Index

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Absolute
Acting
Action
Actor
Adaptation
alienation
Altruism
Anarchy
Anomie and Anomy
Anthropology
association of ideas
Atomism
Autonomy
Autocrat
Authority
Authoritarian
Average man

Barbarism
Behaviour
Body
Body Language
Borough
Bourgeoisie
Brutalisation

Capitalism
Career
charisma
Church
Civilisation
Clan
Class
Convention
Classical economists
Collaborate
Collaboration
Collective Conscience
Collective Mind
Collective Representations
Common Conscience
Common Sense
Common Law
Community
Community Disintegration Theory
Competition
Conflict
Conservative
Constitutional
Constructed Order
Construction
Context
Contextualise
Contract
Cooperate
Cooperation
Corporatism
Crime
Critical thinking
Cultural Constructs
Culture

Dasein
Degeneration Theory
Democracy
Despotic
Deviance
dialectic
dialogue
Dictator
discourse
Disintegration Theory
Divine Right of Kings
Division of Labour
Domination
Dynamics
Dysfunctional


Ecology
Economics
Economists
Ecosystem
Egoism
empirical
empiricists and empiricism
empowerment
Enlightenment
epistemology
Equality
essence
Equilibrium
Ethnicity
Ethnography
Ethnology
Ethnomethodology
Evangelical Revival (British)
Everyday life
Evolution
existence
existentialism

Facts
family
fascist
Feminism
Feudalism
Field
Force
Freedom
Function
Functional
Functionalism

Gender
general will
Generation
Gens
Globalisation
Goal Attainment
Governance
Government
Group

Habit
Habitualisation
Habitus
Heteronomy
Hierarchy
history
Holism
Houshold Economy
Human Ecology
Humanity

ideal types
Ideology
Imagination, society and science
Individual and society
Infantilise
Inscribe
Institute
Institution
institutionalisation
Institutions and Mind
Integration
Interaction
Internalise
Interpellate
Interpretive
isomorphic structures

Knowledge

Labour theory of value
Latency
Latent
Law
Legitimate
Liberal
logic

Magic
Magistrate
Man, Mankind, Humanity
mana
Marginal Utility
materialist
Meaning
mechanical solidarity
Medieval
Meetings
Methodological individualism
Microcosm
Mode of Production
models
Modern
Modern State
Moral Sciences
moral statistics
Mutual
Mutuality

Narrative
Nation
Natural
Natural law
Nature
neo-classical criminology
Networks
Normal person
Norms

Obedience
Order
organic solidarity
Organisation
Organism

Panopticon
passion
Patriarchal
Phenomenological
Philosophy
Pluralism
Political and Politics
Political Economy
Position
Positive law
Positive Criminology
Positivism
Postmodernism
Power: gun and ideas
Power: Hierarchical
Power: Pluralist
Pragmatics
Pragmatism
Praxis
Precedent
Prescription
Primary socialisation
Prison
Production
Prices
Primitive
Profane
Proletariat
Public Discourse
Public Opinion
Public Sphere
Punishment

Race
Rate
rationalists and rationalism
Realism
reason
Reciprocal Development
Recontextualise
reductionist
(Durkheimian swearing)
reification
(Weberian swearing)
Relativism
Religion
Represent
Reproduction
Robotics
Role
Rules

Sacred
Sacrifice
Savagery
science
Secondary socialisation
Self
Sex
Slavery
Social Construction
Social Contract
Social Darwinism
Socialisation
Social Dynamics
Social facts
Social Order
Social Science
Social Statics
social statistics
Social System
Social System Needs
Society
Sociology
Solidarity
Sovereign
Spatial
Speech
Spontaneous Order
State
State of Nature
Statics
Strain
Structuralism
Structure
structural functionalists
Subconscious
Subject
Subjection
Subjective
sui- generis
Supernatural
surveillance
Survivals
symbol
symbolic interaction
System

Taboo
Technologies
Theology
Theosophy
theory
tissue
total institution
totalitarian
Totem
Tradition
Tribe
Truth
Type
Typification
Tyranny

Unconscious
Underlife
USA Sociology
Utilitarianism

Value
Verstehen
Virtual Community

Weltanschauung
World-view

Zeitgeist

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Citation: see the referencing suggestion for advice on citing entries on this page.

