Society

File:Diversity of youth in Oslo Norway.jpg

Young people interacting within an ethnically diverse society.

A society is a grouping of individuals, which is characterized by common interest and may have distinctive culture and institutions. In a society members can be from a different ethnic group. A "Society" may refer to a particular people, such as the Nuer, to a nation state, such as Switzerland, or to a broader cultural group, such as Western society. Society can also be explained as an organized group of people associated together for religious, benevolent, cultural, scientific, political, patriotic, or other purposes.

Origin and usage

The term society emerged in the fifteenth century and is derived from the French société. The French word, in turn, had its origin in the Latin societas, a "friendly association with others," from socius meaning "companion, associate, comrade or business partner." Implicit in the meaning of society is that its members share some mutual concern or interest, a common objective or common characteristics.

In the social sciences "society" has been used to mean a group of people that form a semi-closed social system, in which most interactions are with other individuals belonging to the group. According to sociologist Richard Jenkins, the term addresses a number of important existential issues facing people:

1. How humans think and exchange information – the sensory world makes up only a fraction of human experience. In order to understand the world, we have to conceive of human interaction in the abstract (namely, society).
2. Many phenomena cannot be reduced to individual behavior – to explain certain conditions, a view of something "greater than the sum of its parts" is needed.
3. Collectives often endure beyond the lifespan of individual members.
4. The human condition has always meant going beyond the evidence of our senses; every aspect of our lives is tied to the collective.

Society and culture are similar concepts, but their scopes are different. A society is an interdependent community, while culture is an attribute of a community: the complex web of shifting patterns that link individuals together. For example, Clifford Geertz has suggested that "society" is the actual arrangement of social relations while "culture" consists of beliefs and symbolic forms. Edward Burnett Tylor wrote in 1871 that "culture or civilization, taken in its wide ethnographic sense, is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society."

In political science, the term is often used to mean the totality of human relationships, generally in contrast to the State, the apparatus of rule or government within a territory:

I mean by it [the State] that summation of privileges and dominating positions which are brought into being by extra-economic power... I mean by Society, the totality of concepts of all purely natural relations and institutions between man and man...

Franz Oppenheimer,

It should be noted, however, that some theorists, particularly Marxists, have argued that there is no entity that we could call "society," that is a useful concept in sociological study. The concept of a society as the sum total of social relations among members of a community contrasts with the perspective where society is simply the sum total of individuals in a territory, having no independent existence or characteristics beyond that which can be described on another level. Such objections notwithstanding, the notion of society has continued to be used to describe this totality of relationships that characterizes a relatively stable community of people.

In the view of Karl Marx, human beings are intrinsically, necessarily and by definition social beings who - beyond being "gregarious creatures" - cannot survive and meet their needs other than through social co-operation and association. Their social characteristics are therefore to a large extent an objectively given fact, stamped on them from birth and affirmed by socialization processes; and, according to Marx, in producing and reproducing their material life, people must necessarily enter into relations of production which are "independent of their will."

By contrast, the sociologist Max Weber for example defines human action as "social" if, by virtue of the subjective meanings attached to the action by individuals, it "takes account of the behavior of others, and is thereby oriented in its course." In this case, the "social" domain really exists only in the intersubjective relations between individuals, but by implication the life of these individuals also exists in part outside the social domain. "Social" is thus implicitly also contrasted with "private."

In the positivist sociology of Emile Durkheim, a social fact is an abstraction external to the individual which constrains that individual's actions. In his 1895 work Rules of Sociological Method, Durkheim writes: "A social fact is every way of acting, fixed or not, capable of exercising on the individual an influence, or an external constraint; or again, every way of acting which is general throughout a given society, while at the same time existing in its own right independent of its individual manifestations." In Durkheim's view, sociology is 'the science of social facts'.

Levels of societies

The fundamental unit of human society is the family. Margaret Mead, based on her anthropological research, affirmed the centrality of the family in human society:

As far back as our knowledge takes us, human beings have lived in families. We know of no period where this was not so. We know of no people who have succeeded for long in dissolving the family or displacing it ... Again and again, in spite of proposals for change and actual experiments, human societies have reaffirmed their dependence on the family as the basic unit of human living—the family of father, mother and children.

Societies consist minimally of a large extended family, and generally as groups of families connected either by kinship or by geopolitical factors (location, resources, common enemies, and so forth). While a number of societal groups have and continue to exist, those most relevant are the band, clan, chiefdom, Tribe, ethnic group, and State.

