Narratives of social change: cultural perceptions and responses to globalization and rural urbanization in Pakistan

People respond to social change in diverse ways that are shaped by socioeconomic conditions, ideologies, and other local and global factors. The effects of broader level changes such as globalization and urbanization are mostly studied from macroperspectives. A macroperspective does not primarily focus on how people respond to social change in their everyday lives. This paper aims to highlight people’s attitude toward social change in the context of generational changes caused by globalization and rural urbanization in Pakistan. It argues the ways people narrate social realities of their past and present, and aspirations for their future highlight their perceptions of and responses to social change. This study is based on ethnography of a Pakistani village. It uses peoples’ narratives of the past, the present, and the future from different generations in the village. It shows how social change is perceived as a continuous decline of morality from the past to the future by the older generation. However, the younger generations have developed a different view of the future that is informed by socioeconomic factors.