Society Society is the most general term in modern English for the body of institutions and relationships within which a relatively large group of people live. (Williams, R. 1976)

Society may not be visible, but its symbols are. Click on the fishing bird to know more.

"every aggregate of individuals who are in continuous contact form a society" ... "individuals must adhere materially, but it is still necessary that there be moral links between them."   (Durkheim, E. 1893/1933 p.276)

Society's parts

Filmer and Locke made different analyses of family and politics as parts of society. Filmer argued that political power derives from family power, but Locke said that we should not confuse: paternal or parental power with political power, or either of them with with despotical power.

Hegel suggested that society (the whole) has three corners: the State ( politics), Civil Society (the economy) and Private Society (the family).

One of the activities of social theorists has been to theorise about how the parts of society inter-relate.

USA sociologists, like Talcott Parsons tend to treat society as created by individuals, rather than a reality in itself. However, Parsons argues that individual actions are directed to other people and that, in the inter-action of individuals, a social system emerges. Society, therefore, emerges as a reality. Robert Merton belongs to the same school of thought (Structural Functionalism) as Parsons.

Parsons uses four interrelated systems to analyse this human reality: the biological system, the personality system, the cultural system and the social system [See under structure].

Parsons says social systems have four needs which correspond to parts of the social structure. Three of these fit in with Hegel's division: adaptation (relating to the economy), goal attainment (relating to politics) and latency (relating to the family). Parsons's fourth need is integration, which he relates to religion.

Playing the creativity ball game: Starting with society - individual - government - we went through solidarity - social - suicide - peer-pressure - drugs - prison - to social glue - division of labour - social view (looking at things Weber's way) - conformity - state of nature - naturist - nudist - rebel - conformity - deviance - religion - anomie - conflict theory - disagreement - anarchy. We discussed the relationship of anarchy to the theories of Hobbes, Locke, Weber and Durkheim. We asked what would give an anarchist society solidarity and whether the state increased or decreased individual freedom.

Sociology: The science of society. See Durkheim and Weber's Contrasting Imaginations: Who is the Sociologist?. The original French word (Sociologie) was created by Comte in 1839 and there is a sense in which sociology was invented in France. .

The similarly constructed word "Psychology", for the science of mind, had existed in English since the late 17th century.

USA Sociology

In the United States of America, beliefs about society tend to use State of Nature theory as axioms. USA Sociology explores the idea that individuals construct society, without always recognising that to do so is a product of particular societies, at particular times.

Social Science Is a broader concept than sociology. It includes all the sciences with social content, including psychology, politics, economics, human geography, anthropology, etc. The term dates from the late nineteenth century. Older terms with a similar meaning include sciences humaines (human sciences - a French term dating back to the 17th century) - sciences de l'homme (sciences of man) - sciences morales et politiques (moral and political sciences - See 1770 and 1795) - moral sciences, a term used by J.S. Mill in 1843 and by Cambridge University in 1851

Anthropology

Anthropology means the scientific study of human beings. For a time in the 18th and 19th centuries it tended to mean the study of human physical characteristics, but has been extended to cultural and social characteristics. It is the science of humankind in the broadest sense. (See man).

Ethnology is a mid-nineteenth century term for the science of nations or races. The Ethnological Society, founded in London in 1843, became The Anthropological Society in 1863. In the United States, a New York based American Ethnological Society was started in 1842. A Bureau of Ethnology was established by an Act of Congress in 1879 and the Anthropological Society of Washington at the same time.

Anthropology has tended to theorise about the evolution of human beings, physically and culturally and to take a cross cultural approach. There is no strict division between anthropology and sociology, they overlap.

Some well known studies of society that are based on anthropology are Engels' The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884), Durkheim's The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912), and Freud's Totem and Taboo (1913).

These are based on studies of pre-literate societies. In the twentieth century however, the scope of antthropoloy was extended to all societies. Robert Park wrote, in 1925

"Anthropology... has been mainly concerned... with the study of primitive peoples. But civilised man is quite as interesting... Urban life and culture are more varied, subtle, and complicated, but the fundamental motives are in both instances the same. The same patient methods of observation which anthropologists... have expended on the study of the life and manners of the North American Indian might be even more fruitfully employed in the investigation of the customs, beliefs, social practices, and general conceptions of life prevalent ... on the lower North Side in Chicago..."

