PART 1

HOW TO STUDY SOCIETY AND CULTURE?

(Sociology and Anthropology: Disciplines in Focus)

The Study of Sociology and Anthropology

As the society starts the new millennium, everyone is filled with excitement as well as apprehension about the prospects
of a new century. Dramatic changes brought about by social upheavals, rapid population growth, information
technology, increasing globalization, and environmental degradation are taking place, bringing with them multifarious
problems. In the face of confusion, uncertainties or crisis, we need to understand more than ever these various
phenomena and offer solutions to the different problems.
In humanity’s quest for understanding the world and its concomitant problems, many approaches and solutions
have been tried. Some of the speculations and attempts at understanding and solving problems are embodied in myths,
legends, folkways and traditions or in the use of common sense. The philosophers, the moralists, the theologians,
statesmen, and journalists have provided solutions to these problems but they are somehow insufficient and non-too
reliable at times. A more precise and reliable approach was provided with the advent of science in the sixteenth century.

What is Science?
A clarification of the meaning of science, and of social science in particular, is fundamental to the understanding
of sociology and anthropology. Some lay persons have the impression that the scientist is a queer-looking, unsociable
genius, but this is very far from reality. They are not aware that the scientist is dependent upon groups and has
increasingly worked in teams with other scientists. Scientists have tried to lessen or remove the difficulties of
communication that separate the varied scientific disciplines and to present their findings in a manner that can be
understood by the lay person.
Science is a way of learning about the world through disciplined inquiry which combines systematic theory and
observation that provide explanation of how things work. A theory is a system of ideas or statements held as an
explanation of a group of facts or phenomena. It gives a description and explanation of matters of everyday life or facts
about the world. It summarizes existing knowledge that suggests guidelines for interpreting new information. The
ordered body of knowledge is arrived at through methodically rigid observation. As a method of inquiry, science is a way
of finding out about the world through rigorous and disciplined collection of facts and a logical explanation of them.
Science can also be viewed as a way of life when one imbibes the knowledge, skills, and attitudes necessary in scientific
investigation.
Science may be classified into two:
1. Natural Sciences
 Study phenomena and processes as well as objects in nature and provide systematic information of the
non-human and physical aspects of the natural world.
 Biology, physics, chemistry, zoology, geology, and astronomy are some of the natural sciences.
2. Social Sciences
 Involved in the study of society, social relations, and human behavior.
 The social scientist makes use of the methods and tools used by the natural scientist in the study of
social behavior and social phenomena and their subjects are human beings who can and do talk back.
 Hence, social scientists encounter problems such as the ethical aspects in studying their subjects,
something which is not experienced by the natural scientist. There are ethical limits to the kinds of
experiments that they can perform, like those which may inflict moral or physical harm on the subjects.
 The social sciences include economics, political science, psychology, sociology, anthropology, and
history.

Science may also be divided into:

1. Pure Science
 Concerned with the pursuit of knowledge and empirical truth and the development of theory. Its goal is
to discover truth.
 The pure scientist derives intellectual pleasure in advancing knowledge.
 The pure social sciences are economics, political science, anthropology, and sociology.
2. Applied Science
 Directed toward the use of scientific knowledge and theory for the solution of practical problems.
 Social work, education, public administration, ethics, and management may be classified as applied
social sciences.

Theoretically, the pure and applied sciences are distinct from each other, but actually they are interrelated.
Sociologists and Anthropologists are generally concerned with doing basic research, but at times they are called to use
their specialized knowledge in the evaluation of research, which seeks information on the actual effects of some existing
programs like those on nutrition, family planning, agrarian reform, or those carried out by NGOs.

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The Origins of Sociology and Anthropology
The history of Anthropology goes back to the period of discoveries and explorations, from the 15 th to 18th
centuries. Sources of facts are the accounts of early Western explorers, missionaries, soldiers, and colonial officials
regarding the strange behavior and beliefs as well as exotic appearance of people they had come in contact with.
Discoveries of flint tools and other artifacts in France and other parts of Europe in the early 19 th century gave evidence of
the existence of human beings a million years ago. These discoveries happened at a time when advances in physics and
chemistry were made, arousing an interest in scientific inquiry. In the 19 th century Anthropology began to take shape as
a separate field of study which had its roots in the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities. Edward Tylor was
the first professor of Anthropology in Oxford, England. In the United States, it was Franz Boas of Clark University,
Massachusetts.
Modern Anthropology in both its physical and cultural aspects started only around the 20 th century. Among its
pioneers aside from Edward Tylor were Lewis Morgan and Herbert Spencer. An evolutionary view of humanity and
human behavior was the dominant theme of the early anthropologists who were mostly armchair theorists. Structural-
functionalism was eventually used. The turn for a higher level of research through the use of careful and thorough
gathering of data about individual cultures was made by Franz Boas and Alfred Kroeber, who were followed by
Bronislaw Malinowski, A. R. Radcliffe Brown, Ralph Linton, Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead, and others.
On the other hand, Sociology, considered as one of the youngest of the social sciences emerged about the
middle of the 19th century when European observers began to use scientific methods to test their ideas. Four factors
combined to lead to the development of sociology:
1. The turmoil of the Industrial Revolution
 By the middle of the 19 th century, Europe was changing from agriculture to factory production. This
violently changed people’s lives. Masses of people were forced off the land. Moving to the cities in
search for work, they found anonymity, crowding, filth, and poverty. Their ties to the land, to the
generations that had lived there before them and to their way of life were abruptly broken.
 They also found horrible working conditions: low pay, exhausting hours, dangerous work, foul smoke,
and much noise. To survive, families had to permit their children to work in these same conditions; some
children were even chained to factory machines to make certain they could not run away.
 Life no longer looked the same, and tradition, which had provided the answers, no longer sufficed.

2. The success of American and French Revolutions.

 The second blow to tradition was the success of the American and French revolutions. These
encouraged people to rethink social life. New ideas arose, including the conviction that individuals
possess inalienable rights.
 As this new idea caught fire, many traditional Western monarchies gave way to more democratic forms
and to other manifestations of political change. The ready answers of tradition, including religion, no
longer sufficed.
 When tradition reigns supreme, it provides a ready answer: “We do this because it has always been
done this way.” Such societies discourage original thinking. Since the answers are already provided, why
search for explanations? Sweeping change, however, does the opposite: By upsetting the existing order,
it encourages questioning and demands answers.

3. Imperialism
 This factor also stimulated the development of sociology. The Europeans had been successful in
conquering many parts of the world. Their new colonial empires, stretching from Asia through the North
America, exposed them to radically different cultures. Startled by these contrasting ways of life, they
began to ask why cultures differed.

4. The success of the natural sciences.

 The fourth impetus for the development of sociology is the success of the natural sciences. Just as the
time when people were questioning fundamental aspects of their social worlds, the scientific method—
using objective, systematic observations to test theories—was being tried out in chemistry and physics.
Many secrets that had been concealed in nature were uncovered. With tradition no longer providing
answers to questions about social life, the logical step was to apply this method to these questions. The
result was the birth of sociology.

Auguste Comte and Positivism

Social problems attended this social upheaval, and Auguste Comte, a French philosopher, believed that the
methods and techniques of the natural sciences could be fruitfully applied to the society. This idea of applying the
scientific method to the social world, known as positivism, apparently was first proposed by Auguste Comte (1987-1857).
With the French Revolution still fresh in his mind, Comte left the small, conservative town in which he had grown up and
moved to Paris. The changes he experienced, combined with those France underwent in the revolution, led Comte to
become interested in what holds society together. What creates social order, he wondered, instead of anarchy and
chaos? And then, once society does become set on a particular course, what causes it to change? Comte simply asked
two questions: “What is? and What should be?”

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 As he considered these questions, Comte concluded that the right way to answer them was to apply the
scientific method to social life. Just as this method revealed the law of gravity, so, too, would it uncover the laws that
underlie society. Comte called this new science sociology—the “scientific study of society” (from Greek logos, ‘study of’
and the Latin socius or ‘companion’ or ‘being with others.’). Comte stressed that this new science not only would
discover social principles but also would apply then to social reform, to making society a better place to live.
Comte had some ideas that today’s sociologists find humorous. For example, as Comte saw matters, there were
only six sciences—mathematics, chemistry, biology, astronomy, and sociology—with sociology far superior than others
(Bogardus, 1992). To Comte, applying the scientific method to social life meant practicing what we might call “armchair
philosophy”—drawing conclusions from informal observations of social life. He did not do what today’s sociologists
would call research, and his conclusions have been abandoned.
Nevertheless, Comte’s insistence that we cannot be dogmatic about social life, but that we must observe and
classify human activities in order to uncover society’s fundamental laws, is well taken. Because he developed this idea
and coined the term sociology, Comte often is credited being the founder of sociology.

