Amity University/ Sociology for Engineers/HSM

What is Society?

The term society is derived from the Latin word ‘socius’ which means ‘association,
companionship, togetherness. Thus, society refers to a group of people living together with
shared cultures, having social interactions and inter-relationships.

Society has been viewed as a system, made up of interrelated and inter-dependent parts that
function together to maintain the system as a whole.

Human beings are called social animals. We cannot live alone. Family alone cannot satisfy our
needs. We need a society where are people similar to us. We feel at home when people in our
surroundings share common interests, religions, languages, and ways of life. Being social
animals, we live together in a group, in a community, and in society. Society is a must for
human beings, we help one another, give something to others, and take something from others.

In sociology, the term society refers not to a group of people but to the complete pattern of the
norms of interaction that arise among them. It is a process rather than a thing, motion rather
than structure. The important aspect of society is the system of relationships, the patterns of
norms of interaction by which the members of society maintain themselves.

Some sociologists say that society exists only when the members know each other and possess
common interests or objects. Thus, if two persons are traveling in a bus, their relationship of
co-existence in the same compartment, of being same time in the same place does not constitute
society but as soon as possible they come to know each other, the element of society is created.
This idea of reciprocal awareness is implied in Giddings’s definition of society as

“a number of like-minded individuals, who know and enjoy their like-mindedness and are
therefore able to work together for common ends.”

Definition

Different scholars have defined society in various ways:

 To Anthony Giddings, ‘Society is the union itself, the organization, the sum of formal
relations in which associating individuals are bound together.
 To Talcott Parson ‘Society may be defined as the total complex of human relationships
in so far as they grow out of action in terms of mean-end relationships intrinsic or
symbolic.’
 To R.T. LaPierre ‘Society refers not to a group of people but to the complex pattern
of norms of interaction that arise among and between them’.
Characteristics of Society

Society is viewed as a process as well as a structure that is complementary to each other. It

means that society exists only when they behave toward each other (process) and it is a structure
as it is made up of a web or network of relationships among the people and institutions. Society
has the following basic features as follows:

Abstract in Nature

It is abstract in nature. We can not see the structure of it, we can just feel it. It is made up of
social relationships. It consists of social relations, human behavior, customs, rituals, etc.

Dynamic in Nature

Society is not static, it is dynamic. Change is ever-present in it. According to Herbert Spencer
change is the rule of society. It is like water in a stream or river that forever flows. New
associations, institutions, and groups may come into being, and old ones may die a natural
death. Changes take place slowly, or gradually, suddenly or abruptly.

It Consists of People

It is composed of people. Without people, there is no society. No social relationships and no

social life is possible.

It is not only a group of persons

According to sociologist Wright, society is not a group of persons rather it is a relationship and
interaction process among and between people and groups.

It is a complex system

It is ever-changing. Due to continuous changes in people’s roles, rights, duties, and conditions
whole social structure gets changed. Its nature changed from simple to complex due to its
dynamic nature.

It is based on interdependence

Social relationships are characterized by interdependence. Society’s people and groups are
interdependent. One has to depend upon others for the satisfaction of needs.

Cooperation and conflict

It is based on cooperation. It is the very basis of our social life. People can satisfy their desires
and fulfill their needs with the help of cooperation. Due to a lot of differences, we find conflicts
in society. In it, like cooperation, conflict also existed directly or indirectly.
It is means of social control

It has its own ways and means of controlling the behavior of its members. It has various formal
as well as informal means of social control. It means it has customs, traditions, conventions
and folkways, mores, manners, etiquettes, laws, legislations, police, court, and other formal or
informal means of social control to regulate the behavior of its members.

It consists of culture

Each society is distinct from others. Every society is unique because it has one way of life,
called culture. Human societies are distinguished from animal societies because of the culture
we share.

Mutual interaction and awareness

It is a group of people in continuous interaction with each other. Social interaction is made
possible because of mutual awareness. So without interaction and awareness, there are no
societies.

Types or Categories of Societies

Sociologists classify societies into various categories depending on certain criteria. One such
criterion is the level of economic and technological development attained by countries. Thus,
the countries of the world are classified as:

 First World (highly industrially advanced and economically rich

 Second World (industrially advanced but not as much as the first category), and
 Third World (least developed, or in the process of developing).
Another important criterion for classifying societies is on the basis of a major source of
economic organization which classifies society into the following types:

Pre-industrial or Pre-modern Society:

Before the Industrial Revolution and the widespread use of machines, societies were small,
rural, and dependent largely on local resources. Economic production was limited to the
amount of labor a human being could provide, and there were few specialized occupations. The
very first occupation was that of hunter-gatherer.