Anthropometry Measurement of the height and other dimensions of human beings, especially at different ages, or in different races, occupations, etc.

Anthropomorphic Shaped in human form

Social System:

In a social system parts are arranged in a pattern of relationships that, together, makes the system.

Talcott Parsons argues that each of us is an actor playing a role within a system of relationships. He analyses the real (concrete) system we are in into social system, cultural system and our own personality system. (Extracts)

" a social system consists in a plurality of individual actors interacting with each other in a situation which has at least a physical or environmental aspect, actors who are motivated in terms of a tendency to the "optimisation of gratification" and whose relation to their situations, including each other, is defined and mediated in terms of a system of culturally structured and shared symbols." (Parsons, T. 1951 p.5)

Social System Needs: Talcott Parsons says that societies (like all systems and organisms) have needs which must be fulfilled if they are to survive.

"...process in any social system is subject to four independent functional imperatives or "problems" which must be met adequately if equilibrium and/or continuing existence of the system is to be maintained." (Parsons and Smelser 1957 p.16)

Parsons says that all societies have four basic needs:

adaptation,
goal attainment,
integration,
latency or pattern maintenance.

Constitutional rule is limited - by laws or by the will of those who are ruled, for example. Absolute rule (or absolutism) is the converse of constitutional. It means that a rule is not limited.

The word absolute comes from being absolved (set free) of the bonds of responsibility. This is the meaning of free in title of King James's book The True Law of Free Monarchies (1598). The absolute monarch is free of the constraints of law: "having absolute power; arbitrary, despotic" (New Shorter Oxford Dictionary). This political use of the word absolute started in the late 16th century. The theory of absolute monarchy developed fully in the 17th century. The final end of absolute monarchy (and the establishment of constitutional monarchy) in Britain was 1688, but in France it was not until 1789.

From the start, some theorists of political absolutism (Filmer, for example) modelled their arguments on the family where a benevolent father had powers given to him (by God or nature) to rule over his wife and children. The family was the model for political society.

Criticising both the political and the family model, John Stuart Mill wrote

"Whether the institution to be defended is ... political absolutism, or the absolutism of the head of a family ... we are presented with pictures of loving exercise of authority on one side, loving submission to it on the other - ... Who doubts that there may be great goodness, and great happiness, and great affection, under the absolute government of a good man? Meanwhile, laws and institutions require to be adapted, not to good men, but to bad. Marriage is not an institution designed for a select few. Men are not required, as a preliminary to the marriage ceremony, to prove by testimonials that they are fit to be trusted with the exercise of absolute power"

Alienate - Alienation

See Rousseau and Marx and Engels

Max Weber wrote: In action is included all human behaviour when and in so far as the acting individual attaches a subjective meaning to it.

Meaning The meaning of something is what it refers to or stands for. If you mean to do something, you intend to do it. Meaning and action are intimate relations. When you blink, it is behaviour, you intend nothing, it has no meaning, it is not an action. If you wink you intend something, it is not just behaviour, it is action.

Talcott Parsons began his theory (1937) with the "Action Frame of Reference", a development of the "Voluntaristic Theory of Action" that he saw as developing in social theory. He then moved on (1951) to analyse of social systems in terms of the action frame of reference.

Actor

See both action and role

Robert Park says that The term adaptation came into vogue with Darwin's theory of the origin of the species by natural selection. As this suggests, adaptation is a term relating to the way an organism alters itself in relation to its environment. [See Introduction to Darwin's Origin of Species]

Jean Piaget (9.8.1896-1980) applies this to the psychological development of human beings.

Piaget argues that we have mental structures that adapt (alter) in response to challenges the environment presents to our activities. Schema are elements of these structures. They are variable ways of acting which have a common feature. For example, we grasp different objects with different muscle movements, but there is an overall plan of acting.

The adaptation of a mental structure is a two-sided process. The two sides are accommodation and assimilation. In accommodation, the existing schema is altered in order to adapt to a new element in the environment. In assimilation, the new object of experience is incorporated into the existing schema.

The two processes take place together. An example is a child who can grasp large objects, but not small ones. To learn to grasp small ones, s/he has to attempt to grasp them: This is attempting to assimilate the small object into the existing grasping technique. In doing so, however, the technique will need to be modified: That is, it will accommodate to the new task.

