Why do some societies allow change, and others resist it?

The subject line states the question a little too boldly.

My untutored view of things suggests that societies/populations (large groups of people who consider themselves to be ancestrally and geographically “related”–the examples will clarify) differ with respect to allowing change in their customs, mores, and attitudes. Some societies undergo historically rapid, broadscale bursts of change; others are barely touched by time.

And these characteristics are not just collectively true, but “seem” to be true of the “typical” member of the society. In one type of society, there are more go-getter make-it-better individuals who think in terms of leaving for their descendents an altered, “new and improved” world. In the other type society, one seems to find a good deal of fatalism, an attachment to “the way we’ve always done it,” perhaps an antipathy to innovators and nonconformists.

At this point in world history, the basic conflict seems to be between Type A and Type B societies–very roughly, between the sort of society one finds in northern and western Europe, the USA/Canada, Japan, South Korea, (and a few etc’s)…and the “traditional” societies of the Middle East, Latin America, Southern Asia, equatorial Africa, etc.

Why have the processes of history localized Type A and Type B societies as they have? Why, for example, did Sweden take the turn toward being an industrial welfare state generations ago, while Kazakistan or Ethiopia or Honduras remain, by comparison, traditional societies?

Why did the various Native American cultures adhere to a nomadic life rather than building sailing ships, establishing cities and nation-states, repelling the invading Europeans with nuclear weapons, and so on? Why didn’t the Aztecs, Toltecs, Maya, or Incas sail east and discover Europe? Why didn’t the Zulu leave behind a civilization “like” that of vedic India or Confucian China?

Note that I’m not using the word “progress” nor suggesting that it’s better to burn down the forests than to worship the Mother Goddess.

It’s just that–given the fair amount of geographical separation of human populations until the last couple centuries or so–why don’t we find pockets of Type A societies cropping up throughout the world independent of one another, instead of basically starting in Europe in concentrated form? Any thoughts?

(And I’m really interested in answering the specific question, not debating the pros and cons of different cultural structures.)

A good place to start would be the book Guns Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond. It deals with how different factors tend to create static or dynamic cultures and have determined cultural and technological exchanges throughout history.

It’s basically to do with resources and having a surplus of food which allows parts of your population to engage in other activities. For example the rise of the city-states in ancient Sumer came about with the discovery of agriculture which brought the population above the level of subsistence. This population that was surplus to the need of food production could engage in other activities such as building, discovery of new technolgy and techniques and things that in general ‘improve’ a civilization. Societies that could not produce this food surplus (for a variety of reasons, such as unsuitable geography, unaware of agriculture, etc.) tended not to change as there was nothing to act as a catalyst for it.

MC–

I understand your point, but…

aren’t many of the locations of my "Type B"s entirely suitable for farming? Yet supra-subsistence agriculture has not developed.

And to all appearances, a great many societies that are, today, in the Type B category appear to be basically agrarian societies.

What about China? Notwithstanding my mention of Confucian China as a source of the trappings of civilization, pre-Mao China was basically a Type-B-er…slow to change, not particularly oriented toward “modernization” and industrial-type development, the whole drill–BUT also a land of fertile plains and much agriculture.

Japan seems to be a Type A…is it particularly well-suited for farming, historically?

Or am I missing your point?