The Development of Sociology and Anthropology in the Philippines

The ideas of sociology and anthropology were diffused in Europe, in the Americas, and Asia, and one of the
receiving countries is the Philippines. In the Philippines, there is a close tradition of close cooperation between sociology
and social anthropology.
Anthropology began as a practical activity of colonizers in the service of religion and government. Ethnographic
accounts provided by Spanish chroniclers like Pigafetta, Loarca, Plasencia, and Chirino are now being used for historical
and comparative studies on Philippine society and culture. In the 19 th century, archaeological explorations were made by
a Frenchman, Alfred Marche, who did some diggings in Marinduque. Jose Rizal and Trinidad Pardo de Tavera later
contributed to ethnolinguistics and the study of folklore.
During the American period, the American government got interested in the various ethnic groups of the
country out of curiosity and religious, humanistic, and political reasons. The Bureau of Non-Christian Tribes was
established: it was later replaced by the Ethnological Survey of the Philippines Office. Field studies were made on a
number of hill peoples by such American anthropologists as H. Otley Beyer, Albert Jenks, and Roy Franklin Barton.
Anthropology was elevated to an academic discipline in the University of the Philippines in 1914 by Otley Beyer.
It was offered as one of the courses in the department of history; it was merged with sociology in 1921. Patterned after
the American model, the studies included areas in physical ang cultural anthropology.
From its inception sociology was made part of the academe. It was introduced by Fr. Valentin Marin as a subject
in the curriculum in 1896 at the University of Santo Tomas, and it was initiated in the University of the Philippines in
1911 by Pres. Murray Bartlett and A. E. W. Salt. Silliman University was also one of the first to include it in its curriculum.
At its start, sociology had a social philosophy perspective, which continued up to the 1950’s. in 1920 Serafin Macaraig,
the first Filipino to obtain a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Wisconsin, introduced the social problem
orientation. Not until the 1950’s did the scientific perspective seep into sociology with the establishment of educational
exchange programs and local scholarships and the holding of seminars and conferences on social science. A number of
Filipinos studied in the United States and England and imbibed the theoretical and research orientations of the West,
such as structural-functionalism and symbolic-interactionism.
The training in anthropology was also boosted after World War II. The number of Filipinos enjoying foreign
scholarships or studying in the U. S. continued to increase in the 1950’s training abroad was mostly in the University of
Chicago and Cornell University. The returning scholars in both sociology and anthropology ushered into the Philippines
the climate of research in the social sciences. With the arrival of several Fulbright professors, further interest in social
research was started.
In 1952 the Philippine Sociological Society was organized, which marked an important milestone in the
development of Philippine sociology. It established a journal, the Philippine Sociological Review, which has as
contributors, sociologists and anthropologists.
In 1960 the Research Foundation of Philippine Anthropology and Archaeology was established giving greater
impetus to research. In 1968 the Philippine Social Science Council (PSSC) was formed to consolidate the Philippine social
science researches. It aimed to promote the quality and relevance of social science studies, improve teaching skills, train
social science research, and encourage social science publications.
The 1960’s and 1970’s saw the emergence of empirical researches undertaken in the University of the
Philippines, Ateneo de Manila University, and the University of San Carlos. The Institute of Philippine Culture at the
Ateneo, headed by Dr. Frank Lynch S.J., a social anthropologist, came out with a number of publications in Philippine
society and culture. The Community Development Center created in 1957 supported the various social science
researches, both pure and applied. At this time, there was also an advocacy for the indigenization of concepts and tools
suited to local conditions in order to wean social science research from Western pattern and methodology. Gelia
Castillo, a Filipino sociologist, advocated the integration of the scattered empirical studies into the development
problem areas which policy-makers, researchers, teachers, and students can focus attention on. The 1970’s brought in
ideas of phenomenological sociology and Marxism in Europe.
The Anthropological Association of the Philippines (UGAT-Ugnayan pang Agham-Tao) was established in 1978.
The organization publishes its own journal, Agham Tao. Despite this break-away from the Philippine Sociological Society,
the individual and inter-organizational cooperation between sociology and anthropology is still maintained.

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 The theoretical and methodological trend of the 70’s continued into the 80’s. This was reflected in the theory
courses in the University of the Philippines and other schools. The period also saw the use of more applied research.
However, such problems as poverty and disparate distribution of wealth remained in the country despite the numerous
researches made for policy makers. The traditional theory of functionalism was challenged by some members of the
academe. A shift to a new strategy in research where people concerned were made to participate in the social research
process was then made. This shift to a new methodological framework, participatory research in sociology was
welcomed, despite its being considered by some scientists as unscientific and subjective.
A major event for the social science community in the 1980’s was the holding of the first Social Science Congress
on November 17-19, 1983. The theme of the Conference was “Towards Excellence in the Social Science in the
Philippines.” On May 22-23, 1998, the Philippine Social Science Council, in cooperation with the National Academy of
Science and Technology, held the Fourth National Congress on assessing the role of the social sciences in the life of a
nation celebrating the centennial anniversary of independence.
In the 1990’s the Philippine Sociological Society and the Ungnayan pang Agham-Tao continued to address the
current issues facing the country through the holding of conventions and seminars and conducting empirical research on
issues like the family and related problems, transnational migration, social deviance, NGO’s and the like. As the
disciplines of sociology and anthropology start the third millennium they continue to wrestle against the social, cultural,
political, and ecological problems of the country by providing insights and perspectives which may be useful for policy
makers, program managers, or the people concerned.

SOCIOLOGY Defined
Sociology is the science of society and the social interaction taking place among individuals in a social group. It
focuses on all kinds of social interaction—social acts, social relationships, social organizations and social processes. It is
concerned with the recurrent and repetitive forms of behavior, attitudes, beliefs, values, and norms, and social
institutions which make up the social order. As Durkheim pointed out, its scope is social facts such as facts of religion,
law, moral ideas, and economics which must be seen in their relation to each other and the collective milieu in the midst
of which they develop and whose expression they are. Sociologists seek not only the description but also the explanation
of social behavior. They are interested in knowing the causes of social facts, the function of social institutions, and the
meaning of social action.
The various areas of concern of sociology are as follows:
a. Social Organization
 This involves the study of social groups, social institutions, ethnic relations, social stratification, social
mobility, and bureaucracy.
 It includes the sociology of family, economy, work, agriculture, industry, religion, law, politics, and
education.
b. Social Psychology
 This area studies human nature and personality as the product of group life.
 It also touches on the study of social attitudes and collective behavior.
c. Social Change and Social Disorganization
 This area is concerned with the change in culture and social relations and the attendant disruption that
may occur. Social reorganization is also considered.
d. Population Studies
 This analyzes population number, composition, change, and quality as they influence and are influenced
by the social, economic, and political orders.
e. Human Ecology
 Studies in this area deal with the human behavior of a given population in relation to its environment
and the emergence of the spatial relations between the people and the environment.
f. Sociological Theory and Methods
 This includes theory building and testing the applicability of the principles of group life as the bases for
the prediction and control of the individual’s social environment.
g. Applied Sociology
 This makes use of the findings of pure sociological research on the various aspects and problems of daily
life, as in criminology, community development, family counseling, squatters’ relocation, education,
agrarian reform, non-governmental organizations, labor relations, nutrition and health.

C. Wright Mills and The Sociological Imagination

Sociology offers a new perspective, a view of the world. The Sociological Imagination opens a window onto
unfamiliar worlds, and offers a fresh look at familiar worlds. In your daily regular routine, you might find yourself in the
midst of other students in school, with family members at home, or around peer groups. But you will also find yourself
looking at your own world in a different light. As you view other worlds, or your own, the sociological imagination
enables you to gain a new vision of social life.
Sociological imagination stresses the social contexts in which people live. It examines how these contexts
influence people’s lives. At the center of the sociological imagination is the question of how groups influence people,
especially how people are influenced by their society—a group of people who share a culture and territory.

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 To find out why people do what they do, sociologists look at social location—the corners in life that people
occupy because of where they are located in a society. Sociologists look at jobs, income, education, gender, age, and race
as significant. Consider, for example, how being identified with a group called males or with a group called females when
we are growing up affects our ideas of what we should attain in life. Growing up as a male or female influences not only
our aspirations, but also how we feel about ourselves and how we relate to others in dating and marriage and at work.
Sociologist C. Wright Mills (1959) put it this way: “The sociological imagination enables us to grasp the
connection between history and biography.” By history, Mills meant that each society is located in a broad stream of
events. Because of this, each society has specific characteristics—such as its ideas of the proper roles of men and
women. By biography, Mills referred to the individual’s specific experiences in society. In short, people don’t do what
they do because of inherited internal mechanisms, such as instincts. Rather, external influences—our experiences—
become part of our thinking and motivations. The society in which we grow up, and our particular concerns in that
society, then, lie at the center of our behavior.
Consider a newborn baby. If we were to take the baby from its Filipino parents and place it with a Yanomamo
Indian ethnic group in the jungles of South America, you know that when the child begins to speak, his or her words will
not be Filipino. You also know that the child will not think like a Filipino. He or she will not grow up wanting credit cards,
for example, or levis jeans, a new car, and the latest video game. Equally, the child will unquestioningly take his or her
place in Yanomamo society—perhaps as a food gatherer, a hunter, or a warrior—and he or she will not even know about
the world left behind at birth. And, whether male or female, the child will grow up assuming that it is natural to want
many children, not debating whether to have one, two, or three children.
People around the globe take their particular world for granted. Something inside us tells us that spaghetti is
delicious, and levis jeans are desirable. Yet something inside some of the Sinai Desert Arab ethnic groups used to tell
them that warm, fresh camel’s blood makes a fine drink and that everyone should have a large family and wear flowing
robes. And that something certainly isn’t an instinct. As sociologist Peter Berger (1963) phrased it, that “something” is
“society within us.”
Although obvious, this point frequently eludes us. We often think and talk about people’s behavior as though it
were caused by their sex, their race, and some other factor transmitted by their genes. The sociological imagination
helps us escape from this cramped personal view by exposing the broader social context that underlies human behavior.
It helps us see the links between what people do and the social settings that shape their behavior. It is seeing the
“general from the particular” and seeing the “strange in the familiar.”

Weber and Verstehen

Max Weber, one of the proponents of sociology also argued that another quality of mind must be used in
understanding the society he stressed that one cannot understand human behavior simply by looking at statistics. Those
cold numbers may represent people’s activities, he said, but they must be interpreted. To understand people, he said
that we should use Verstehen (a German word meaning “to understand”). Perhaps the best translation of this term is
“to grasp by insight.” By emphasizing verstehen, Weber meant that the best interpreter of human action is someone
“who has been there,” someone who understands the feelings and motivations of the people they are studying. In short,
we must pay attention to what are called subjective meanings, the ways in which people interpret their own behavior.
We can’t understand what people do, Weber insisted, unless we look at how people view and explain their own
behavior.

Durkheim and Social Facts

In contrast to Weber’s use of verstehen, or subjective meanings, Emile Durkheim stressed what he called social
facts. By this term he meant the patterns of behavior that characterize a social group. Example of social facts in the
United States include June being the most popular month of weddings, suicide rates being higher among people 65 and
older, and more births occurring on Tuesdays than on any other day of the week.
Durkheim said that we must use social facts to interpret social facts. In other words, each pattern reflects some
underlying condition of society. People all over the country don’t just coincidentally decide to do similar things, whether
that be to get married or to commit suicide. If that were the case, in some years, middle-aged people would be most
likely to kill themselves, in other years, young people, and so on. Patterns that hold true year after year, however,
indicate that as thousands and even millions of people make their individual decisions, they are responding to conditions
in their society. It is the job of the sociologist, then, to uncover the facts and then to explain them through other social
facts.