Park and Burgess

Park and Burgess also make use of the three concepts of adaptation, accommodation and assimilation. (See Ecology). They do so in a different way to Piaget. They use adaptation for the unconscious biological alteration of organisms in relationship to one another, and accomodation for the conscious alteration of human beings in realtion to one another.

"adaptation is applied to organic modifications which are transmitted biologically; while accommodation is used with reference to changes in habit, which are transmitted, or may be transmitted, sociologically, that is, in the form of social tradition"

Assimilation is a more thoroughgoing form of accomodation. Through intimate relationship, people comw "into possession of a common experience and a common tradition"

Talcott Parson's Adaptation

Adaptation (he maybe thinking of the adaptation of the society to its environment) is one of the four basic needs that Parsons says that all Social Systems have. All societies need a mechanism to allocate resources. In the social system as a whole, this is done by the economy.

Erving Goffman's two types of adjustment

Goffman defines two types of adjustment of people to institutions. Primary adjustments are ones that harmonise the individual with the institution on the way that is intended. Secondary adjustments are habitual ways in which people get round the organisation's assumptions about what they should do and be. The totality of such secondary adjustments is an organisation's underlife

Social theories developed from Hobbes are egoistic. They assume that following individual self interest is natural and that what needs to be explained is how self interest can be restrained enough to make society possible. So, Herbert Spencer, who writes in the tradition of Hobbes, says

"The promptings of egoism are duly restrained by regard for others." (quoted in the Shorter Oxford Dictionary)

Altruism is a word formed by Auguste Comte in 1851, to talk about benevolent, in contrast to selfish inclinations.

Two great schools of sociology, one built on Hobbes and the other on Rousseau, can be distinguished by whether they consider altruism a real, solid aspect of human nature. Following the tradition of Rousseau, Emile Durkheim wrote:

"altruism is not destined to become, as Spencer desires, a sort of agreeable ornament to social life, but it will forever be its fundamental basis" (Durkheim 1893 p.228)

From Greek for without a chief.

As a political fear, anarchy is chaos. Thomas Carlyle wrote:

"Without sovereigns, true sovereigns, temporal and spiritual, I see nothing possible but an anarchy; the hatefullest of things."

But there is also a political theory that sets it out as an ideal. Geoffrey Keith Roberts in his book on Anarchy defines it as:

"The organisation of society on the basis of voluntary cooperation, and especially without the agency of political institutions, i.e. the state."

Animism

"The theory which endows the phenomenon of nature with personal life might perhaps conveniently be called 'animism'" (E.B. Tylor "Religion of Savages" 1866)

Aryan

In the wake of national socialism, aryan is a highly contentious term. Following the Wikipedia link above and examining the struggle over the term there (see discussion page, for example) may indicate how contentious it is.

I have included Walter Theimer's, critical, 1939 dictionary entry on Aryans in the file on National Socialism

Max Müller, in 1861, speaks occasionally of an Aryan race (pages 213, 245, 246, 256). More often, he uses terms like the "Aryan family of speech". He made clear in 1888 that his use of Aryan was as a cultural rather than a biological concept:

"Aryas are those who speak Aryan languages, whatever their colour, whatever their blood. In calling them Aryas we predicate nothing of them except that the grammar of their language is Aryan"

Authority is a special kind of power. It is not just force. The word's origins are linked to ideas of God as the "author" of our being.

There is something magical about authority and many social theorists have discussed its special qualities as a key to understanding society. (See, for example, Rousseau, Weber, Freud and Scruton)

Authority is the right to enforce obediance. A crook with a gun may have the power to force you to obey, but does not have the authority to do so. Hobbes argued that submitting to force can create a duty to obey, but Rousseau replied: "Force is a physical power, and I fail to see what moral effect it can have. To yield to force is an act of necessity, not of will - at the most, an act of prudence. In what sense can it be a duty? Let us then admit that force does not create right, and that we are obliged to obey only legitimate powers"

We tend to say that a government has authority if is legitimate.

Authority can be contrasted with reason. This appears to be what Mary Wollstonecraft does in Vindication of the Rights of Woman, chapter one, where she is discussing "The Rights and Involved Duties of Mankind". She says

"any ... maxim deduced from simple reason, raises an outcry - the Church or the State is in danger, if faith in the wisdom of antiquity is not implicit; and they who ... dare to attack human authority, are reviled as despisers of God and enemies of man"

Here, authority is the people in power, and it is associated with what Max Weber called "traditional authority" and Wollstonecraft calls "the wisdom of antiquity".

