The concept of cultural lag was first introduced by W. F. Ogbum published in his book entitled ‘Social change’ in 1922. In his book he had delineated the two aspects of culture-material and non material. In that context he introduced the concept of cultural lag. By the very natural of it the material aspects changes quickly but the non material changes but slowly. The change between material and non material culture is called gap or lag. The word lag denotes crippled movement of one part of culture as compared with the other. Culture has two parts, material and non-material. Both be changed by human begins.
In the process of change Ogbum believes that both the material culture and nonmaterial culture undergoes change. But the nonmaterial culture according to Ogbum is often slow to respond to the rapid changes in material culture. When non material culture cannot adjust itself to the material culture it falls behind the two. According to Ogbum this gap between the material culture and non-material culture is called “cultural lag”.
In the words of Ogbum “the strain that exists between two correlated parts of culture that change at unequal rates of speed may be interpreted as a lag in the part that is changing at the slowest rate for the one lags behind the other”. For example a lag is seen when people change method of cultivation without change in the land owning system. Thus according to Ogbum one of the main problems of adjustment in modem society is due to problem of uneven speed of change in material and non material culture.