ANTHROPOLOGY Defined
Anthropology is also a science of humanity and its society. It is a scientific study of humanity, the similarities and
diversity of cultures, and attempts to present an integrated picture of humankind. Anthropology studies the biological,
social, and cultural development of humankind and seeks answers to why people are different and how are they similar.
It has subdivisions marked by unifying themes:
1. Universalism
 All people are fully and equally human whether they belong to indigenous groups such as the Aetas,
Mangyans or Subanons or are modernized such as those in Metro Manila.

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2. Integration
 Anthropologists view the various aspects of life, like kinship, family, economy, arts, politics, as
interwoven to form a social whole. It looks at all societies as an integrated part of a large world system.
It views societies within the context of the larger world or global perspective so that the influence of
global markets on small island societies as well as the strategic concerns of foreign powers, is also
studied.
3. Adaptation
 Anthropology studies how humans are affected by the environment and what adjustments they make. It
holds that humans and their environment are interrelated and that the end product of adaptation may
be a particular behavior, social system, and physical structure.
4. Holism
 This means getting the whole picture of a phenomenon and application of knowledge from different
fields in order to understand human behavior. Anthropology use the holistic approach in studying
people’s way of life, covering many aspects of social life including history of the area, physical
environment, organization of family life, language, settlement patterns, political, economic, and religious
organizations, both present and past, in all levels of complexity.

One can glean on the vastness of the subject matter of anthropology into its various fields such as:
1. Biological and Physical Anthropology
 This engages in two categories of studies: Evolutionary—seeks to understand how and why humans
evolve, and biological variation within the species. Physical anthropologists concentrate on the history
of man’s physical characteristics, the factors and processes by which the biological changes occur, and
the resultant human variation.
 It likewise studies the mechanics of growth and development. Knowledge of human diversity is
important in understanding human adaptation.
2. Socio-cultural Anthropology
 This area focuses on the origin and history of human societies and their culture. The evolution and
development of culture per se and of different societies and culture are explored.
 Uses two techniques such as ethnography (provides a particular account of a particular society,
community, or culture based on field work) and ethnology (examines, interprets, analyzes, and
compares the results of ethnography—the data gathered in different societies).
3. Archaeology
 Socio-cultural anthropology and archaeology are both concerned with culture and the history of
societies, but while the former dwells directly with existing societies, the latter is concerned with extinct
societies. Archaeology reconstructs the cultural events of the past since the development of culture
through the material remains left by people. It involves the study of ancient people and past phases of
present day civilization.
4. Linguistics
 This is the study of human language, its complex system of symbols, and its development.
5. Applied Anthropology
 This is focused on the application of ideas and information gathered for the solution of specific problems
in order to achieve particular ends. The ideas gathered are used for policy recommendations,
development planning, and advocacy.

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 HOW TO STUDY SOCIETY AND CULTURE?
(Theoretical Perspectives in Understanding Society and Culture)

Facts never interpret themselves. In everyday life, we interpret what we observe by using common sense, placing any
particular observation or “fact” into a framework of more-or-less related ideas. Sociologists place their observations into
a conceptual framework called a theory. A THEORY is a general statement about how some parts of the world fit
together and how they work. It is an explanation of how two or more facts are related to one another. By providing a
framework in which to place observations, each theory interprets reality in a distinct way. Sociologists use three major
theories that provide understanding of social life.

I. Symbolic Interactionism
We can trace the origins of Symbolic Interactionism to the moral philosophers of the eighteenth century who
noted that:
 People evaluate their own conduct by comparing themselves with others (Strykers 1990).
 People use symbols to encapsulate their experiences (William James, 1842-1910; John Dewey, 1859-1952).
 Symbols lie at the basis of self-concept (Charles Horton Cooley, 1864-1929; William I. Thomas, 1863-1947;
George Herbert Mead, 1863-1931).

Symbolic Interactionists stress that symbols – things to which we attach meaning – make social life possible. What
do we mean by this?
1. Without symbols our social relations would be limited to the animal level, for we would have no mechanism for
perceiving others in terms of relationships (aunts and uncles, employers and teachers, and so on). Strange as it
may seem, only because we have symbols can we have aunts and uncles, for it is these symbols that define for
us what such relationships entail.

2. Without symbols, we also could not coordinate our actions with others. We would be unable to make plans for a
future date, time, and place. Unable to specify times, materials, sizes, or goals, we could not build bridges and
highways. Without symbols, there would be no books, movies, or musical instruments. We would have no
schools or hospitals, no government, no religion.

Symbolic Interactionists point out that even the self is a symbol, for it consists of the ideas that we have about who
we are. And it is a changing symbol, for as we interact with others, we constantly adjust our views of the self based on
how we interpret the reactions of others.
In short, Symbolic Interactionists analyze how our behaviors depend on the ways we define ourselves and others.
For example, if you think of someone as an aunt or uncle, you behave in certain ways, but if you think of that person as a
boyfriend or girlfriend, you behave quite differently. It is as though everyday life is a stage on which we perform; we
switch roles to suit our changing audiences. Symbolic Interactionists primarily examine face-to-face interaction; they
look at how people work out their relationships and make sense out of life and their place in it.

Applying Symbolic Interactionism

To better understand Symbolic Interactionism, let’s see how changing symbols (meanings) help to explain the
high U.S. divorce rate. For background, you should understand that marriage used to be seen as a lifelong commitment,
and divorce as an immoral act, evidence of a flagrant disregard for public opinion and the abandonment of adult
responsibilities.

1. Emotional satisfaction. In the early part of the last century, symbolic interactionists observed that the basis for family
solidarity was changing. As early as 1933, sociologist William Ogburn noted that personality was becoming more
important in mate selection. Then in 1945, sociologists Ernest Burgess and Harvey Locke found that family solidarity was
coming to depend more and more on mutual affection, understanding, and compatibility. What these sociologists had
observed was a fundamental shift in U.S. marriage: Husbands and wives were coming to expect – and demand – greater
emotional satisfaction from one another.
As this trend intensified, intimacy became the core of marriage. At the same time, as society grew more
complex and impersonal, Americans came to see marriage as a solution to the tensions that society produced. This new
form, “compassionate marriage,” contributed to divorce, for it encouraged people to expect that their spouse would
satisfy “each and every need.” Consequently, sociologists say, marriage became an “overloaded instruction.”

2. The love symbol. Our symbol of love also helps to “overload” marriage. Unrealistic expectations that “true love” will
be a constant source of emotional satisfaction set people up for crushed hopes, for when dissatisfactions enter
marriage, as they inevitably do, spouses tend to blame one another for what they see as the other’s failure. Their
engulfment in the symbol of love at the time of marriage blinds them to the basic unreality of their expectations.

3. The meaning of children. Ideas about childhood have undergone a deep historical shift with far-reaching
consequences for the contemporary U.S. family. In medieval European society children were seen as miniature adults,
and there was no sharp separation between the worlds of adults and children. Boys were apprenticed at about age 7,

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while girls at the same age learned the homemaking duties associated with the wifely role. In the United States, just
three generations ago children “became adults” when they graduated from eight grade and took employment. The
contrast is amazing: From miniature adults, children have been culturally fashioned into impressionable, vulnerable, and
innocent beings.

4. The meaning of parenthood. These changed notions of childhood have had a corresponding impact on our ideas of
good parenting. Today’s parents are expected not only to provide unending amounts of affection, love, and tender care
but also to take responsibility for ensuring that their children “reach their potential.” Today’s child rearing lasts longer
and is more demanding, pushing the family into even greater “emotional overload.”

5. Marital roles. In earlier generations, newlyweds knew what they could legitimately expect from each other, for the
responsibilities and privileges of husbands and wives were clearly defined. In contrast, today’s much vaguer guidelines
leave couples to work out more aspects of their respective roles on their own. Many find it difficult to figure out how to
divide up responsibilities for work, home, and children.

6. Perception of alternatives. While the above changes in marriage expectations were taking place, another significant
social change was under way: More and more women began taking jobs outside the home. As they earned paychecks of
their own, many wives began for the first time to see alternatives to remaining in unhappy marriages. Symbolic
interactionists consider the perception of an alternative an essential first step to making divorce possible.

7. The meaning of divorce. As these various factors coalesced – greater expectations of emotional satisfaction and
changed marital and parental roles, accompanied by a new perception of alternatives to an unhappy marriage – divorce
steadily increased.

8. Changes in the law. The law, itself a powerful symbol, began to reflect these changed ideas about divorce – and to
encourage divorce. Where previously divorce was granted only when the most rigorous criteria, such as adultery, were
met, legislators now made “incompatibility” legitimate grounds for divorce. Eventually, states pioneered “no-fault”
divorce, in which couples could dissolve their marriage without accusations of wrongdoing. Some even provide do-it-
yourself divorce kits.

In sum
Symbolic Interactionists explain an increasing divorce rate in terms of the changing symbols (meanings)
associated with both marriage and divorce. Changes in people’s ideas—about marriage, marital satisfaction, love, the
nature of changing and parenting, and the roles of husband and wife—have put extreme pressures on today’s married
couples. No single change is the cause, but taken together, these changes provide a strong “push” toward divorce.
Are these changes good or bad? Central to symbolic interactionism is the position that to make a value
judgment about change (or anything else) requires a value framework from which to view the change. Symbolic
interactionism provides no such value framework. In short, symbolic interactionists, like other sociologists, can analyze
social change, but they cannot pass judgment on that value.

