change and individual behaviour. Here, such conceptual bridging will be explored by focusing on individual development in particular contexts. Only in recent years have the effects of social change on individual development been discussed, relating, on the one hand, social (and historical) phenomena occurring on different levels, in different areas, with varying intensity and speed, and, on the other hand, individual developmental processes of persons of different cohorts and sex. Elder's (1974) famous study, Children of the Great Depression, has contributed impressively to the difficult question of connecting social and psychological theorizing. This study showed that social categories like cohort, sex and social status have to be transformed into psychological variables to enable us to understand the differential effects of social change on individual development. Furthermore, clarification is needed of the processes which transform social change into subjectively meaningful events (or sequences of events) which activate a person's behaviour.