Band

A band society is the simplest form of human society. A band generally consists of a small kinship group, no larger than an extended family or small clan. Bands have very informal leadership; the older members of the band generally are looked to for guidance and advice, but there are no written laws and no law enforcement seen typically in more complex societies. Bands' customs are almost always transmitted orally. Formal social institutions are few or non-existent. Religion is generally based on family tradition, individual experience, or counsel from a shaman. Bands are distinguished from tribes in that tribes are generally larger, consisting of many families. Tribes have more social institutions and clearly defined leadership such as a "chief," or "elder." Tribes are also more permanent than bands; a band can cease to exist if only a small group walks out. Many tribes are in fact sub-divided into bands; in the United States, some tribes are made up of official bands that live in specific locations.

Clan

A clan is a group of people united by kinship and descent, which is defined by perceived descent from a common ancestor. Even if actual lineage patterns are unknown, clan members nonetheless recognize a founding member or "apical ancestor." As kinship based bonds can be merely symbolic in nature some clans share a "stipulated" common ancestor, which is a symbol of the clan's unity. When this ancestor is not human, this is referred to a totem. Generally speaking, kinship differs from biological relation, as it also involves adoption, marriage, and fictive genealogical ties. Clans can be most easily described as sub-groups of tribes and usually constitute groups of 7,000 to 10,000 people.

Chiefdom

A chiefdom is any community led by an individual known as a chief. In anthropological theory, one model of human social development rooted in ideas of cultural evolution describes a chiefdom as a form of social organization more complex than a tribe, and less complex than a state or a civilization. The most succinct (but still working) definition of a chiefdom in anthropology belongs to Robert Carneiro: "An autonomous political unit comprising a number of villages or communities under the permanent control of a paramount chief" Chiefdoms have been shown by anthropologists and archaeologists to be a relatively unstable form of social organization. They are prone to cycles of collapse and renewal, in which tribal units band together, expand in power, fragment through some form of social stress, and band together again.

An example of this kind of social organization would be the Germanic Peoples who conquered the western Roman Empire in the 5th century C.E. Although commonly referred to as tribes, the Germanic Peoples were by anthropological definition not tribes, but chiefdoms. They had a complex social hierarchy consisting of kings, a warrior aristocracy, common freemen, serfs and slaves.

Chiefdoms are characterized by pervasive inequality of peoples and centralization of authority. At least two inherited social classes (elite and commoner) are present, although social class can often be changed by extraordinary behavior during an individual's life. A single lineage/family of the elite class will be the ruling elite of the chiefdom, with the greatest influence, power, and prestige. Kinship is typically an organizing principle, while marriage, age, and gender can affect one's social status and role.

A single simple chiefdom is generally composed of a central community surrounded by or near a number of smaller subsidiary communities. All of these communities recognize the authority of a single kin group or individual with hereditary centralized power, dwelling in the primary community. Each community will have its own leaders, which are usually in a tributary and/or subservient relationship with the ruling elite of the primary community.

A complex chiefdom is a group of simple chiefdoms controlled by a single paramount center, and ruled by a paramount chief. Complex chiefdoms have two or even three tiers of political hierarchy. Nobles are clearly distinct from commoners and do not usually engage in any form of agricultural production. The higher members of society consume most of the goods that are passed up the hierarchy as a tribute. Reciprocal obligations are fulfilled by the nobles carrying out ritual that only they can perform. They may also make token, symbolic redistributions of food and other goods. In two or three tiered chiefdoms, higher ranking chiefs have control over a number or lesser ranking individuals, each of whom controls specific territory or social units. Political control rests on the chief's ability to maintain access to a sufficiently large body of tribute, passed up the line by lesser chiefs. These lesser chiefs in turn collect from those below them, from communities close to their own center. At the apex of the status hierarchy sits the paramount chief.

Tribe

A tribe, viewed historically or developmentally, consists of a social group existing before the development of, or outside of, states, though some modern theorists hold that "contemporary" tribes can only be understood in terms of their relationship to states.

The actual word, "tribe," is of uncertain origin before the Roman usage. The "tri" part of tribe referred to three tribes or political ethnic divisions (Tities, Ramnes, and Luceres), in the ancient Roman state. Properly, in Latin tribus means "by three." Gregory Nagy, citing the linguist Émile Benveniste in his Origines de la formation des noms en indo-européen noted that the Umbrian trifu (tribus) is apparently derived from a combination of *tri- and *bhu- where the second element is cognate with the phu- of Greek phule, and that this was subdividing the Greek polis into three phulai.