II. Structural – Functional Analysis

The central idea of Structural-Functional Analysis is that society is a whole unit made up of interrelated parts
that work together. Structural-Functional Analysis also known as functionalism or structural functionalism, is rooted in
the origins of sociology (Turner 1978). Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer viewed society as a kind of living organism.
Just as a biological organism has organs that function together, they wrote, so does society. Like an organism, if society
is to function smoothly, its various parts must work together in harmony.
Emile Durkheim also saw society as composed of many parts, each with its own function. When all the parts of
society fulfill their functions, society is in a “normal state.” If they do not fulfill their functions, society is an “abnormal”
or “pathological state.” To understand society, then, functionalists say that we need to look at both structure (how the
parts of the society fit together to make a whole) and function (what each part does, how it contributes to society).
Although Robert Merton dismissed the organic analogy, he continued the essence of functionalism—the image
of society as a whole composed of interrelated parts. Merton used the term functions to refer to the beneficial
consequences of people’s actions that help keep a group (society, social system) in equilibrium. In contrast, dysfunctions
are consequences that undermine a system’s equilibrium.
Functions can be either manifest or latent. If an action is intended to help some part of the system, it is a
manifest function. For example, suppose that government officials become concerned about the slowing rate of
childbirth. Congress passes a new law that offers a $10,000 bonus for every child born to a married couple. The
intention, or manifest function, of the bonus is to increase childbearing. Merton pointed out that people’s actions also
can have latent functions—unintended consequences that help a system adjust. Let’s suppose that the bonus works,
that the birth rate jumps. As a result, the sale of diapers and baby furniture booms. Because the benefits of these
businesses were not the intended consequences, they are latent functions of the bonus.
Of course, human actions also can hurt a system. Because such consequences usually are unintended, Merton
called them latent dysfunctions. Let’s assume that the government has failed to specify a “stopping point” with regard to
its bonus system. To collect the bonus, some people keep on having children. The more children they have, however,

8
the more they need the next bonus in order to survive. Large families become common, and poverty increases. Welfare
is reinstated, taxes jump, and the nation erupts in protest. Because these results were not intended, and because they
harmed the social system, they represent latent dysfunctions of the bonus program.

Applying Structural-Functional Analysis

Structural-Functionalists stress that industrialization and urbanization determined the traditional functions of
the family. Let’s see how each basic function has changed.

1. Economic Production. Prior to industrialization, the family constituted an economic team. Most families found it
difficult to obtain the basic necessities of life, and family members had to cooperate in producing what they needed to
survive. When industrialization moved production from home to factory, it disrupted this family team and weakened the
bonds that tied family members together. Especially significant was the transfer of the husband/father to the factory, for
this move separated him from the family’s daily routine. In addition, the wife/mother and children now contributed less
to the family’s economic survival.

2. Socialization of Children. As these sweeping economic changes took place, the government, which was growing larger
and more powerful, usurped many family functions. To name just one example, local schools took away from the family
the responsibility of educating children. In so doing, they assumed much of the responsibility for socializing children. To
make certain that families went along with this change, states passed laws requiring that children attend school and
threatened parents with jail if they did not send their children.

3. Care of the Sick and Elderly. With new laws governing medical schools and hospitals, institutionalized medicine grew
more powerful, and care of the sick gradually shifted from the family to outside medical specialists. As the central
government expanded and its agencies multiplied, care of the aged changed from a family concern to a government
obligation.

4. Recreation. As more disposable income became available to Americans, business enterprises sprang up to compete
for that income. This cost the family much of its recreational function, for much entertainment and “fun” changed from
home-based, family-centered activities to attendance at paid events.

5. Sexual control of Members. Even the control of sexuality was not left untouched by the vast social changes that
swept the country. Traditionally, only sexual relations within marriage were considered legitimate. Although this sexual
control was always more ideal than real, for even among the Puritans matrimony never did enjoy a monopoly over
sexual relations, it is now considerably weaker than it is used to be. The “sexual revolution” of the past few decades has
opened many alternatives to marital sex.

6. Reproduction. On the surface, the only family function that seems to have been left untouched is reproduction. Yet
even this vital and seemingly inviolable function has not gone unchallenged. A prime example is the greater number of
single women who are having children. Even schools and private agencies have taken over some of the family’s control
over reproduction. A married woman, for example, can get an abortion without informing her husband, and some high
schools distribute condoms.

In sum
From the perspective of structural-functional analysis, then, the group is a functional whole, with each part
related to the whole. Whenever we examine a smaller part, we need to look for its functions and dysfunctions to see
how it is related to the larger unit. This basic approach can be applied to any social group, whether an entire society, a
college, or even a group as small as a family.

III. Conflict Theory

Conflict theory provides a third perspective on social life. Karl Marx, who developed conflict theory, witnessed
the Industrial Revolution that transformed Europe. He saw that peasants who had left the land to seek work in cities had
to work at wages that barely provided enough to eat. (The average worker died at age 30, the average wealthy person at
age 50). Shocked by this suffering and exploitation, Marx began to analyze society and history. As he did so, he
developed Conflict Theory concluding that:
 The key to human history is class struggle.
In every society, some small group controls the means of production and exploits those who are not in control.
The struggle is between:
Bourgeoisie-the small group of capitalists who own the means to produce wealth.
Proletariat-the mass of workers who are exploited by the Bourgeoisie.

Another conflict sociologist by the name Ralf Dahrendorf sees conflict as:
 Inherent in all relations that involve authority. He points out that authority or power that people consider
legitimate, permeates every layer of the society—whether a small group, a community, or the entire society.
People in positions of authority try to enforce conformity, which in turn creates resentment and resistance.

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  The result is a constant struggle throughout society to determine who has authority over what.

Applying Conflict Theory

To explain why the U.S. divorce rate is high, conflict theorists:
 Look at men’s and women’s relationships in terms of basic inequalities—men dominate and exploit, while
women are dominated and exploited.
 Stress that women have traditionally been regarded as property and passed by one male, the father, to another,
the husband.

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 PART 2
WHAT IS SOCIETY?
(The Sociocultural Evolution of Society)

Many kinds of human societies have existed in history, and we still find remarkable diversity today. But what is a society,
in the first place? How and why have societies changed over the course of human history?
Society as viewed by:
 Gerhard and Jean Lenski
 Described the changing character of human societies over the last 10,000 years.
 Explained the importance of technology, and how new technology can have revolutionary consequences
for social life.
 Karl Marx
 Understood human history as a long and complex process.
 The story of society spins around social conflict that arises from how people produce material goods.
 Max Weber
 The power of ideas also shapes society.
 Contrasted the traditional thinking of simple societies with the rational thought that dominates our
modern way of life.
 Emile Durkheim
 Helped us to see the different ways that traditional and modern societies hang together.

All four visions of society answer key questions:

 What makes simple people, such as the Tuareg of the Sahara, so different from the society familiar to us?
 How and why do all societies change?
 What forces divide a society?
 What forces hold it together?
 Are societies getting better or worse?

GERHARD and JEAN LENSKI: SOCIETY and TECHNOLOGY

Members of our society, who take telephones and television as well as schools and hospitals for granted, must
wonder at the nomads of the Sahara, who live the same simple life their ancestors did centuries ago. The work of
Gerhard and Jean Lenski helps us understand the great differences among societies that have flourished and declined
throughout human history.
The Lenskis use the term sociocultural evolution to refer to the changes that occur as a society acquires new
technology. Societies with simple technology, such as the Tuareg, have little control over nature, so they can support
only a small number of people. Technologically complex societies, while not necessarily “better,” support large numbers
of people who live highly specialized lives.
In addition, the more technological information a society has, the faster it changes. Technologically simple
societies change very slow; Sididi Ag Inaka says he “lives the life of his ancestors.” Modern high-technology societies, on
the other hand, change so quickly that dramatic transformation can occur during a single lifetime. Imagine how
someone who lived just a few years ago would react to beepers, phone sex, artificial hearts, test-tube babies, genetic
engineering, e-mail, smart bombs, space shuttles, the threat of nuclear holocaust, transsexualism, and “tell all” talk
shows.
In short, new technology sends ripples of change through a society’s way of life. When our ancestors discovered
how to harness the power of the wind using a sail, they set the stage for building sailing ships, which took them to new
lands, stimulated trade, and increased their military might. Consider, as a more recent example, how our lives are being
changed by the spread of computer technology.
Drawing on the Lenski’s work, we will describe five types of societies according to their technology: hunting and
gathering societies, horticultural and pastoral societies, agrarian societies, industrial societies, and post-industrial
societies.

I. HUNTING AND GATHERING SOCIETIES

 The simplest of all kinds of societies.
 Existed from the emergence of our species 3 million years ago until just 12,000 years before the present. Even
in 1800, there were many hunting and gathering societies in the world. Today, however, just a few remains,
including the Aka and Pygmies of Central Africa, the Bushmen of Southwestern Africa, the Aborigines of
Australia, the Kaska Indians of Northwest Canada, and the Batek and Semai of Malaysia.
 Hunters and gatherers have little control over the environment so they spend most of their time searching for
game and collecting edible plants. Only in lush areas where food is plentiful do hunters and gatherers have
leisure time.
 Organized as small bands with a few dozen of members because they do not have enough land to support even
few people.

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  Hunters and gatherers are nomadic, moving from one place to another as they deplete vegetation in an area or
follow migratory animals. Although periodically, they return to their favored sites, they rarely form permanent
settlements.
 Built on kinship. The family obtains and distributes food, protects its members, and teaches the children.
Everyone’s life is focused on getting their next meal.
 There is some specialization related to age and gender. The very young and the very old contribute on what
they can, while healthy adults secure most of the food. Women gather vegetation—the more reliable source of
food—while men take on the less certain task of hunting. Although men and women perform different tasks,
most hunters and gatherers probably saw the sexes as having about the same social importance. Thus, hunting
and gathering society is also known as an egalitarian society—having equality in terms of age and gender.
 Have few formal leaders. The shaman, mostly recognized as a spiritual leader, enjoys high prestige but receives
no greater material rewards and must work to find food like everyone else.
 Hunters and gatherers employ simple weapons—the spear, bow and arrow, the stone knife—but rarely to wage
war. They are much more likely to fall victim to the forces of nature. Storms and droughts can destroy their food
supply, and there is little they can do in the event of accident or illness. Such vulnerability encourages
cooperation and sharing, raising everyone’s odds of survival. Nonetheless, many die in childhood, and no more
than half reach the age of twenty.
 Practice animism. They believe many spirits inhabit the world.

During the twentieth century, technologically complex societies closed in on the few remaining hunters and gatherers,
reducing their food supply. The Lenskis claim that at this point, we may well have witnessed the end of hunting and
gathering societies on earth. Fortunately, study of this way of life has produced valuable information about human
history and our fundamental ties to the natural world.

San Hunting Tools

The San, members of a traditional hunter-gatherer society, live throughout much of the Kalahari Desert in southern
Africa. San women ensure that the group has enough wild plants and fruits to supplement their diet. San men use light
bows with poisoned arrows to hunt animals. Bags such as the one shown here are made from the skins of gazelles, deer,
or other such animals. The skin from the animal’s legs form the straps.

