Quick questions on Power, authority and globalisation in the HSC Society and Culture core

Those who hold power often use it to preserve the status quo. Institutions resist change to protect established interests. In many societies, religious or political elites maintain traditional family structures, gender roles or class hierarchies because change would weaken their position. Continuity, in other words, is frequently an active choice by the powerful, not simply inertia.

Power also drives change. Social movements mobilise collective power from below to transform attitudes and laws. In Australia, the union movement, the women's movement, the land rights and reconciliation movements, and the marriage equality campaign all show grassroots power producing lasting change. Governments use legislative power to accelerate change, as with anti-discrimination law and native title following Mabo v Queensland (No 2) in 1992.

Technology is one of the most powerful contemporary agents of change. It reshapes work, communication, identity and the distribution of power itself. Social media has decentralised who can broadcast ideas, fuelling movements but also misinformation. In Australia, smartphones and platforms have transformed how young people form identity and community, while also raising concern about wellbeing, leading to debate over restricting social media access for under-16s.

Globalisation spreads ideas, goods, capital and people across borders, accelerating change while provoking resistance. It can homogenise culture, as global brands and media flatten local difference, but it can also strengthen local identity as communities push back. In Indonesia and Japan, global economic integration sits alongside deliberate preservation of language, religion and tradition. In Australia, globalisation drives a diverse, trade-dependent economy and a multicultural society, while debates over national identity, sovereignty and local jobs show the resistance it generates.

The strongest responses do not list these agents but weigh them. Which has been most decisive in your studied country, and why? Often they reinforce one another: globalisation spreads a technology, which empowers a movement, which pressures a government to change the law. Showing these interactions, with current evidence, is what separates a Band 6 answer.