ABSTRACT
One of the origins of the modern study of social change can be located in the ideas of progress and cultural evolution introduced by Comte’s positivism and Hegelian dialectics, which would eventually give rise to functionalist perspectives. The latter were greatly influenced by evolutionism and are characterized by the need to give consistent and complementary functions to the various components of society, which is understood as a logical entity undergoing continuous improvement. Against this linear view of history, proponents of critical theory, influenced by Max Weber and other postmodernist views, have opted for terms that make more reference to discontinuous change than to evolution. Today, many different terms and concepts are used to refer to changes in political, social, and cultural dynamics. For this reason, especially in psychology, there is little consensus on the use of terms referring to changes at the macro level. Although there is a body of psychological research that has been explicitly carried out in different contexts of social (financial crises, political transitions, contexts of political violence and/or armed conflict, etc.) and cultural (migration from rural to urban areas or between countries, generational changes, globalization, introduction of new communication technologies, etc.) changes, the terminology – even in the literature explicitly referring to change – is clearly heterogeneous. Terms as diverse as political, economic, or social crises or transitions; transformation of societies; periods of instability, and many more, are used to refer to the contexts in which psychological research is done under very heterogeneous social conditions, hampering the understanding of these complex phenomena.