2. HORTICULTURAL SOCIETIES
 Existed ten to twelve years ago when a new technology—horticulture—began to change the lives of human
beings.
 Horticulturalists use a hoe to work the soil, and digging stick to punch holes in the ground to plant seeds. It may
seem simple and obvious but horticulture allowed people to give up gathering in favor of “growing their own.”
 Horticulturalists formed settlements, moving on only when they depleted the soil.
 Humans first planted gardens to in the fertile regions of the Middle East and then in Latin America and Asia.
Within some 5,000 years, cultural diffusion spread knowledge of horticulture throughout most of the world.
 Practice ancestor worship and conceive of God as Creator.

Not all societies abandoned hunting and gathering in favor of horticulture. Hunters and gatherers living amid
plentiful vegetation and game probably took little note of the new technology. Then, too, people inhabiting arid regions
(such as the Middle East or the Sahara in Western Africa) or mountainous areas found horticulture of little value. Such
people turned to pastoralism.

3. PASTORAL SOCIETIES
 Members rose to hundreds because of the domestication of plants and animals that has greatly increased food
production so that societies could be able to support hundreds of people.
 Pastoralists remained nomadic, leading their herds to fresh grazing lands.
 Carry the horticulturalists’ belief further, seeing God directly involved in the well-being of the entire world. This
view of God is widespread among members of our own society because Christianity, Islam, and Judaism all
began as Middle Eastern pastoral religions.

Two patterns occur with pastoralism:

1. Transhumance
 Where parts of the group moves with herds, but most people stay in the home village. There are
examples from Europe and Africa. In Europe’s Alps, it is just the shepherds and goatherds—not the
whole village—who accompany the flocks to highland meadows in summer. Among the Turkana of
Uganda, men and boys accompany the herds to distant pastures, while much of the village stays put and
does some horticultural farming.
 Villages tend to be located in the best-watered areas, which have the longest pasture season. This
permits the village population to stay together during a large chunk of the year.

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 2. Pastoral Nomadism
 The entire group—women, men, and children—moves with the animals throughout the year. The
Middle East and North Africa provide numerous examples of pastoral nomads. In Iran, for example, the
Basseri and the Quashqai ethnic groups traditionally followed a nomadic route more than 300 miles (480
kilometers) long. Starting each year near the coast, they took their animals to grazing land 17,000 feet
(5,400 meters) above sea level.

Once a society is capable of producing a material surplus—more resources than needed to support day-to-day
living—not everyone has to secure food. Some make crafts, engage in trade, cut hair, apply tattoos, or serve as priests.
Compared to hunting and gathering societies, then, horticultural and pastoral societies are more specialized and
complex.
Expanding productive technology creates social inequality. As some families produce more food than others, they
assume positions of relative power and privilege. Forging alliances with other elite families allows social advantages to
endure over generations. Along with social hierarchy, simple government, backed by military force, emerges to shore up
the dominance of elites. However, without the ability to communicate or to travel over large distances, a ruler can
control only a small number of people, so there is little empire-building.
Domestication of plants and animals made simpler societies more productive. But advancing technology is never
entirely beneficial. The Lenskis point out that, compared to hunters and gatherers, horticulturalists and pastoralists have
more social inequality and, in many cases, engage in slavery, protracted warfare, and even cannibalism. Thus, social
inequality was said to be given birth in these societies during these periods of the history of social experience.
Horticultural and Pastoral societies are not a combination. They are two different societies that coexisted at almost
the same period of time.

4. AGRARIAN SOCIETIES
 Existed about 5,000 years ago when another technological revolution—the discovery of agriculture—was
underway in the Middle East and would eventually transform most of the world.
 Social significance of the animal-drawn plow as well as other technological innovations of the period—including
irrigation, the wheel, writing, numbers, and various metals was so great that this era qualifies as “ the dawn of
civilization.”
 Using animal-drawn plows, farmers could cultivate fields vastly larger than the garden-sized plots worked by
horticulturalists. Plows have the additional advantage of turning and aerating the soil to increase fertility.
 Permanent settlements were encouraged as a result of having the same lands the farmers could work for
generations.
 Large food surpluses, transported on animal-drawn wagons, allow agrarian societies to expand greatly their land
area and population. About 100 C.E., for example, the agrarian Roman Empire boasted a population of 70 million
over some 2 million square miles.
 Production increased due to large-scale cultivation. As always, increasing production meant more specialization.
Tasks once performed by everyone, such as clearing land and securing food, became distinct occupations.
Specialization also made the early barter system obsolete and money became the standard of exchange.
Because money made trade easier, cities grew and populations soared into millions.
 Agrarian societies exhibit dramatic social inequality. In many cases, including the United States early in its
history, peasants or slaves represent a significant share of the population. Freed from manual work, elites can
then engage in the study of philosophy, art, and literature. This explains the historical link between “high
culture” and social privilege.
 Among hunters and gatherers and also among horticulturists, women are the primary providers of food.
Agriculture, however, propels men into a position of social dominance.
 In many societies, religion reinforces the power of agricultural elites by defining work as a moral obligation.
Many of the “Wonders of the Ancient World,” such as the Great Wall of China and the Great Pyramids of Egypt,
were possible only because emperors and pharaohs wielded absolute power, commanding their people to a
lifetime of labor without wages. In agrarian societies, then, elites acquire unparalleled power. To maintain
control of large empires, leaders require the services of a wide range of administrators. Thus, along with the
growing economy, the political system emerges as a distinct sphere of life.

Of the societies described so far, agrarian societies have the greatest specialization and the most social inequality.
Agrarian technology also gives people a greater range of life choices, which is why agrarian societies differ more from
one another than horticultural and pastoral societies do.

5. INDUSTRIAL SOCIETIES
 Until the industrial era, the major source of energy was the muscles of humans and other animals. But about
1750, mills and factories began to use water and then steam boilers to power ever-larger machinery.
 With industrial technology, societies began to change faster. Industrial societies transformed themselves more
in one century than they had during the past thousand years. As explained in Chapter 1 (The Nature and
Beginnings of Sociology and Anthropology), this stunning change prompted the birth of Sociology itself.
 During the 19th century, railroads and steamships revolutionized transportation, and steel-framed sky-scrapers
dwarfed the cathedrals that symbolized an earlier age.

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  In the 20th century, automobiles further changed Western societies, and electricity powered modern
conveniences such as lighting, refrigerators and washing machines. Electronic communication, including the
telephone, radio, and television, soon followed, making the world seem smaller and smaller. During the last
generation, computers have dramatically increased our ability to process information.
 Work, too, has changed. In agrarian societies, most men and women work in or near the home. Industrialization,
however, creates factories filled with machinery and situated near energy sources. People may travel great
distances to their jobs in the factories. Lost in the process are close working relationships, strong kinship ties,
and many traditional values, beliefs and customs that guide agrarian life.
 Occupational specialization has become more pronounced than ever. In fact, industrial people often size up one
another in terms of their jobs rather than according to their kinship ties (as non-industrial people do).
 Rapid change and movement from place to place also generate anonymity, cultural diversity, and numerous
subcultures and countercultures.
 Industrial technology recasts the family, too, lessening its traditional significance as the center of social life. No
longer does the family serve as the primary setting for economic production, learning, and religious worship. It
also underlies the trend away from traditional families to greater numbers of single people, divorced people,
single-parent families, and stepfamilies.

The Lenskis point out that, early in the industrialization process, only a small segment of the population enjoys the
benefits that advancing technology brings. In time, however, wealth spreads and more people live longer and more
comfortably. Though poverty remains a serious problem in industrial societies, the standard of living has risen fivefold
over the course of the last century, and social inequality has declined.

 Some social leveling (Social Stratification) occurs because industrial societies required an educated and skilled
labor force. While the majority of people in non-industrial societies are illiterate, industrial societies provide
state-funded schooling and confer numerous political rights on almost everyone. Industrialization, in fact,
intensifies popular demands for a political voice, as seen in South Korea, Taiwan, The People’s Republic of
China, the nations of Eastern Europe, and the former Soviet Union.

Many industrial societies, including the United States, have now entered yet another phase of technological
development. This extends Lenskis’ analysis to take account of recent trends named postindustrialism.

6. POST-INDUSTRIAL SOCIETIES
 Whereas production in industrial societies center on factories and machinery generating material goods,
postindustrial production is based on computers and other electronic devices that create, process, store and
apply information.
 Members of industrial societies learn and apply mechanical skills while people in post-industrial societies
develop information-based skills for working with computers and other forms of advanced technology
communication.
 With the shift in key skills, the emergence of post-industrialism dramatically changes a society’s occupational
structure. This society uses less and less of its labor force for industrial production. At the same time, the ranks
of clerical workers, managers, and other people who process information (in fields ranging from academia and
advertising to marketing and public relations) swell.
 Information Revolution became more pronounced in rich nations, yet the new technology affects the entire
world. A new worldwide flow of goods, people, and information ties societies together and foster a global
culture. And just as industrial technology joined local communities to create a national economy, so post-
industrial technology joins nations to build a global economy.

RANGE AND LIMITS OF TECHNOLOGY

Technology remedies many human problems by raising productivity, reducing infectious disease, and sometimes
simply relieving boredom. But it provides no quick fix for social problems. Poverty, for example, remains the plight of
millions of women and men in the United States, and 1 billion people worldwide. Moreover, technology creates new
problems that our ancestors (and people like the opening vignettes’s Sididi Ag Inaka today) hardly could imagine.
Industrial societies provide more personal freedom, but often at the cost of the sense of community that characterized
pre-industrial life. Further, although the most powerful nations in the world today rarely engage in all-out warfare, they
have stock piles of nuclear weapons that could return us to a technologically primitive state of, indeed, we survived at
all.

Advancing technology has also contributed to a major social problem involving the environment. Each stage in
socio-cultural evolution has introduced more powerful sources of energy and increased our appetite for the earth’s
resources. An issue of vital concern is whether humanity can continue to pursue material prosperity without
permanently damaging our planet.

In some respects, then, technological advances have improved life and brought the world’s people closer into a
“global village.” But establishing peace, ensuring justice, and sustaining a safe environment are problems that
technology alone cannot solve.