Wollstonecraft is supporting what we might call the "authority of reason". She associates (traditional or established) authority with arbitrary power. Arbitrary power is not governed by reason (See absolutism). She associates reason with the power of the people, when informed by the free discussion of ideas, and says:

"when once the public opinion preponderates, through the exertion of reason, the overthrow of arbitrary power is not very distant"

Authority is an old English word, coming from French and Latin after 1066 (the Norman conquest). Authoritarian (late 19th century) and authoritarianism are relatively new words. Authoritarian means in favour of obedience - in politics, the family, or wherever. An authoritarian style of government is called authoritarianism.

Here is the definition of Authoritarian from a 1939 Political Dictionary (English). In 1939, Italy (Fascist) and Germany (Nazi) were proud to be authoritarian:

"Authoritarian: a term denoting a more or less dictatorial system of government, as opposed to the democratic system based on the people's sovereignty. Adherents of authoritarianism criticise the alleged disunion and inefficiency of the democratic system, and praise the alleged advantages of a strong State authority. The question where the bearers of this authority derive it from is left open."

The idea of an average or normal person is an historical construction. This is reflected in the history of the word "normal". An important stage in the development of the concept was the idea of "the average man" (l'homme moyen) put forward in the work of Quetelet (1835). But what we mean by normal or average can mean different things. See, for example, the different mathematical meanings for average.

This word is used by Michel Foucault. It includes forms of knowledge - (discourses). For example, medical theories about how women should give birth to their babies are a form of power. This kind of knowledge shapes what women do with their bodies.

René Descartes argued that the body is a machine which, in humans, but not animals, is directed by the soul.

A biological analysis of the body analysis of the body as a machine only gives us one view of it. Human bodies are also shaped and organised by society. This is sometimes expressed by saying bodies are socially inscribed. Michel Foucault says

"the body is also directly involved in a political field; power relations have an immediate hold upon it; they invest it, mark it, train it, torture it, force it to carry out tasks, to perform ceremonies, to emit signs."

Body language is one of the systems of communication, apart from speech, that humans use. It is a language that does not distinguish us from other animals. Most of it consists of (unconscious) behaviour rather than (deliberate) action. Examples of body language are the way we sit and the gestures we make. In a group discussion, leaning forward may indicate an interest in what is being said. As with speech, body language can communicate false messages. If someone leans back and closes his eyes in order to concentrate, other group members can interpret it as lack of interest. Body language can be brought under the control of the conscious mind and used to improve relations. Smiling and nodding at a speaker can improve the speaker's confidence by suggesting support and interest from the listeners.

George Mead called body language a converstaion in gestures:

" Language is part of social behavior. There are an indefinite number of signs or symbols which may serve the purpose of what we term language. We are reading the meaning of the conduct of other people when, perhaps, they are not aware of it. There is something that reveals to us what the purpose is - just the glance of an eye, the attitude of the body which leads to the response. The communication set up in this way between individuals may be very perfect. Conversation in gestures may be carried on which cannot be translated into articulate speech."

See Semiotics   Darwin

The bourgeoisie are a social class who make their money from the capital they own. They make money from money, or from owning businesses. They are distinguished from the landowning aristocracy, who make their money from rents, and the working classes who make their money by their labour. The word comes from the same source as borough. Originally the bourgeoisie lived in towns (like the city of London) where they had freedoms to trade and govern themselves granted by the king.

Because they are the class between the aristocracy and the labouring class, bourgeoisie is sometimes used as another word for middle class. Because many of the richest and most powerful people in modern society make their money from finance or business, bourgeoisie is sometimes used as another word for upper class. In using the word you need to be sensitive to its context. A landowning Earl, for example, is upper class, but not bourgeois.

Bourgeois is also used as a word for attitudes that some people believe to be typical of the bourgeoisie. If someone calls you bourgeois, they probably do not mean that you make your money from capital, or that you live in a town. They probably do mean that you are conventional, humdrum, unimaginative or selfish and materialistic. They could mean that you are an opponent of communists.

Engels speaks of brutalisation repeatedly in his The Condition of the Working Class in England. He means that social conditions reduce people to responding like animals, or even things.

