Throughout the rest of this course, we will devote much of our attention to studying these specific social institutions. What behavioral rules are in effect when you encounter an acquaintance at school, work, or in the grocery store?
Generally, we do not step back to consider all of the intricacies of such normative rules. Rarely do we physically embrace or even touch the individual, and this is often because in our culture we see this as the norm, or the standard of acceptable social behavior. Only when confronted with a different norm do we begin to see cultural differences or even understand that this everyday behavior is part of a larger socialization process.
Figure 2. The apps on a phone are like the cultural components of society. One way to think about the relationship between society and culture is to consider the characteristics of a phone. The phone itself is like society, and the apps on the phone are like culture:. The software and apps on the phone could be compared to culture. And just as phone apps go through updates or changes, culture can also evolve over time. Social institutions can be most visible when they break down.
For example, for six days in January , public school teachers in California went on strike. The Los Angelos school district the second-largest in the nation scrambled to provide s ubstitute teachers and staff to stay with students after 30, teachers walked out, demanding smaller class sizes, more teachers and support staff, and a 6.
How do breakdowns of social institutions like this one public education affect individuals? How does it affect students? Teachers and administrators?
How would the strike affect other school employees such as cafeteria workers or custodial staff? Our system of public education meets many complex societal needs, including the training and preparation of future voters and workers, but on a more pragmatic level it also provides a place for children to go while parents work.
When we think about family as a social institution, we might consider the ways in which the definition of family has changed over time and how this has produced new formal norms i. The family meets a variety of social needs—including legal i. The legalization of same-sex marriage was an issue that divided many states and serves as an illustrative sociological example of the interplay between society and culture. Figure 3. Hunting and gathering tribes, industrialized Japanese, suburban Americans—each is a society.
But what does this mean? Exactly what is a society? In sociological terms, society refers to a group of people who live in a definable geographic space and share the same or similar culture. Consider the cell phone example: phone society , hardware social institutions , and software culture.
Sociologist Gerhard Lenski — defined societies in terms of their technological sophistication. As a society advances, so does its use of technology , which is defined as the application of science to address the problems of daily life.
Societies with rudimentary technology depend on the fluctuations of their environments, while industrialized societies have more control over the impact of their surroundings and thus develop different cultural features. This distinction is so important that sociologists generally classify societies along a spectrum based on their degree of industrialization—from preindustrial to industrial to postindustrial.
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 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,—12, 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. Changing conditions and adaptations led some societies to rely on the domestication of animals where circumstances permitted. Roughly 7, 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 of East Africa, 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 each other.
The Maasai are a modern pastoral society with an economy largely structured around herds of cattle. Read more about the Maasai people and see pictures of their daily lives. When cultures meet, technology can help, hinder, and even destroy. Oil spills in the Nigerian Delta have forced many of the Ogoni tribe from their land and forced removal has meant that over , Ogoni have sought refuge in the country of Benin University of Michigan, n.
As a society advances, so does its use of technology. Societies with rudimentary technology depend on the fluctuations of their environments, while industrialized societies have more control over the impact of their surroundings and thus develop different cultural features.
This distinction is so important that sociologists generally classify societies along a spectrum of their level of industrialization—from preindustrial to industrial to postindustrial. 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 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,—12, 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. Changing conditions and adaptations led some societies to rely on the domestication of animals where circumstances permitted. Roughly 7, 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.
When cultures meet, technology can help, hinder, and even destroy. Oil spills in the Nigerian Delta have forced many of the Ogoni tribe from their land and forced removal has meant that over , Ogoni have sought refuge in the country of Benin University of Michigan, n. And the massive Deepwater Horizon oil spill of drew great attention as it occurred in what is the most developed country, the United States. Environmental disasters continue as Western technology and its need for energy expands into less developed peripheral regions of the globe.
Of course not all technology is bad. We take electric light for granted in the United States, Europe, and the rest of the developed world. Such light extends the day and allows us to work, read, and travel at night. It makes us safer and more productive. But regions in India, Africa, and elsewhere are not so fortunate. Meeting the challenge, one particular organization, Barefoot College, located in District Ajmer, Rajasthan, India, works with numerous less developed nations to bring solar electricity, water solutions, and education.
The focus for the solar projects is the village elders. The elders agree to select two grandmothers to be trained as solar engineers and choose a village committee composed of men and women to help operate the solar program. The program has brought light to over , people in 1, villages. The environmental rewards include a large reduction in the use of kerosene and in carbon dioxide emissions.
The fact that the villagers are operating the projects themselves helps minimize their sense of dependence. 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. Horticultural societies formed in areas where rainfall and other conditions allowed them to grow stable crops. This created more stability and more material goods and became the basis for the first revolution in human survival.
While pastoral and horticultural societies used small, temporary tools such as digging sticks or hoes, agricultural societies relied on permanent tools for survival. Around B. Farmers learned to rotate the types of crops grown on their fields and to reuse waste products such as fertilizer, which led to better harvests and bigger surpluses of food. Man needs society for his existence or survival. The human child depends on his parents and others for its survival and growth.
