Society and community

1. Meaning of society

In ordinary speech society means any collection of people. In sociology it means the system of social relationships among people, not the people themselves.

• MacIver and Page: society is “a system of usages and procedures, of authority and mutual aid, of many groupings and divisions, of controls of human behaviour and of liberties. This changing system, this ever-changing complex system we call society. It is the web of social relationships.”
• Morris Ginsberg: society is a collection of individuals united by certain relations or modes of behaviour which mark them off from others who do not enter into these relations.
• Talcott Parsons: society is the total complex of human relationships in so far as they grow out of action in terms of means-end relationships, intrinsic or symbolic.

2. Characteristics of society

1. Society is abstract. Relationships cannot be seen or touched. We see people, not the web among them.
2. Likeness. A sense of being alike — in need, outlook or way of life — is the basis of fellow-feeling. MacIver: “society means likeness”.
3. Difference. Society also rests on differences of sex, age, ability and occupation, which make division of labour possible. Difference is subordinate to likeness.
4. Interdependence. No individual or group is self-sufficient: family members depend on each other, villages on towns, nations on nations.
5. Co-operation and conflict. Co-operation is the basis of social life; conflict, controlled, also has a place. MacIver: society is “co-operation crossed by conflict”.
6. Society is a process and changes. It is dynamic, never static.
7. Social control. Every society has norms, customs and laws to regulate behaviour.
8. Culture. Each society has its own culture, a way of life passed down from generation to generation.
9. Society is not confined to humans. Animal societies exist (ants, bees, apes), but human society alone has culture transmitted through language.

3. Types of society

• By mode of subsistence (Lenski and others): hunting and gathering; pastoral; horticultural; agrarian; industrial; post-industrial (Daniel Bell).
• By solidarity (Durkheim): societies of mechanical solidarity, held together by likeness and a strong collective conscience; and of organic solidarity, held together by interdependence arising from division of labour.
• By type of relationship (Tönnies): Gemeinschaft, based on kinship, neighbourhood and natural will; and Gesellschaft, based on contract and rational will.
• By development: tribal, rural (agrarian) and urban (industrial) societies; traditional and modern societies.
• By Comte’s three stages: theological (military), metaphysical (legalistic) and positive (industrial).

4. Meaning of community

A community is a group living in a definite locality and sharing a common life and a sense of belonging. A village, a town, a tribe or a nation can be a community.

• MacIver and Page: “Whenever the members of any group, small or large, live together in such a way that they share, not this or that particular interest, but the basic conditions of a common life, we call that group a community.”
• Kingsley Davis: community is the smallest territorial group that can embrace all aspects of social life.
• Bogardus: community is a social group with some degree of we-feeling and living in a given area.

5. Bases and characteristics of community

MacIver gives two bases: locality and community sentiment. Community sentiment has three elements:

• We-feeling — identification with the group as “ours”;
• Role-feeling — each member feels he has a place and a part to play;
• Dependency-feeling — reliance on the community for physical and emotional needs.

Other characteristics:

1. A group of people — there can be no community without people.
2. A definite locality, which gives stability and a sense of unity.
3. Naturalness — a community grows of itself; it is not created by a decision.
4. Permanence — it lasts across generations.
5. Likeness of language, custom and tradition.
6. Wider ends — it serves all the basic needs of life, not a single purpose.
7. A particular name, such as the name of the village.
8. No legal status — it has no rights and duties in law as an association does.

Types of community

Rural and urban communities are the standard pair. Tönnies’s Gemeinschaft is the idealised rural community. Other classifications: tribal, village, town, city, metropolitan; and in India, the caste or religious community in a looser sense, which lacks the element of a single locality.

6. Society and community distinguished

How this is examined

The 16-mark question asks for the definition and characteristics of society: give MacIver and Ginsberg, then the nine characteristics with a line each, and close with Durkheim’s or Tönnies’s types. Short notes on society or community take the definition, five or six characteristics and the society-community table.