The term is often loosely used to refer to any non-Western or indigenous society. Many anthropologists use the term to refer to societies organized largely on the basis of kinship, especially corporate descent groups (see clan and lineage).

In common understanding the word "tribe" is a social division within a traditional society consisting of a group of interlinked families or communities sharing a common culture and dialect. In the contemporary western mind the modern tribe is typically associated with a seat of traditional authority (tribal leader) with whom the representatives of external powers (the governing state or occupying government) interact.

Considerable debate has taken place over how best to characterize tribes. Some of this debate stems from perceived differences between pre-state tribes and contemporary tribes; some of this debate reflects more general controversy over cultural evolution and colonialism. In the popular imagination, tribes reflect a way of life that predates, and is more "natural," than that in modern states. Tribes also privilege primordial social ties, are clearly bounded, homogeneous, parochial, and stable. Thus, many believed that tribes organize links between families (including clans and lineages), and provide them with a social and ideological basis for solidarity that is in some way more limited than that of an "ethnic group" or of a "nation."

However, anthropological and ethnohistorical research has challenged this view. In his 1972 study, The Notion of the Tribe, Morton Fried provided numerous examples of tribes the members of which spoke different languages and practiced different rituals, or that shared languages and rituals with members of other tribes. Similarly, he provided examples of tribes where people followed different political leaders, or followed the same leaders as members of other tribes. He concluded that tribes in general are characterized by fluid boundaries and heterogeneity, are dynamic, and are not parochial.

For various reasons, the term "tribe" fell into disfavor in the latter part of the twentieth century. For many anthropologists, when the term was clearly defined it became an "ideal" concept, with no basis in reality. Thus, it was replaced with the designation "ethnic group," which defines a group of people of common ancestry and language, shared cultural history, and an identifiable territory. This term is also preferred as it overcame the negative connotations that the term tribe had acquired under colonialism. Nevertheless, the term tribe is still in common use and the term used for recognized Native American governments in the United States.

Ethnic group

An ethnic group is a human population whose members identify with each other, usually on the basis of a presumed common genealogy or lineage. Ethnic groups are also usually united by common cultural, behavioral, linguistic, or religious practices. In this sense, an ethnic group is also a cultural community.

State

In general discussion, a nation-state is variously called a "country," a "nation," or a "state." But technically, it is a specific form of sovereign state (a political entity on a territory) that governs a nation (a cultural entity), and which derives its legitimacy from successfully serving all its citizens. The Compact OED defines "nation-state": a sovereign state of which most of the citizens or subjects are united also by factors which define a nation, such as language or common descent. The nation-state implies that a state and a nation coincide.

The modern nation-state is relatively new to human history, emerging after the Renaissance and Reformation. It was given impetus by the throwing off of kings (for example, in the Netherlands and the United States) and the rise of efficient state bureaucracies that could govern large groups of people impersonally. Frederick the Great in Germany is frequently cited as one of the originators of modern state bureaucracy. It is based on the idea that the state can treat large numbers of people equally by efficient application of the law through the bureaucratic machinery of the state.

Some modern nation-states, for example in Europe or North America, prospered in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and were promoted as a model form of governance. The League of Nations and the United Nations are predicated on the concept of a community of nation-states. However, the concept of a modern nation-state is more an ideal than a reality. The majority of the world's people do not feel that the ruling elite in their state promotes their own national interest, but only that of the ruling party. As a result, most of the world's population does not feel their nation (cultural identity) is represented at the United Nations.

The modern nation-state is larger and more populous than the "city-states" of ancient Greece or Medieval Europe. Those "states" were governed through face-to-face relationships of people that often lived within the walls of the city. The nation-state also differs from an empire, which is usually an expansive territory comprising numerous states and many nationalities which is united by political and military power, and a common currency. The language of an empire is often not the mother tongue of most of its inhabitants.

The nation-state became the standard ideal in France during the French Revolution, and quickly the nationalist idea spread through Europe, and later the rest of the world. However island nations such as the English (and later British) or the Japanese tended to acquire a nation-state sooner than this, not intentionally (on the French revolutionary model) but by chance, because the island situation made the clear natural limits of state and nation coincide.

There are two directions for the formation of a nation-state. The first—and more peaceful way—is for responsible people living in a territory to organize a common government for the nation-state they will create. The second, and more violent and oppressive method—is for a ruler or army to conquer a territory and impose its will on the people it rules. Unfortunately, history has more frequently seen the latter method of nation-state formation.

