How Social Theory Identifies Levers for Social Change

The general question about how societies reproduce themselves is highly relevant to law, for law is one of the primary tools we rely on for both stabilising and changing social systems. Of course, because law is backed by the coercive power of the state, it can have a significant impact. But law alone is not the unique source of social stability and change, and for it to have the impact we might want, we need an understanding of the multiple forces at work in the process of societal reproduction. This article explores the multiple dynamics that are relevant to social transformation, arguing that it is a mistake to think that the social forces governing society are located in our collective intentionality. Instead, as social subjects, we participate in and are shaped by social practices that have both a cultural dimension and a material dimension which produce stable equilibria through their looping effects. Law can prompt social transformation in multiple ways, including changing social meanings and material constraints, but its success in doing so is more likely if it sees itself as one force among many that affect the evolution of the complex systems that constitute societies.