Nature of Society: Society, Society & Culture, Social Institutions and Social Startification

The roots of the term society can be traced to the Latin word socius which means companionship or friendship. Society has become an essential condition for human life to continue. Herein, we will discuss some of the views of the social thinkers who had on society and how they have perceived the same.

Though the term society and culture is used today as a scientific concept by most of the social sciences, its most comprehensive definition has been provided in anthropology. Humans are social beings. That is why we live together in societies. Day-to-day we interact with each other and develop social relationships. 

But in sociology and anthropology, the term is used in a different sense. The term “society” refers not just to a group of people but to a complex pattern of norms of interaction that exist among them. In terms of common sense, society is understood as a tangible object, whereas in sociology and anthropology it refers to an intangible entity. It is a mental construct, which we realize in everyday life but cannot see it. The important aspect of society is the system of relationships, the pattern of the norms of interaction by which the members of the society maintain themselves. Some anthropologists say that society exists only when the members know each other and possess common interests or objects.

Characteristics of Society:

According to McIver “society is a web of social relationships”, which may be of several types. To formulate a catalog of social relationships would be an uphill task. The family alone is said to have as many relationships based on age, sex, gender, and generation. Outside the family, there is no limit to the number of possible relationships.

McIver says “society means likeness”. Therefore, the likeness is an essential prerequisite of society. The sense of likeness was focused in early society on kinship, that is, real or supposed blood relationships. In modern societies, the conditions of social likeness have broadened out in the principle of the nationality of one world.

In addition to likeness, interdependence is another essential element to constitute society. Family, one of the important units of society with which we all are closely associated, is based on the biological interdependence of the sexes. None of the two sexes is complete by itself and therefore each seeks fulfillment by the aid of the other. 

Lastly, cooperation is also essential to constitute society. Without cooperation, no society can exist. Unless people cooperate with each other, they cannot live a happy life. All social institutions rest on cooperation. The members of social institutions cooperate with one another to live happily and joyfully. 

Thus likeness, interdependence, and cooperation are the essential elements to constitute society. Besides these elements, McIver has also mentioned some other elements of society; it is a system of usages and procedures, authority and mutual aid, of many groupings and divisions; it controls human behavior and liberties.

This view brings in several other elements of society firstly, in every society there are some usages concerned with marriage, education, religion, food, and speech, etc., which differ from society to society. Secondly, there are procedures i.e., the modes of action in every society which maintain its unity and organization. Thirdly, the presence of authority is necessary to maintain order in society. Fourthly, no society can be stable unless there is a feeling of mutual aid among its members. Fifthly, in a society there are several groupings and divisions such as family, city, and village, etc. sixthly, liberty and control go together in a society. Without liberty, man cannot develop his personality. Control upon an individual’s behavior is not meant to destroy his liberty but to promote and protect it.

Culture and Society:

Culture is the sum total of learned, shared, and socially transmitted behavior that includes ideas, values, and customs of groups of people. A fairly large number of people living in the same territory constitute a society. Members of a society share a common language, which facilitates day-to-day exchanges with others and participate in a common culture. When we see the relationship between society and culture, society and culture are two elements that are complementing each other. Society expresses itself through culture. We can associate the group of people or society from the culture they practice, such as Asian society is characterized by Asian culture or Javanese society with its Javanese culture.

The early notion of culture was popularised among anthropologists in order to understand homogeneous societies. In the modern world, the relationship between culture and society is a complex one. Culture is produced and reproduced within society and society acts in a certain way in culture. But how does culture work in complex societies? Early Anthropologists used culture as the set of practical and contingent significations, while postmodernists use it to mark the domain of signifying practices.

Social Institution:

The two types of institutions defined in the field of anthropology are total institutions and social institution Total institutions are places that comprehensively coordinate the actions of people within them, and examples of total institutions include prisons, convents, and hospitals. Social institutions, on the other hand, are constructs that regulate individuals’ day-to-day lives, such as kinship, religion, and economics. Anthropology of institutions may analyze labor unions, businesses ranging from small enterprises to corporations, government, medical organizations, education, prisons, and financial institutions.

Nongovernmental organizations have garnered particular interest in the field of institutional anthropology because they are capable of fulfilling roles previously ignored by governments, or previously realized by families or local groups, in an attempt to mitigate social problems.

Institutional anthropologists may study the relationship between organizations or between an organization and other parts of society. Institutional anthropology may also focus on the inner workings of an institution, such as the relationships, hierarchies, and cultures formed, and the ways that these elements are transmitted and maintained, transformed, or abandoned over time. Additionally, some anthropology of institutions examines the specific design of institutions and their corresponding strength. More specifically, anthropologists may analyze specific events within an institution, perform semiotic investigations, or analyze the mechanisms by which knowledge and culture are organized and dispersed.

Types of institutions:

A very useful way of grouping social institutions is as follows:

> kinship institutions deal with marriage, the family and primary socialization;

> political institutions regulate access to and the use of power;

> cultural institutions deal with religious, artistic and scientific activities;

> stratification institutions deal with the distribution of social positions and resources; and

> economic institutions produce and distribute goods and services.

Social Stratification(सामाजिक स्तरीकरण):

Social stratification is a society’s categorization of people into socioeconomic strata, based upon their occupation and income, wealth and social status, or derived power (social and political). As such, stratification is the relative social position of persons within a social group, category, geographic region, or social unit. In modern Western societies, social stratification typically is distinguished as three social classes: (a) the upper class, (b) the middle class, and (c) the lower class; in turn, each class can be subdivided into strata, e.g. the upper-stratum, the middle-stratum, and the lower stratum. Moreover, a social stratum can be formed upon the bases of kinship or caste, or both.

The categorization of people by social strata occurs in all societies, ranging from the complex, state-based societies to tribal and feudal societies, which are based upon socio-economic relations among classes of nobility and classes of peasants. Historically, whether or not hunter-gatherer societies can be defined as socially stratified or if social stratification began with agriculture and common acts of social exchange, remains a debated matter in the social sciences. Generally, the greater the social complexity of a society, the more social strata exist, by way of social differentiation.

An open class system is a stratification that facilitates social mobility, with individual achievement and personal merit determining social rank. The hierarchical social status of a person is achieved through their effort. Any status that is based on family background, ethnicity, gender, and religion, which is also known as ascribed status, becomes less important. There is no distinct line between the classes and there would be more positions within that status.

Conclusion:

In this blog, we have studied the anthropological meaning of the concept of society. It is derived from the Latin word socius which means companionship or friendship. We have come to know that society comprises of a group of people who share a common culture, live in a particular area, and feel themselves to constitute a unified and distinct entity. Society or human society is a group of people related to each other through persistent relations such as kinship, marriage, social status, roles, and social networks. By extension, society denotes the people of a region or country, sometimes even the world, taken as a whole.