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 WHAT IS SOCIETY?
(Groups and Organizations)

COLLECTIONS OF PEOPLE
Almost everyone seeks a sense of belonging, which is the experience of group life. A social group refers to two
or more people who identify and interact with one another. Human beings come together in couples, families, circles of
friends, churches, clubs, businesses, neighborhoods, and large organizations. Whatever its form, a group is made up of
people with shared experiences, loyalties, and interests. In short, while keeping their individuality, members of social
groups also think of themselves as special “we.”
Not every collection of individuals can be called a group. People with a status in common, such as women,
homeowners, soldiers, millionaires, and Roman Catholics, are not a group but a category. Though they know others who
hold the same status, the vast majority are strangers to one another.
What about students sitting together in a lecture hall or bathers enjoying a day at the beach? Some people in
such settings may interact, but not very much. These temporary, loosely formed collections of people are better termed a
crowd. In general, crowds are too anonymous and transitory to qualify as groups.
The right circumstances, however, can turn a crowd into a group. People riding in an elevator that stalls
between floors generally recognize their common plight and turn to each other for help. Sometimes out of accidents and
disasters, people form lasting relationships.
Another collection of people which is not considered as social group but are labeled with other nomenclature is
aggregate which refer to a cluster of people who may be on close physical proximity but do not interact with one
another. They may look at each other occasionally, or they brushed shoulders or any other part of their bodies
unintentionally, but they are not really concerned with one another. This is the case of people gathered in an
unstructured manner in a bus or jeepney stop; people sharing an escalator, or people lining up to buy their movie
tickets.

In sum, collections of people can be categorized into:

Collection of People Level of Proximity Level of Interaction Status in Common
Social Group High High Not necessary
Crowd High Low Not necessary
Category Not necessary Low or none at all Necessary
Aggregate High None at all Not necessary

THE SOCIAL GROUP

To differentiate the social group from the other collections of people, its characteristics can be described as follows:
1. Group members interact on a fairly regular basis through communication. They affect and influence each other.
2. The members of the group develop a structure where each member assumes a specific status and adopts a
particular role. Each member accepts certain duties and responsibilities and is entitled to certain privileges.
3. The members of the group agree to some extent on important norms, goals, and values. Certain orderly
procedures and values are agreed upon.
4. The members of the group feel a sense of identity. They think of themselves as united and interdependent,
somewhat apart from other people.

TYPES OF SOCIAL GROUPS

Diverse groups exist in the society. Knowledge of their important distinctions is necessary in describing and
analyzing group behavior. Sociologists classify the different groups as follows:

1. Groups According to Social Ties

Primary Group
 It is the most fundamental unit of human society. It is a long-lasting group whose members have intimate,
personal, continuous face to face relationships. It is usually characterized by strong ties of love and affection,
personal identity with the group, mutuality of interest, cooperation, and a “we” feeling.
 According to Charles Horton Cooley, it is a small social group whose members share personal and enduring
relationships. Bound by primary relationships, people typically spend a great deal of time together, engage
in a wide range of activities, and feel that they know one another well. Although not without conflict from
time to time, members of primary groups display real concern for each other’s welfare.
 Primary relationships give people a comforting sense of security. In the familiar social circle of family and
friends, people feel they can “be themselves” without worrying about the impression they are making.
 Members of primary groups help one another in many ways, but they generally think of their group as an
end in itself rather than as a means to other ends. In other words, we prefer to think that kinship and
friendship link people who “belong together.” Moreover, members of the primary group tend to view each
other as unique and irreplaceable. Especially in the family, we are bound to others by emotion and loyalty.
Brothers and sisters may not always get along but they will always remain as siblings.
 Examples of which are families, gangs, cliques, play groups, and friendship groups.

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Secondary Group
 Refers to the group with which the individual comes in contact later in life. This group has characteristics that
are the opposite of primary group.
 It is also referred to as a large and impersonal social group whose members pursue a specific goal or activity.
 It is characterized by impersonal, business-like, contractual, formal, and casual relationship. It is usually large in
size, not very enduring, and with limited relationships, weak ties of affection, weak personal identity with the
group and limited face-to-face interaction.
 Most secondary groups are short term, beginning and ending without particular significance. Students in college
course, for instance, who may or may not see each other after the semester ends, exemplify the secondary
group.
 Secondary groups include more people than primary groups. For example, dozens or even hundreds of people
may work together in the same office, yet most of them pay only passing attention to one another. In some
cases, time may transform a group from secondary to primary, as with co-workers who share the same office for
many years. But generally, members of a secondary group do not think of themselves as “we.”
 Whereas members of primary groups display a personal orientation, people in secondary groups have a goal
orientation. Secondary ties need not be hostile or cold, of course. Interaction among students, co-workers, and
business associates is often pleasant even if it is impersonal. But while primary group members define
themselves according to who they are in terms of kinship or personal qualities, people in secondary groups look
to one another for what they are or what they can do for each other. Thus, people engage in secondary
relationships because people need other people for the satisfaction of their complex needs or because they
have certain obligations toward them as in business.
 In secondary groups, we tend to “keep score,” mindful of what we give others and what and what we receive in
return. This goal orientation means that secondary group members usually remain formal and polite. In a
secondary group, therefore, we ask the question “How are you?” without expecting a truthful answer.
 Examples of which are industrial workers, business associates, faculty staff, company employees.

Keep in mind that these traits define two types of groups in ideal terms; many real groups contain elements of both.
But putting these concepts at opposite ends of a continuum helps us describe and analyze group life.
Many people think that small towns and rural areas have mostly primary relationships and that large cities are
characterized by more secondary ties. This generalization holds much truth, but some urban neighborhoods—especially
those populated by people of a single ethnic or religious category—are very tightly knit.

2. Groups According to Self-Identification

Everyone favors some groups over others, whether because of political outlook, social prestige, or just manner
of dress. On the college campus, for example, left-leaning student activists may look down on fraternity members,
whom they consider conservative; the Greeks, in turn, may snub the computer “nerds” and “grinds,” who work too
hard. Virtually, every social landscape has a comparable mix of positive and negative evaluations.
Such judgments illustrate another important element of group dynamics: the opposition of in-groups and out-
groups. These groups are based on the idea that “we” have valued traits that “they” lack.

In-Group
 It is a social unit in which individuals feel at home and with which they identify. Members of the in-group have
the “we” feeling for they are similar in certain ways, such as being poor, being rich, being a Tagalog, and other
social categories.
 It is also a social group commanding a member’s esteem and loyalty. It exists in relation to an out-group.
 Specifically, members generally hold overly positive views of themselves and unfairly negative views of various
out-groups.
 Power also shapes intergroup relations. A powerful in-group can define others as lower-status out-group.
Historically, for example, white people have viewed people of color as an out-group and subordinated them
socially, politically, and economically. Internalizing these attitudes, minorities struggle to overcome negative
self-images. In short, in-groups and out-groups foster loyalty but also generate conflict.
Out-Group
 It is a social unit to which individuals do not belong due to differences in certain social categories and with which
they do not identify.
 One example is if we are law abiders, the out-group is the law violators; if we violate the laws, the law abiders
are the out-group.
Reference Group
 It refers to the group to which we consciously or unconsciously refer when we try to evaluate our own life
situations and behavior, but to which we do not necessarily belong.
 It serves a comparison function; it provides us with standards against which we evaluate ourselves. Thus,
depending on which groups we select to compare ourselves with, we can feel deprived or privileged, satisfied or
discontented, fortunate or unfortunate.

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  Example: If we belong to the middle class, we may feel fortunate and satisfied in comparison to the poor class or
dissatisfied in comparison with the rich or upper class. It all depends on which social category serves as a
reference group.
 Reference group also has a normative function. They provide us with the guidelines we use in fashioning our
behavior. They serve as a model to which the individual patterns his lifestyles.
 A young man who imagines his family’s response to a woman he is dating is using his family as a reference
group. Similarly, a supervisor who tries to guage her employees’ reactions to a new vacation policy is using them
as standard of reference. As these examples suggest, reference groups can be primary or secondary. In either
case, our need to conform means that others’ attitudes greatly affect us.
 We also use groups that we do not belong to for reference. Being well prepared for a job interview means
showing up dressed the way people in that company dress for work. Conforming to groups we do not belong to
is a strategy to win acceptance and illustrates the process of anticipatory socialization.

3. Groups According to Purpose

Special Interest Group
 It refers to a group which is organized to meet the special interest of its members.
 Example: Hobby groups.
Task Group
 This group is assigned to accomplish jobs which cannot be done by one person.
 Example: Working Committee, Construction Workers.
Influence or Pressure Group
 This refers to a group organized to support or influence social actions.
 Example: Social Movements, Campaign Groups, Political Parties.

4. Groups According to Geographical Location and Degree or Quality of Relationship

Gemeinschaft
 It refers to a social system in which most relationships are personal or traditional. It is a community of intimate,
private, and exclusive living and familism. The activities, interest, and personalities of the members center
around the large family groups and neighbors. Culture is homogeneous and tradition-bound.
 Example: Tribal groups, agricultural and fishing villages, barrio.
Gesselschaft
 This is a social system in which most relationships are impersonal, formal, contractual or bargain-like.
Relationships are individualistic, business-like, secondary and rationalized. Culture is heterogeneous and more
advanced.
 Example: City or urban groups.

5. Groups According to Form of Organization

Formal Group
 It is also called social organization. It is deliberately formed, and its purpose and objectives are explicitly
defined. Its goals are clearly stated and the division of labor is based on member’s ability or merit.
 Formal organizations have a certain type of administrative machinery which is aimed to enable members meet
its goals. This administrative structure is called “bureaucracy.” The best example of bureaucracy is the
government.

Bureaucracy—refers to a hierarchical arrangement in large-scale formal organizations in which parts of the

organization are ordered in the manner of a pyramid based on a division of function and authority. (Weber, M.
1965)

Weber identified the following characteristics of a bureaucracy:

1. Positions and offices are clearly defined.
2. The hierarchical arrangement of authority, rights, and obligations is specifically drawn and clear-cut.
3. The personnel are selected on the basis of technical or professional qualification and expert training and
competence through competitive examination.
4. Definite rules govern official behavior.
5. Security of tenure and the pursuit of a career with promotion in the hierarchy are assured.

