CULTURAL LAG: WHAT IS IT?

The article presents a study on the introduction of a new term called "cultural lag" in sociology. Cultural lag is defined as a condition of strain or maladjustment produced by the lagging of one of two correlated parts of culture behind the other. The occasion for the lagging of police behind population may be viewed as the structural rigidity of city governmental organization which prevents the adding or retiring of policemen rapidly enough to keep pace with population trends, thus compelling taxpayers in the latter situation to pay more for police protection than is necessary. The illustration of cultural lag presented in sociology is, in the meaning of that phrase, nonsense. Population data are demographic phenomena at the level of sociological analysis, i.e., aspects of social behavior are inferred from population characteristics. An increase in the number of persons in a particular area, a city for instance, whether by natural increase or migration, is not a cultural or superorganic phenomenon.