Hunter-Gatherer

Hunter-gatherer societies demonstrate the strongest dependence on the environment of the

various types of preindustrial societies. As the basic structure of human society until about
10,000–12,000 years ago, these groups were based around kinship or tribes. Hunter-gatherers
relied on their surroundings for survival—they hunted wild animals and foraged for
uncultivated plants for food. When resources became scarce, the group moved to a new area to
find sustenance, meaning they were nomadic. These societies were common until several
hundred years ago, but today only a few hundred remain in existence, such as indigenous
Australian tribes sometimes referred to as “aborigines,” or the Bambuti, a group of pygmy
hunter-gatherers residing in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Hunter-gatherer groups are
quickly disappearing as the world’s population explodes.

Pastoral

Changing conditions and adaptations led some societies to rely on the domestication of animals
where circumstances permitted. Roughly 7,500 years ago, human societies began to recognize
their ability to tame and breed animals and to grow and cultivate their own plants. Pastoral
societies, such as the Maasai villagers, rely on the domestication of animals as a resource for
survival. Unlike earlier hunter-gatherers who depended entirely on existing resources to stay
alive, pastoral groups were able to breed livestock for food, clothing, and transportation, and
they created a surplus of goods. Herding, or pastoral, societies remained nomadic because they
were forced to follow their animals to fresh feeding grounds. Around the time that pastoral
societies emerged, specialized occupations began to develop, and societies commenced trading
with local groups.

Horticultural

Around the same time that pastoral societies were on the rise, another type of society
developed, based on the newly developed capacity for people to grow and cultivate plants.
Previously, the depletion of a region’s crops or water supply forced pastoral societies to
relocate in search of food sources for their livestock. Horticultural societies formed in areas
where rainfall and other conditions allowed them to grow stable crops. They were similar to
hunter-gatherers in that they largely depended on the environment for survival, but since they
didn’t have to abandon their location to follow resources, they were able to start permanent
settlements. This created more stability and more material goods and became the basis for the
first revolution in human survival.

Agricultural

While pastoral and horticultural societies used small, temporary tools such as digging sticks or
hoes, agricultural societies relied on permanent tools for survival. Around 3000 B.C.E., an
explosion of new technology known as the Agricultural Revolution made farming possible—
and profitable. Farmers learned to rotate the types of crops grown on their fields and to reuse
waste products such as manure as fertilizer, which led to better harvests and bigger surpluses
of food. New tools for digging and harvesting were made of metal, and this made them more
effective and longer lasting. Human settlements grew into towns and cities, and particularly
bountiful regions became centers of trade and commerce.

This is also the age in which people had the time and comfort to engage in more contemplative
and thoughtful activities, such as music, poetry, and philosophy. This period became referred
to as the “dawn of civilization” by some because of the development of leisure and humanities.
Craftspeople were able to support themselves through the production of creative, decorative,
or thought-provoking aesthetic objects and writings.

As resources became more plentiful, social classes became more divisive. Those who had more
resources could afford better living and developed into a class of nobility. Difference in social
standing between men and women increased. As cities expanded, ownership and preservation
of resources became a pressing concern.
Feudal

The ninth century gave rise to feudal societies. These societies contained a strict hierarchical
system of power based around land ownership and protection. The nobility, known as lords,
placed vassals in charge of pieces of land. In return for the resources that the land provided,
vassals promised to fight for their lords.

These individual pieces of land, known as fiefdoms, were cultivated by the lower class. In
return for maintaining the land, peasants were guaranteed a place to live and protection from
outside enemies. Power was handed down through family lines, with peasant families serving
lords for generations and generations. Ultimately, the social and economic system of feudalism
failed and was replaced by capitalism and the technological advances of the industrial era.

Industrial Society

In the eighteenth century, Europe experienced a dramatic rise in technological invention,

ushering in an era known as the Industrial Revolution. What made this period remarkable was
the number of new inventions that influenced people’s daily lives. Within a generation, tasks
that had until this point required months of labor became achievable in a matter of days. Before
the Industrial Revolution, work was largely person- or animal-based, and relied on human
workers or horses to power mills and drive pumps. In 1782, James Watt and Matthew Boulton
created a steam engine that could do the work of twelve horses by itself.

Steam power began appearing everywhere. Instead of paying artisans to painstakingly spin
wool and weave it into cloth, people turned to textile mills that produced fabric quickly at a
better price and often with better quality. Rather than planting and harvesting fields by hand,
farmers were able to purchase mechanical seeders and threshing machines that caused
agricultural productivity to soar. Products such as paper and glass became available to the
average person, and the quality and accessibility of education and health care soared. Gas lights
allowed increased visibility in the dark, and towns and cities developed a nightlife.

One of the results of increased productivity and technology was the rise of urban centers.
Workers flocked to factories for jobs, and the populations of cities became increasingly diverse.
The new generation became less preoccupied with maintaining family land and traditions and
more focused on acquiring wealth and achieving upward mobility for themselves and their
families. People wanted their children and their children’s children to continue to rise to the
top, and as capitalism increased, so did social mobility.

It was during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries of the Industrial Revolution that sociology
was born. Life was changing quickly and the long-established traditions of the agricultural eras
did not apply to life in the larger cities. Masses of people were moving to new environments
and often found themselves faced with horrendous conditions of filth, overcrowding, and
poverty. Social scientists emerged to study the relationship between the individual members of
society and society as a whole.