Merton (1965) defines the bureaucracy as a formal, rationally organized social structure involving clearly
defined patterns of activity in which every series of action is fundamentally related to the purpose of the organization.
As Merton (1964) pointed out, “the chief merit of the bureaucracy is its technical efficiency with a premium
placed on precision, speed, control, continuity, discretion, and optimal returns or input.”
Among the defects of bureaucracy includes the “red tape” or extreme adherence to rigid procedures and paper
work, the tendency of those in power to maintain the status quo, “boss officials” who feel so powerful that they are
indispensable fixtures of the organization, and “gentlemanly malingerers” or employees who have become so secure
and contented in their jobs, that they feel they do not have to work too hard. These defects have resulted in non-

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productivity, graft and corruption, inefficiency in service, delay in transactions, palakasan system, lagay system, official
misconduct and malpractices.

Informal Group
 This group arises spontaneously out of the interactions of two or more persons. It is unplanned: it has no explicit
rules for membership, and does not have specific objectives to be attained. It has the characteristics of primary
groups and members are bound by emotions and sentiments.
 Example: Barkadas and gangs.

GROUP SIZE
If you are the first person to arrive at a party, you are in a position to watch some fascinating group dynamics.
Until about six people enter the room, everyone usually shares a single conversation. But as more people arrive, the
group divides into two or more clusters. Size plays an important role in how group members interact.
To understand the effects of group size, consider the mathematical number of relationships among two to seven
people. Two people form a single relationship; adding a third person results in three relationships; adding a fourth
person yields six. Increasing the number of people one at a time, the, expands the number of relationships much more
rapidly since every new individual can interact with everyone already there. Thus, by the time seven people join one
conversation, twenty-one “channels” connect them. With so many open channels at this point, the group usually
divides.

The Dyad
 This is the term used to designate a social group with two members. This is according to German Sociologist
Georg Simmel, who studied group dynamics in smaller groups.
 Simmel explained that social interaction in a dyad is typically more intense than in larger groups because neither
member shares the other’s attention with anyone else. In the United States, love affairs, marriages, and the
closest friendships are dyadic.
 Like a stool with only two legs, dyads are unstable. Both members of a dyad must work to keep the relationship
going; if either withdraws, the group collapses. Because the stability of marriages is important to society, the
marital dyad is supported with legal, economic, and often religious ties.
The Triad
 Simmel also studied the triad, a social group with three members. A triad contains three relationships, each
joining two of the three people.
 Is more stable than a dyad because one member can act as a mediator should the relationship between the
other two become strained. Such group dynamics help explain why members of a dyad (say, a married couple)
often seek out a third person (counselor) to air tensions between them.
 On the other hand, two of the three can pair up to press their views on the third, or two may intensify their
relationship, leaving the other feeling left out. For example, when two of the three develop a romantic interest
in each other, they will understand the old saying, “Two’s company, three’s a crowd.”
As groups grow beyond three people, they become more stable and capable of withstanding the loss of even several
members. At the same time, increases in group size reduce the intense personal interaction possible only in the smallest
groups. Larger groups are thus based less on personal attachment and more on formal rules and regulations. Such
formality helps a group persist over time, though the group is not immune to change. After all, their numerous members
give large groups more contact with the outside world, opening the world to new attitudes and behavior (Cooley, 1991).

Social Network
 A network is a web of weak social ties. Think of a network as a “fuzzy” group containing people who come into
occasional contact but who lack a sense of boundaries and belonging. If we think of a group as a “circle of
friends,” then, we might describe a network as a “social web” expanding outward, often reaching great
distances and including large numbers of people.
 Some networks are close to being groups, as is the case with college friends who stay in touch after graduation
by e-mail and telephone. More commonly, however, a network includes people we know of—or who know of
us—but with who we interact rarely, if at all. as one woman with a widespread reputation as a community
organizer explains, “I get calls at home, someone says, ‘Are you Roseann Navarro? Somebody told me to call
you. I have this problem… ”
 Network ties may be weak, but they can be a powerful resource. For immigrants seeking to become
established in a new community, businesspeople seeking to expand their operations, or anyone looking for a
job, who you know is often as important as what you know.
 Networks are based on people’s colleges, clubs, neighborhoods, political parties, and personal interests.
Obviously, some networks contain people with considerably more wealth, power, and prestige than others—
that is, they are connected to more people. Typically, the most extensive social networks include people who
are young, well educated, and living in large cities.
 Gender, too, shapes networks. Although the networks of men and women are typically the same size, women
include more relatives in their networks, whereas those of men include more co-workers. Women’s ties,

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 therefore, may not carry quite the same clout as “old boy” networks. Even so, research suggests that as gender
equality increases, the networks of women and men are becoming more alike.
 Finally, new information technology has generated a global network of unprecedented size in the form of the
Internet through social network sites like facebook and friendster.

FORMAL ORGANIZATIONS
A century ago, most people lived in small groups of family, friends, and neighbors. Today, our lives revolve more
and more around formal organizations, large secondary groups that are organized to achieve their goals efficiently.
Formal organizations such as business corporation and government agencies differ from families and
neighborhoods. Their greater size makes social relations less personal and fosters a formal, planned atmosphere. In
other words, formal organizations operate in a deliberate way, not to meet personal needs but to accomplish complex
jobs.
When you think about it, organizing some 725 million members or our society is remarkable, involving countless
jobs, from collecting taxes to delivering the mail. To carry out most of these tasks, we rely upon large, formal
organizations. Large, formal organizations develop lives and cultures of their own so that, as members come and go, the
statuses they fill and the roles they perform remain unchanged over the years.

Types of Formal Organizations

Amitai Etzioni (1975) identified three types of formal organizations, distinguished by the reasons people
participate—utilitarian organizations, normative organizations, and coercive organizations.
1. Utilitarian Organizations
 Just about everyone works for income belongs to a utilitarian organization, one that pays people for their
efforts. Large businesses, for example, generate profits for their owners and income for their employees.
 Joining utilitarian organizations is usually a matter of individual choice, although, obviously, most people must
join one or another utilitarian organization to make a living.
2. Normative Organizations
 People join normative organizations not for income but to pursue some goals which they think are morally
worthwhile. Sometimes called voluntary associations, these include community service groups (such as PTA, the
Lions Club, the League of Women Voters, and the Red Cross), as well as political parties and religious
organizations.
3. Coercive Organizations
 Coercive organizations have an involuntary membership. That is, people join these organizations as a form of
punishment (prisons) or treatment (psychiatric hospitals).
 Have special physical features, such as locked doors and barred windows, and are supervised by security
personnel. They isolate people as “inmates” or “patients” for a period of time, seeking to change radically
attitudes and behavior. Total institutions have a great role in transforming human being’s overall sense of self.
 From differing vantage points, any particular organization may fall into all of these categories. A psychiatric
hospital, for example, serves as a coercive organization for a patient, a utilitarian organization for a psychiatrist,
and a normative organization for a part-time hospital volunteer.

ORIGINS OF BUREAUCRACY
In earlier discussions (Types of Social Groups), it was noted that one determinant of a formal group is the
presence of a bureaucracy. Formal organizations date back thousands of years. Elites who controlled early empires
relied on officials to collect taxes, undertake military campaigns, and construct monumental structures from the Great
Wall of China to the pyramids of Egypt.
These early organizations had two limitations, however. First, they lacked the technology to communicate
quickly, to travel over large distances, and to collect and store information. Second, tradition is strong in preindustrial
societies, so organizational goals were to preserve cultural systems, not to change them. But, during the last few
centuries, what Max Weber called a “rational world view” emerged in parts of the world. In Europe and North America,
the Industrial Revolution ushered in a new organizational structure concerned with efficiency, what Weber called
bureaucracy.

Characteristics of Bureaucracy
Bureaucracy—is an organizational model rationally designed to perform tasks efficiently. Bureaucratic officials
deliberately enact and revise policy to increase efficiency. To appreciate the power and scope of bureaucratic
organization, consider this:
 Any one of nearly 300 million phones can connect you, within seconds, to any other phone—in homes,
business, automobiles, or even a hiker’s backpack on a mountain trail. Such instant communication was
beyond the imagination of people who lived in the ancient world.
Of course, the telephone system depends on technology such as electricity, fiber optics, and computers. But
neither could the system exist without the organizational ability to keep track of every telephone call—noting which
phone called with other phone, when, and for how long—and then present this information to more than 100 million
telephone users in the form of monthly bills.

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 What specific traits promote organizational efficiency? Max Weber identified six key elements of the ideal
bureaucratic organization.
a. Specialization. Our ancestors spent most of their time looking for food and shelter. Bureaucracy, by contrast,
assigns individuals highly specialized duties.
b. Hierarchy of Offices. Bureaucracies arrange personnel in a vertical ranking of offices. Each person is supervised
by “higher-ups” in the organization while, in turn, supervising others in lower positions. Usually, with few people
at the top and many at the bottom, bureaucratic organizations take the form of a pyramid.
c. Rules and Regulations. Cultural tradition counts for little in a bureaucracy. Instead, rationally enacted rules and
regulations guide a bureaucracy’s operation. Ideally, a bureaucracy seeks to operate in a completely predictable
way.
d. Technical Competence. Bureaucratic officials and staff have the technical competence to carry out their duties.
Bureaucracies typically recruit new members according to set criteria and regularly monitor their performance.
Such impersonal evaluation contrasts sharply with the ancient custom of favoring relatives, whatever their
talents, over strangers.
e. Impersonality. Bureaucracy puts rules ahead of personal whim so that clients as well as workers are all treated
uniformly. From this detached approach stems the notion of the “faceless bureaucrat.”
f. Formal, Written Communications. According to an old saying, the heart of bureaucracy is not people but
paperwork. Rather than casual, face-to-face talk, bureaucracy relies on formal, written memos and reports,
which accumulate in vast files and guide the operation of the organization.
Bureaucratic organization promotes efficiency by carefully recruiting personnel and limiting the unpredictable
effects of personal taste and opinion.

Organizational Environment
No organization operates in a vacuum. How any organization performs depends not only on its own goals and
policies but also on the organizational environment, the range of factors outside the organization that affects its
operation. These factors include technology, economic and political trends, the available work force, and other
organizations.
Modern organizations are shaped by the technology of computers, telephone systems, and copiers. Computers
give employees access to more information and people than ever before. At the same time, computer technology allows
managers to monitor closely the activities of workers.
Economic and political trends affect organizations. All organizations are helped or hindered by periodic economic
growth or recession. Most industries also face competition from abroad, as well as changes in law—such as new
environmental standards—at home.
Population patterns, such as the size and composition of the surrounding populace, also affect organizations.
The average age, typical education, and social diversity of a local community determine the available work force and,
sometimes, the market for an organization’s products or services.
Other organizations also contribute to the organizational environment. To be competitive, a hospital must be
responsive to the insurance industry and organizations representing doctors, nurses, and other workers. It must also
keep abreast of the equipment and procedures available at nearby facilities, as well as their prices.