More scholars are beginning to predict the end of the nation-state as an ideal. The idea of a sovereign state has already been abandoned by all but the most powerful countries. Increasingly, states are willing to accept regional-level government like the European Union for many government functions like producing money and regulation of commerce and trade. Regional courts of arbitration are increasingly accepted by traditional states that give up a measure of sovereignty for equal treatment and participation in a global community.

National and cultural groups will not disappear, as human beings are cultural and literary beings; however, the natural place for such groups is not the control of government resources in order to attain power and wealth at the expense of other groups. As people from different minority backgrounds continue to relocate and live in states that are not their ancestral home, pluralism will have to be accommodated for the sake of peace.

Pluralistic states, like those in the United States and the European Union, can agree on several general principles, such as murder, theft and rape are wrong and should be punished, while avoiding taking positions on divisive issues that exist in religious or ideological dogmas. No racial, ethnic, or religious group should be favored at the expense of others by a state, whose function is not naturally related national culture, but more naturally related to the governance of territorial functions like military protection, domestic security, physical infrastructure, inter-state water distribution, and the regulation of money. For these reasons, states will not disappear, even though they may become uncoupled from the ideal of a nation-state.

Characteristics of society

The following three components are common to all definitions of society:

• Social networks
• Criteria for membership, and
• Characteristic patterns of organization

Social networks

An example of a social network diagram

Social networks are maps of the relationships between people. Structural features such as proximity, frequency of contact and type of relationship (such as relative, friend, colleague) define various social networks.

Social network analysis views social relationships in terms of nodes and ties. Nodes are the individual actors within the networks, and ties are the relationships between the actors. There can be many kinds of ties between the nodes. Research in a number of academic fields has shown that social networks operate on many levels, from families up to the level of nations, and play a critical role in determining the way problems are solved, organizations are run, and the degree to which individuals succeed in achieving their goals.

Several analytic tendencies distinguish social network analysis:

There is no assumption that groups are the building blocks of society: the approach is open to studying less-bounded social systems, from nonlocal communities to links among Web sites.

Rather than treating individuals (persons, organizations, states) as discrete units of analysis, it focuses on how the structure of ties affects individuals and their relationships.

By contrast with analyses that assume that socialization into norms determines behavior, network analysis looks to see the extent to which the structure and composition of ties affect norms.

Precursors of social networks in the late 1800s include Émile Durkheim and Ferdinand Tönnies. Tönnies argued that social groups can exist as personal and direct social ties that either link individuals who share values and belief (gemeinschaft) or impersonal, formal and instrumental social links (gesellschaft). Durkheim gave a non-individualistic explanation of social facts arguing that social phenomena arise when interacting individuals constitute a reality that can no longer be accounted for in terms of the properties of individual actors. He distinguished between a traditional society – "mechanical solidarity" – which prevails if individual differences are minimized, and the modern society – "organic solidarity" – that develops out of cooperation between differentiated individuals with independent roles.

Georg Simmel, writing at the turn of the twentieth century, was the first scholar to think directly in social network terms. His essays pointed to the nature of network size on interaction and to the likelihood of interaction in ramified, loosely-knit networks rather than groups (Simmel, 1908/1971).

Criteria for membership

Generally the members of a society have a shared belief or common goal that binds them together. On the most basic level, that of a family or extended family, they share a common blood lineage. Some larger social groups, such as clans and ethnic groups also share a common lineage, although the connections may be more distant.

Peoples of many nations united by common political and cultural traditions, beliefs, or values are may be said to be a society (such as Judeo-Christian, Eastern, and Western). When used in this context, the term is employed as a means of contrasting two or more "societies" whose members represent alternative conflicting and competing worldviews.

There are also "secret societies," organizations that conceal their activities and membership from outsiders. The term "secret society" is also often used by the general public to describe a wide range of organizations that do not fit this definition, such as college fraternities and fraternal organizations that may have non-public ceremonies. Freemasonry has often been called a "secret society" although Freemasons themselves argue that it is more correct to say that it is an esoteric society, in that certain aspects are private. The most common phrasing being that Freemasonry has, in the twenty-first century, become less a secret society and more of a "society with secrets". It also includes organizations described in conspiracy theories.