The idea relates back to Rousseau's idea that society transforms people from an animal state to a human state in which they act morally (in accordance with the general will) rather than according to natural desires. Natural animal desires are thought of as determined - the animal just does what its instincts lead it too - whilst the human, moral, will is free and self- determined.

"Under the brutal and brutalising treatment of the bourgeoisie, the working-man becomes precisely as much a thing without volition as water, and is subject to the laws of Nature with precisely the same necessity; at a certain point all freedom ceases."

In Engels' analysis, society can not only make us human, it can also undo our humanity. And when society brutalises, it also de-moralises. But Engels argues that rebellion offers the worker the choice of freedom rather than determination and, consequently, the opportunity to restore humanity.

"When people are placed under conditions which appeal to the brute only, what remains to them but to rebel or to succumb to utter brutality?"

" The workers... strive to escape from this brutalising condition, to secure for themselves a better, more human position"

Capitalism has become the term for the present period of social history that Saint Simon, in 1817, called industrial and Marx and Engels, in 1848, described as modern bourgeois society

Saint Simon divided the history he knew about at two crucial points: at about the third/fourth century AD and about eleventh/twelfth century AD. These divided the three systems that scientific history could identify: that based on slavery, which had polytheist ideas; that based on feudalism, which had theological ideas; and the industrial system that had positive or scientific ideas.

The fully developed systems were divided by critical periods of turmoil and change. At the time he wrote, Saint Simon considered that the industrial system had not yet achieved its maturity, and the last remnants of the feudal system were not yet extinct. It was a long slow process. Comparing the turmoil of the early 19th century to that of the third/fourth century AD, he writes:

"The philosophical revolution which then took place consisted in the passage from polytheism to theism. Once this revolution was completed, once theism was organised, a corresponding political revolution resulted, which consisted of the passage from the ancient social order which had existed amongst the Greeks and the Romans to the one that was later established among modern peoples...

The transition which is now taking place is composed, like the preceding one, of two elements: one philosophical and one political. The first consists in the passage from the theological system to the terrestrial and positive systems; the second, in the passage from the regime of arbitrary rule to a liberal and industrial regime.

The philosophical revolution has long since begun, because we should trace its origins back to the study of positive sciences introduced into Europe by the Arabs more than ten centuries ago. To complete this revolution we have to accomplish only one more thing: we must finish the comprehensive work necessary for the organisation of a positive system, whose elements now exist isolated.

The transition in its political form can be said to date from Luther's Reformation. Although this political transition has been less catastrophic than the political transition from polytheism to theism, it has already produced great misfortunes; it was the issue behind the Thirty Years' War, the two English Revolutions of the seventeenth century, and the French Revolution"

In its broadest sense, a career is a path through life. Erving Goffman writes about the moral career of patients to distinguish the path through changing social roles and expectations from the path taken by any underlying disease. He says

"Traditionally the term career has been reserved for those who expect to enjoy the rises laid out within a respectable profession. The term is coming to be used, however, in a broadened sense to refer to any social strand of any person's course through life" (Goffman E. 1961A p.119)

When someone enters a total institution, he or she

"begins some radical shifts in his moral career, a career composed of the progressive changes that occur in the beliefs that he has concerning himself and significant others." (Goffman E. 1961A p.119)

This is a development of Parson's idea of the sick role. We can see the person's social role developing. What happens in the course of his illness is a combination and interaction of his or her changing social roles (moral career) and the physical and psychological progress of the disease.

Our embryonic, foetus like, characteristics, make us more adaptable than other animals. A particular feature of this is the long period of "childhood" when we are particularly adaptable.

Childhood, however, is more than a biological period. It is socially structured as well. Originally, in English, the word child was similar to the word for an unborn baby. This may relate to there being a much shorter period of childhood in the past than now.