It was during this time that power moved from the hands of the aristocracy and “old money”
to business-savvy newcomers who amassed fortunes in their lifetimes. Families such as the
Rockefellers and the Vanderbilts became the new power players and used their influence in
business to control aspects of government as well. Eventually, concerns over the exploitation
of workers led to the formation of labor unions and laws that set mandatory conditions for
employees. Although the introduction of new technology at the end of the nineteenth century
ended the industrial age, much of our social structure and social ideas—like family, childhood,
and time standardization—have a basis in industrial society.

Postindustrial Society

Information societies, sometimes known as postindustrial or digital societies, are a recent

development. Unlike industrial societies that are rooted in the production of material goods,
information societies are based on the production of information and services.

Digital technology is the steam engine of information societies, and computer moguls such as
Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are its John D. Rockefellers and Cornelius Vanderbilts. Since the
economy of information societies is driven by knowledge and not material goods, power lies
with those in charge of storing and distributing information. Members of a postindustrial
society are likely to be employed as sellers of services—software programmers or business
consultants, for example—instead of producers of goods. Social classes are divided by access
to education, since without technical skills, people in an information society lack the means for
success.

Émile Durkheim on Society(Structural Functionalist View)

As a functionalist, Émile Durkheim’s (1858–1917) perspective on society stressed the

necessary interconnectivity of all of its elements. To Durkheim, society was greater than the
sum of its parts. He asserted that individual behavior was not the same as collective behavior
and that studying collective behavior was quite different from studying an individual’s actions.
Durkheim called the communal beliefs, morals, and attitudes of a society the collective
conscience. In his quest to understand what causes individuals to act in similar and predictable
ways, he wrote, “If I do not submit to the conventions of society, if in my dress I do not conform
to the customs observed in my country and in my class, the ridicule I provoke, the social
isolation in which I am kept, produce, although in an attenuated form, the same effects as
punishment” (Durkheim 1895). Durkheim also believed that social integration, or the strength
of ties that people have to their social groups, was a key factor in social life.

Following the ideas of Comte and Spencer, Durkheim likened society to a living organism, in
which each organ plays a necessary role in keeping the being alive. Even the socially deviant
members of society are necessary, Durkheim argued, as punishments for deviance affirm
established cultural values and norms. That is, punishment of a crime reaffirms our moral
consciousness. “A crime is a crime because we condemn it,” Durkheim wrote in 1893. “An act
offends the common consciousness not because it is criminal, but it is criminal because it
offends that consciousness” (Durkheim 1893). Durkheim called these elements of society
“social facts.” By this, he meant that social forces were to be considered real and existed outside
the individual.

As an observer of his social world, Durkheim was not entirely satisfied with the direction of
society in his day. His primary concern was that the cultural glue that held society together was
failing, and people were becoming more divided. In his book The Division of Labor in
Society (1893), Durkheim argued that as society grew more complex, social order made the
transition from mechanical to organic.

Preindustrial societies, Durkheim explained, were held together by mechanical solidarity, a

type of social order maintained by the collective conscience of a culture. Societies with
mechanical solidarity act in a mechanical fashion; things are done mostly because they have
always been done that way. This type of thinking was common in preindustrial societies where
strong bonds of kinship and a low division of labor created shared morals and values among
people, such as hunter-gatherer groups. When people tend to do the same type of work,
Durkheim argued, they tend to think and act alike.

In industrial societies, mechanical solidarity is replaced with organic solidarity, which is

social order based around an acceptance of economic and social differences. In capitalist
societies, Durkheim wrote, division of labor becomes so specialized that everyone is doing
different things. Instead of punishing members of a society for failure to assimilate to common
values, organic solidarity allows people with differing values to coexist. Laws exist as
formalized morals and are based on restitution rather than revenge.

Karl Marx’s View on Society (Conflict Perspective)

Karl Marx (1818–1883) is certainly among the most significant social thinkers in recent
history. While there are many critics of his work, it is still widely respected and influential. For
Marx, society’s constructions were predicated upon the idea of “base and superstructure.” This
term refers to the idea that a society’s economic character forms its base, upon which rests the
culture and social institutions, the superstructure. For Marx, it is the base (economy) that
determines what a society will be like.
 Fig: Karl Marx asserted that all elements of a society’s structure depend on its economic structure .

Additionally, Marx saw conflict in society as the primary means of change. Economically, he
saw conflict existing between the owners of the means of production—the bourgeoisie—and
the laborers, called the proletariat.
Marx maintained that these conflicts appeared consistently throughout history during times of
social revolution. These revolutions or “class antagonisms” as he called them, were a result of
one class dominating another. Most recently, with the end of feudalism, a new revolutionary
class he called the bourgeoisie dominated the proletariat laborers. The bourgeoisie were
revolutionary in the sense that they represented a radical change in the structure of society. In
Marx’s words, “Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps,
into two great classes directly facing each other—Bourgeoisie and Proletariat” (Marx and
Engels 1848).