Some academic, learned and scholarly associations describe themselves as "societies" (for example, the American Society of Mathematics. More commonly, professional organizations often refer to themselves as societies (e.g., the American Society of Civil Engineers, American Chemical Society). In the United Kingdom and the United States, learned societies are normally nonprofit and have charitable status. In science, they range in size to include national scientific societies (i.e., the Royal Society) to regional natural history societies. Academic societies may have interest in a wide range of subjects, including the arts, humanities and science.

Organization of society

Human societies are often organized according to their primary means of subsistence. As noted in the section on "Evolution of societies," above, social scientists identify hunter-gatherer societies, nomadic pastoral societies, horticulturalist or simple farming societies, and intensive agricultural societies, also called civilizations. Some consider industrial and post-industrial societies to be qualitatively different from traditional agricultural societies.

One common theme for societies in general is that they serve to aid individuals in a time of crisis. Traditionally, when an individual requires aid, for example at birth, death, sickness, or disaster, members of that society will rally others to render aid, in some form—symbolic, linguistic, physical, mental, emotional, financial, medical, or religious. Many societies will distribute largess, at the behest of some individual or some larger group of people. This type of generosity can be seen in all known cultures; typically, prestige accrues to the generous individual or group. Conversely, members of a society may also shun or scapegoat members of the society who violate its norms. Mechanisms such as gift-giving and scapegoating, which may be seen in various types of human groupings, tend to be institutionalized within a society.

Some societies will bestow status on an individual or group of people, when that individual or group performs an admired or desired action. This type of recognition is bestowed by members of that society on the individual or group in the form of a name, title, manner of dress, or monetary reward. Males, in many societies, are particularly susceptible to this type of action and subsequent reward, even at the risk of their lives. Action by an individual or larger group in behalf of some cultural ideal is seen in all societies. The phenomena of community action, shunning, scapegoating, generosity, and shared risk and reward occur in subsistence-based societies and in more technology-based civilizations.

Societies may also be organized according to their political structure. In order of increasing size and complexity, there are bands, tribes, chiefdoms, and state societies. These structures may have varying degrees of political power, depending on the cultural geographical, and historical environments that these societies must contend with. Thus, a more isolated society with the same level of technology and culture as other societies is more likely to survive than one in closer proximity to others that may encroach on their resources (see history for examples}. A society that is unable to offer an effective response to other societies it competes with will usually be subsumed into the culture of the competing society (see technology for examples).

Evolution of societies

Gerhard Lenski, a sociologist, differentiates societies based on their level of technology, communication and economy: (1) hunters and gatherers, (2) simple agricultural, (3) advanced agricultural, (4) industrial. This is somewhat similar to the system earlier developed by anthropologists Morton H. Fried, a conflict theorist, and Elman Service, an integration theorist, who have produced a system of classification for societies in all human cultures based on the evolution of social inequality and the role of the state. This system of classification contains four categories:

• Hunter-gatherer bands, which are generally egalitarian.
• Tribal societies in which there are some limited instances of social rank and prestige.
• Stratified structures led by chieftains.
• Civilizations, with complex social hierarchies and organized, institutional governments.

Over time, some cultures have progressed toward more-complex forms of organization and control. This cultural evolution has a profound effect on patterns of community. Hunter-gatherer tribes settled around seasonal foodstocks to become agrarian villages. Villages grew to become towns and cities. Cities turned into city-states and nation-states. Ultimately, there is the level of all humanity, humankind, that upon which rest all the elements of society, including society's beliefs.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Definition of Society from the OED.
• Lecture notes on "Defining Society" from East Carolina University.
• Learning Commons - What is Culture ? - Glossary Item - Society
• Effland, R. 1998. The Cultural Evolution of Civilizations Mesa Community College.
• Jenkins, R. 2002. Foundations of Sociology. London: Palgrave MacMillan. ISBN 0-333-96050-5.
• Lenski, G. 1974. Human Societies: An Introduction to Macrosociology. New York: McGraw- Hill, Inc.
• Tylor, Edward B. [1871] 1976. Primitive culture: Researches into the development of mythology, philosophy, religion, language, art, and custom. Gordon Press. ISBN 087968464X
• Raymond Williams, "Society," in: Williams, Key Words: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. Fontana, 1976.

• Dick Houtman, Class and Politics in Contemporary Social Science: Marxism Lite and Its Blind Spot for Culture
• Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities
• Karl Marx, The German Ideology
• Karl Popper, The Open Society and its Enemies
• Frank Furedi, Where have all the intellectuals gone?
• Piotr Sztompka, Socjologia

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