"The city is ... the natural habitat of civilised man... all great cultures are city-born... world-history is the history of city men. Nations, governments, politics, and religions - all rest on the basic phenomenon of human existence, the city." (Oswald Spengler, Untergang des Abendlandes, 4, p. 106, quoted by Robert Park)

Each of these words is used to describe a society based on family ties. Clan is a word from the Scottish and Irish languages. Some anthropologists use clan for groups that trace their descent through the mother (matrilineal); gens for ones that trace their descent through the father (patrilineal) and sib to cover both types. [See Weber]

Gens was a sub-division of the Roman curia or tribe. [See Engels on gens]

Tribe was used by anthropologists to describe a grouping of smaller family units thought to have preceded the nation in the evolution of society. This is the definition from the 1911 encyclopedia:

"any aggregate of families or small communities which are grouped together under one chief or leader, observing similar customs and social rules, and tracing their descent from one common ancestor. Examples of such enlarged families are the twelve tribes of Israel. In general the tribe is the earliest form of political organisation, nations being gradually constituted by tribal amalgamation"

In general terms a class is any number of people or things grouped together, graded together or thought of separately from other groups, especially if we are thinking in terms of quality. First class passengers and second class passengers on trains, for example, are distinguished by the quality of the carriage and seats they have paid for. In education a class is a group of people taught together, or the quality of a British degree.

In sociology, class usually refers to a division of society thought of as a kind of layer in the social cake. We speak, for example of upper class, professional class, lower class and working class. A class is always part of the whole (society), never the whole itself.

Developing the theories of Saint Simon (see below, under capitalism), Marx and Engels argued in the Communist Manifesto that conflict between changing social classes is the motor that moves history from one stage to another.

""The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles""     [See below under political economy]

In the theories of Marx and Engels, as in those of other political economists, classes are defined by their relation to production. The two main classes of capitalism are the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Engels in Principles of Communism (1847) calls the proletariat the "working class of the 19th century". They are people who live by selling their labour-power - Wage earners. In The Condition of the English Working Class (1845) he traced the origin of the proletariat to the industrial revolution.

Cooperation and Time Management

Collective Conscience Common Conscience

Also see common sense

"The totality of beliefs and sentiments common to average citizens of the same society forms a determinate system which has its own life; one may call it the collective or common conscience." (Durkheim 1893 pp 79-80)

Freud uses the concept of the Collective Mind

Durkheim says

"Collective representations are the result of an immense cooperation, which stretches out not only into space but into time as well; to make them, a multitude of minds have associated, united and combined their ideas and sentiments; for them, long generations have accumulated their experience and their knowledge"

Time

A community can mean a group of people living in the same area. This place based definition is central to the idea of an ecological community, which is a significant concept in social theory.

However, community more usually refers to a group that you belong to, that you feel you belong to, and that you share important things with. - A definition that does not apply to animal and plant communities, or to many aspects of human communities when considered as based on place.

The word community has been part of the English language since the 14th century . It came from French and Latin words that link to the idea of things being held in common.

Raymond Williams says that its complexity of meaning is due to its being used to refer to matters that are of "direct common concern" (e.g. a community of interests) and also to various forms of organisation (e.g the university community) which may reflect those common interests.

Although, in this way, community can refer to organisation, it has a warmth and closeness compared with the coldness and distance of the "state". It also has a breadth of values, compared with the narrow focus of economics. It can, therefore, be meaningful to divide society into state, economy and community. When this is done, a central part of the community is the family.

Williams says that community differs from other terms for social organisation, such as state, nation and society, because it is never used unfavourably. It is always a good word. ( Williams, R. 1976 pp 65 to 66)

Ecological Community

The word community is also used for a group of interdependent plants or animals growing or living together in natural conditions or inhabiting the same locality.

As this is applied to associations of plants and animals, it has none of the subjective feeling of identity that is attached to usual uses of the word in a human context.

When Park and Burgess apply the ecological term community to human groups, they apply it to relationships that are not necessarily conscious (see index), whereas society is applied to relationships that are necessarily conscious (see index). Human community, in their concept, therefore range from ones with little or no conscious (subjective) identity, to ones with a lot.

Wirth (in the same book) distinguishes community and neighbourhood on the basis of "sense of unity". In simple societies, he says, local community and neighbourhood are the same. Kinship and common tradition bind people together. In the city, however, this sense of unity may be lost. Here, Wirth is using "community" in its more familiar use, not its ecological use (which includes neighbourhood).

Park and Burgess define community by place:

" Community is the term which is applied to societies and social groups where they are considered from the point of view of the geographical distribution of the individuals and institutions of which they are composed."