The inherent capacities of the child can develop only in society. The ultimate goal of society is to promote good and happy life for its individuals. It creates conditions and opportunities for the all round development of individual personality. Society ensures harmony and cooperation among individuals in spite of their occasional conflicts and tensions. If society helps the individuals in numerous ways, great men also contribute to society by their wisdom and experience. Thus, society and individuals are bound by an intimate and harmonious bond and the conflicts between the two are apparent and momentary.
In a well-ordered society, there would be lasting harmony between the two. Society liberates and limits the activities of men and it is a necessary condition of every human being and need to fulfillment of life. Society is a system of usages and procedures of authority and mutual aid many divisions of controls of human behavior and of liberties.
This changing system, we call society and it is always changing [1]. Society not confined to man [2]. It should be clear that society is not limited to human beings.
There are many degrees of animal societies, likely the ants, the bee, the hornet, are known to most school children. It has been contended that wherever there is life there is society, because life means heredity and, so far as we know, can arise only out of and in the presence of other life. All higher animals at least have a very definite society, arising out of the requirements their nature and the conditions involved in the perpetuation of their species [3].
In society each member seeks something and gives something. A society can also consist of likeminded people governed by their own norms and values within a dominant, large society moreover; a society may be illustrated as an economic, social or industrial infrastructure, made up of a varied collection of individuals. Society is universal and pervasive and has no defined boundary or assignable limits.
A society is a collection of individuals united by certain relations or modes of behavior which mark them off from others who do not enter into those relations or who differ from them in behavior. In this way we can conclude that, society is the whole complex of social behavior and the network of social relationship [5]. Society is an abstract term that connotes the complex of inter-relations that exist between and among the members of the group.
Society exists wherever there are good or bad, proper or improper relationships between human beings. These social relationships are not evident, they do not have any concrete from, and hence society is abstract. Society is not a group of people; it means in essence a state or condition, a relationship and is therefore necessarily an abstraction. Society is organization of relationship. It is the total complex of human relationships.
It includes whole range of human relations. Now we can say that society is the union itself, the organization, the sum of formal relations in which associating individuals are bound together.
Societies consist in mutual interaction and inter relation of individuals and of the structure formed by their relations.
As a human being man cannot live without association. Because individuals cannot be understood apart from their relations with one another; the relations cannot be understood apart from the units or terms of the relationship. A man of society may be aided by the understanding of say, neurons and synapses, but his quest remains the analysis of social relationships [8].
The role of social life is clarified when we consider the process by which they develop in the life of the individual. Social life is the combination of various components such as activities, people and places. While all of these components are required to define a social life, the nature of each component is different for every person and can change for each person, as affected by a variety of external influences.
In fact, the complex social life of our day his actions indeed, even his thoughts and feelings are influenced in large measure by a social life which surrounds him like an atmosphere [11]. It is true that, human achievement is marked by his ability to do, so to a more remarkable degree than any other animal. Everywhere there is a social life setting limitations and pre- dominatingly influencing individual action. Because they work together, combine and organize for specific purposes, so that no man lives to himself.
This unity of effort is to make society [12]. There are different kinds of social life and these are depends on various factors. These types of factors of social life are normal and for normal people. Nevertheless, social life depends on different things such as a The political life; b The economic life; c Voluntary associations; d Educational associations; e Methods of communication and; f The family [14]. Though accurate information about the exact origin of society is not known still it is an accepted fact that man has been living in society since time immemorial.
He cannot live without society, if he does so; he is either beast or God. Man has to live in society for his existence and welfare. In almost all aspect of his life he feels the need of society. Biologically and psychologically he compelled to live in society. The essence of the fact is that man has always belonged to a society of some sort, without which man cannot exist at all. Society fulfills all his needs and provides security. Every human took birth, grows, live and die in society.
Hence there exists a great deal of close relationships between man and society. Both are closely inter-related, interconnected and inter-dependent.
Relationship between the two is bilateral in nature. But this close relationship between man and society raises one of the most important questions i. No doubt Aristotle said so long ago. However, man is a social animal mainly because of the following three reasons:.
Man is a social animal because his nature makes him so. Sociality or sociability is his natural instinct. All his human qualities such as: to think, to enquire, to learn language, to play and work only developed in human society. All this developed through interaction with others.
His nature compels him to live with his fellow beings. The first case was of Kasper Hauser who from his childhood until his seventeenth year was brought up in woods of Nuremberg. In his case it was found that at the age of seventeen he could hardly walk, had the mind of an infant and mutter only a few meaningless phrases. In spite of his subsequent education he could never make himself a normal man. The second case was of two Hindu children who in were discovered in a wolf den.
One of the children died soon after discovery. The other could walk only on all four, possessed no language except wolf like growls. She was shy of human being and afraid of them. It was only after careful and sympathetic training that she could learn some social habits.
The third case was of Anna, an illegitimate American child who had been placed in a room at age of six months and discovered five years later. On discovery it was found that she could not walk or speech and was indifferent to people around her. All the above cases prove that man is social by nature. Human nature develops in man only when he lives in society, only when he shares with his fellow begins a common life.
He knows himself and his fellow beings within the framework of society. Indeed, man is social by nature. The social nature is not super-imposed on him or added to him rather it is inborn.
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