society

Examples of society in the following topics:

• Introduction

  • The simplest definition of society is a group of people who share a defined territory and a culture.
  • Social structure is the relatively enduring patterns of behavior and relationships within a society.
  • In sociology, a distinction is made between society and culture.
  • Culture is distinct from society in that it adds meanings to relationships.
  • All human societies have a culture and culture can only exist where there is a society.

• Preindustrial Societies: The Birth of Inequality

  • Medieval Europe was a pre-industrial feudal society.
  • Pre-industrial societies are societies that existed before the Industrial Revolution, which took place in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
  • Some remote societies today may share characteristics with these historical societies, and may, therefore, also be referred to as pre-industrial.
  • Two specific forms of pre-industrial society are hunter-gatherer societies and feudal societies.
  • Hunter-gatherer societies tend to be very mobile, following their food sources.

• The Functionalist Perspective

  • For functionalists, the family creates well-integrated members of society and teaches culture to the new members of society.
  • In this way, society is like an organism and each aspect of society (institutions, social constructs, etc.) is like an organ that works together to keep the whole functioning smoothly.
  • This approach looks at society through a macro-level orientation, which is a broad focus on the social structures that shape society as a whole.
  • For functionalists, the family creates well-integrated members of society and instills culture into the new members of society.
  • For functionalists, the family creates well-integrated members of society and teaches culture to the new members of society.

• Durkheim's Mechanical and Organic Solidarity

  • Mechanical solidarity is found in less structurally complex societies while organic solidarity emerges in industrialized societies.
  • As part of his theory of the development of societies in, The Division of Labour in Society (1893), sociologist Emile Durkheim characterized two categories of societal solidarity: organic and mechanical.
  • In a society exhibiting mechanical solidarity, its cohesion and integration comes from the homogeneity of individuals.
  • Organic solidarity is social cohesion based upon the dependence individuals have on each other in more advanced societies.
  • Give examples for societies held together by mechanical or organic solidarity

• The Four Social Revolutions

  • Most societies develop along a similar historical trajectory.
  • Not all societies pass through every stage, and some societies remain at a particular stage for long periods of time, even while others become more complex.
  • Still other societies may jump stages as a result of technological advancements from other societies .
  • The majority of hunter-gatherer societies are nomadic.
  • Pastoralist societies still exist.

• Public Sphere and Civil Society

  • The literature on relations between civil society and democratic political society have their roots in early liberal writings like those of Alexis de Tocqueville.
  • Others, however, have questioned how democratic civil society actually is.
  • It has also been argued that civil society is biased towards the global north.
  • Partha Chatterjee has argued that, in most of the world, "civil society is demographically limited. " For Jai Sen, civil society is a neo-colonial project driven by global elites in their own interests.
  • Formulate an argument which advocates for a strong civil society based on the definitions of civil society in this text

• Durkheim and Social Integration

  • Durkheim believed that society exerted a powerful force on individuals.
  • For Durkheim, the collective consciousness was crucial in explaining the existence of society: it produces society and holds it together.
  • Durkheim worried that modernity might herald the disintegration of society.
  • Also, in such societies, people have far fewer options in life.
  • In traditional societies, people are self-sufficient, and therefore society has little need for cooperation and interdependence.

• The Functions of Deviance

  • Deviance provides society the boundaries to determine acceptable and unacceptable behaviors in society.
  • As traits become more mainstream, society will gradually adjust to incorporate the formerly stigmatized traits.
  • On the one hand, society was divided into those marked as homosexuals and those unmarked (normative heterosexuals).
  • What function does the notion of deviance play in society?
  • In order to know how not to unsettle society, one must be aware of what behaviors are marked as deviant.

• Functions of Religion

  • Durkheim argued that religion is, in a sense, the celebration and even (self-) worship of human society.
  • He was deeply interested in the problem of what held complex modern societies together.
  • Religion is very real; it is an expression of society itself, and indeed, there is no society that does not have religion.
  • The more complex a particular society is, the more complex the religious system.
  • As societies come in contact with other societies, there is a tendency for religious systems to emphasize universalism to a greater and greater extent.

• The Functionalist Perspective

  • Such societies were held together by shared values and common symbols.
  • Durkheim argued that modern industrial society would destroy the traditional mechanical solidarity that held primitive societies together.
  • Modern societies however, do not fall apart.
  • " Thus, one can ask of education, "What is the function of education for society?
  • They point out that, unlike human beings, society does not have needs; society is only alive in the sense that it is made up of living individuals.