Starting from this concept of people and institutions relating together within a defined space, Burgess distinguishes three distinct conceptions of community:

ecological community

cultural community

political community

Virtual Community

Virtual indicates an electronic equivalent of something in the real world. An early use (about 1987) was virtual reality which is the impression of being in a real space, whereas the experience is really created by a computer. You might, for example, feel you are sitting at the wheel of a car and have to avoid obstacles.

Virtual now means something imagined rather than physically present. The Open University, for example, started a course in the spring of 1992 that was taught almost entirely on computer networks "to explore the possibilities of virtual classrooms"

The Whole Earth Review (1989) spoke of computers creating a "shared reality" for their users. It is this shared reality , and those that use it. that we speak of as a virtual community. Howard Rheingold published a book with this title in 1993.

In this sense, the internet has created a world wide academic community by enabling a free and open expression of ideas. But it is one that does not have the warmth of face to face relationships. A 1999 paper from the web team at Middlesex University described how they envisage the university intranet helping to build community.

The relationships between computers and humans in academic life are analysed by Charles Crook in Computers and the Collaborative Experience of Learning. See also some suggestions I made about the relation of computers to the academic community and some discussion points, including the alternative concept of collegiate learning.

Academic Community

"A University should be an academic community inter-twined with a social community: A community that talks about issues over coffee, but argues its points with research and initiative" (David Medawar)

Discussions with staff and students show that, for many, the idea of an academic community is something they value, or regret when it is absent. The idea includes not only the warmth of mutual support, but also the vibrance of debate, the excitement and stimulation of ideas, and the defence of the right to hold and express ideas. I discussed some of these issues in "Freedom, Community and North Circular" in 1998.

Community Disintegration Theory

The early 19th century saw many theorists argue that political, economic and social changes were undermining community. This was seen as a cause of insanity by Esquirol.

Ashley Cooper said that the disintegration opened the door for the "demons" of chartism [democracy] and socialism. Thomas Carlyle called the money relationship that replaced community the cash-nexus. Engels built on Carlyle and, in the Communist Manisfesto, Marx and Engels wrote:

"The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his "natural superiors," and has left no other bond between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous "cash payment."

Durkheim argued that the political, economic and social changes establish new bonds more than they undermine old ones. He argued that the division of labour in modern society creates an organic solidarity between people. Community disintegration, if it happens, is not, according to Durkheim, the normal, healthy development of modern society, but the result of abnormal forms of the division of labour.

Ironically, many theorists interpret Durkheim as arguing the community disintegration theory.

To take an easily accessible example, Joe Dunman says:

"Industrialisation in particular, according to Durkheim, tends to disolve restraints on the passions of humans. Where traditional societies--primarily through religion--successfully taught people to control their desires and goals, modern industrial societies separate people and weaken social bonds as a result of increased complexity and the division of labor...Perhaps more than ever before, members of Western society are exposed to the risk of anomie"

Durkheim thinks modern society strengthens bonds between people by the division of labour (organic solidarity). Joe Dunman, himself, begins with the quote from Durkheim

"...The state of anomie is impossible whenever interdependent organs are sufficiently in contact and sufficiently extensive. If they are close to each other, they are readily aware, in every situation, of the need which they have of one-another, and consequently they have an active and permanent feeling of mutual dependence."

The community disintegration theory is widely ascribed to Durkheim. Anthony Giddens' textbook on Sociology, for example, suggests Durkheim argued anomie is a consequence of the loss of traditional constraints in modern society. It says "... the notion of anomie was first introduced by Emile Durkheim... who suggested that in modern societies traditional norms and standards become undermined without being replaced by new ones. Anomie exists when there are no clear standards to guide behaviour in a given area of social life..." (Giddens 1997 p.177). Earlier in the book he writes: "According to Durkheim, processes of change in the modern world are so rapid and intense that they give rise to major social difficulties, which he linked to anomie, a feeling of aimlessness or despair provoked by modern social life. Traditional moral controls and standards, which used to be supplied by religion, are largely broken down by modern social development, and this leaves many individuals in modern societies feeling that their daily lives lack meaning." (Giddens 1997 p.9) No references are given. If you read my article on Norms and Anomie you will see that Giddens has omitted Durkeim's analysis of modern society as fundamentally healthy, and replaced this healthy picture with allusions to Durkheim's description of the abnormal forms of modern society. In doing so, he represents Durkheim as arguing for a theory that Durkheim was arguing against! Some of these issues are discussed by students on The Durkheim and Merton Page