The Informal Side of Bureaucracy

Weber’s ideal bureaucracy deliberately regulates every activity. In actual organizations, however, human beings
are creative (and stubborn) enough to resist bureaucratic blueprints. Informality may amount to simply cutting corners
in one’s job, but it can also provide needed flexibility.
Informality comes from the personalities of organizational leaders. Studies of corporations document that the
qualities and quirks of individuals—including personal charisma and interpersonal skills—greatly affect organizational
outcomes.
Authoritarian, democratic, and laissez-faire types of leadership reflect individual personality as much as any
organizational plan. Then, too, in the real world of organizations, leaders and their cronies sometimes seek to benefit
personally by abusing organizational power. Perhaps even more commonly, leaders take credit for the efforts of their
subordinates. Many secretaries, for example, have far more authority and responsibility than their official job titles and
salaries suggest.
Communication offers another example of informality within large organizations. Memos and other written
communications are the formal way to spread information through the organization. Typically, however, individuals
create informal networks, or “grapevines,” that spread information quickly, if not always accurately. Grapevines, using
both word-of-mouth and e-mail, are particularly important to subordinates because higher-ups may try to keep
important information from them.
The spread of e-mail has “flattened” organizations somewhat, allowing even the lowest-ranking employee to
bypass immediate superiors and communicate directly with the organization’s leader or all fellow employees at once.
Some organizations object to “open-channel” communication and limit the use of e-mail. Microsoft Corporation (whose
founder, Bill Gates, has an unlisted address yet still receives hundreds of e-mail messages a day) has developed
“screens” that allow messages from only approved people to reach a particular computer terminal.

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 Using new information technology as well as age-old human ingenuity, members of organizations try to
personalize their procedures and surroundings. Such efforts suggest that we now take a closer look at some of the
problems of bureaucracy.

The Problems of Bureaucracy

We rely on bureaucracy to manage countless dimensions of everyday life, but many people are, at best, uneasy
about large organizations. Bureaucracy can dehumanize and manipulate us, and some say it poses a threat to political
democracy.
a. Bureaucratic Alienation
Max Weber touted bureaucracy as a model of productivity. Nonetheless, Weber was keenly aware of
bureaucracy’s ability to dehumanize the people it is supposed to serve. The same impersonality that fosters
efficiency also keeps officials and clients from responding to each other’s unique, personal needs. On the contrary,
officials must treat each client impersonally—as a standard “case.”
Formal organizations create alienation, according to Weber, by reducing the human being to “a small cog in a
ceaselessly moving mechanism.” Although formal organizations are intended to benefit humanity, Weber feared
that people could well end up serving formal organizations.
b. Bureaucratic Inefficiency and Ritualism
Inefficiency, the failure of an organization to carry out the work that it exists to perform, is a familiar problem.
According to one report, the General Services Administration, the government agency that buys equipment for
federal workers, takes up to three years to process a request for a new computer. This delay ensures that by the
time the computer arrives, it is already out of date.
The problem of inefficiency is captured in the concept of red tape (a phrase derived from the red tape used by
eighteenth-century English administrators to wrap official parcels and records.) Red tape refers to a tedious
preoccupation with organizational routine and procedures. Robert Merton (1968) points out that red tape amounts
to a new twist to the already-familiar concept of group conformity. He coined the term bureaucratic ritualism to
designate a preoccupation with rules and regulations to the point of thwarting an organization’s goals.
Ritualism stifles individual creativity and strangles organizational performance. In part, ritualism arises from the
fact that organizations, which pay modest, fixed salaries, give officials little financial stake in performing efficiently.
Then, too, bureaucratic ritualism stands as another form of alienation that Weber feared would arise from
bureaucratic rigidity.
c. Bureaucratic Inertia
Although bureaucrats sometimes have little motivation to be efficient, they have every reason to protect their
jobs. Officials may even strive to keep an organization going when its purpose has been realized. As Weber put it,
“once fully established, bureaucracy is among the social structures which are hardest to destroy.”
Bureaucratic inertia refers to the tendency of bureaucratic organizations to perpetuate themselves. Formal
organizations tend to take on a life of their own beyond their formal objectives. For example, the U. S Department of
Agriculture has offices in almost all U. S. counties, even though only one county in seven has working farms.
Usually, an organization stays in business by redefining its goals. The Agriculture Department, for example, now
performs a number of tasks not directly related to farming, including nutritional and environmental research.

d. Oligarchy
Early in this century, Robert Michels (1876-1936) pointed out the link between bureaucracy and political
oligarchy, the rule of the many by the few. According to what Michels called “the iron law of oligarchy,” the pyramid
shape of bureaucracy places a few leaders in charge of organizational resources.
Max Weber credited a strict hierarchy of responsibility with high organizational efficiency. But Michels
countered that this hierarchical structure also concentrates power and thus endangers democracy because officials
can—and often do—use their access to information, resources, and the media to promote their personal interests.
Furthermore, bureaucracy also insulates officials from the public, as in the case of the corporate president or
public official who is “unavailable for comment” to the local press. Oligarchy, then, thrives in the hierarchical
structure of bureaucracy and reduces the accountability of leaders to the people.
Political competition, term limits, and a system of checks and balances prevent the government from becoming
an out-and-out oligarchy. Even so, incumbents enjoy a significant advantage in politics

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 PART 3
WHAT IS CULTURE?
(Definition and Dynamics of Culture)

CULTURE is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, arts, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities
and habits acquired my man as a member of the society.

Enculturation is the process by which a child learns his or her culture.

CHARACTERISTICS OF CULTURE
1. Learned. This process is done through experience and interaction with other members of the group. Cultural learning
depends on the uniquely developed human capacity to use symbols.

Principles of Symbolic Interactionism used in understanding human learning:

- Human beings are endowed with the capacity to think.
- Their capacity to think is shaped by social interaction.
- Through social interaction, they learn about meanings and symbols.
- Because of their capacity of thought, they are able to alter and modify such meanings and sysmbols.

“Psychic unity of man”- doctrine stating that man has a capacity of culture.

2. Shared. Culture is an attribute not of individuals per se, but of individuals as members of groups. Shared beliefs,
values, memories and expectations link people who grow up in the same culture through enculturation.

3. Symbolic. Culture uses symbols in order to solidify the meanings to which these symbols are attached.

4. All-encompassing. Culture includes much more than refinement, taste, sophistication, education, and appreciation of
the fine arts (“high culture”) among the “cultured.” It encompasses features that are sometimes regarded as trivial or
unworthy of serious study such as “popular culture.”

5. Integrated. Culture is not merely a collection of customs and beliefs, but are integrated, patterned systems such that
if one part of the system changes other parts change as well.
Eg. Cultures train their individual members to share certain personality traits. A set of characteristics central or core
values (key, basic, central values) integrates each culture and helps distinguish it from others.

6. Transmitted. Cultural transmission (oral or non-oral) are done through enculturation, and from one generation to the
next.

7. Dynamic. Culture is dynamic because it constantly changes.

8. Adaptive and Maladaptive. Through the use of cultural adaptive kits (customary activities and tools) humans
biologically adapt to its physical environment. It the adaptive tools threatens the group’s existence (survival and
reproduction), culture can be maladaptive.
Eg. Automobile permits us to make a living. But it also threatens the environment.

COMPONENTS OF CULTURE
1. Symbols – anything that carries a particular meaning, recognized by people who share culture. These are things that
stand for something. Language is a system of symbols that allows people to communicate with one another.

2. Values – culturally defined standards by which people assess desirability, goodness, and beauty, and which serve as
broad guidelines for social living. They are statements from the standpoint of a culture of what ought to be.

3. Beliefs – specific statements that people hold to be true.

4. Norms – rules and expectations by which a society guides the behavior of its members. Norms can be prescriptive
(stating what we should do) or proscriptive (stating what we should not do).
a. Mores – norms that are widely observed and have great moral significance. It distinguishes between right or
wrong. They are also known as taboos.
b. Folkways – norms for routine, casual interaction such as ideas about appropriate greetings and proper dress.
They also include customary norms that draw a line between right and good.
c. Laws – institutionalized norms.
Norms are the basic rules of everyday life. Although we sometimes bristle when others pressure us to conform, we all
can see that norms make our dealings with others more orderly and predictable.

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Social control – are various means by which members of society encourage conformity to norms.

LEVELS OF CULTURE
1. National culture – beliefs, learned behavior patterns, values, and institutions shared by citizens of the same nation.

2. International culture – term for cultural traditions that extend beyond and across national boundaries. This happens
through diffusion or borrowing.
Eg. Roman Catholics in many different countries share beliefs, customs, symbols, experiences and values transmitted by
their church.

3. Subcultures – different symbol-based patterns and traditions associated with particular groups in the same complex
society. They originate in region, ethnicity, language, class, and religion.
Eg. Jews, Baptists, Roman Catholics

ISSUES IN UNDERSTANDING CULTURE

1. Ethnocentrism – the tendency to view one’s culture as superior, and apply one’s own cultural values in judging the
behavior and beliefs of people raised in other cultures. It contributes to group solidarity, but oftentimes social conflict.

2. Xenocentrism – the exact reverse of ethnocentrism. It is looking at one’s own culture as inferior, thus, shifting to the
favored culture of others.

3. Cultural Relativism – the argument that behavior in one culture should not be judged by the standards of another
culture. It could also make or break social/group relations for it argues that there is no superior, international, or
universal morality, that the moral and ethical rules of all cultures deserve equal rights/respect.

The idea of human rights challenges cultural relativism and ethnocentrism. Human rights are inalienable (nations cannot
abridge or terminate them). On the other hand, cultural rights are vested not in individuals but in groups such as
religious and ethnic minorities and indigenous societies. It includes a group’s ability to preserve its culture.

OTHER PRINCIPLES THAT DEFINE/CHARACTERIZE CULTURE

1. Diffusion – borrowing or traits between cultures
- Direct (when 2 cultures trade, intermarry, or wage war with one another)
- Forced (when one culture subjugates another and imposes its customs on the dominated group)
- Indirect (when items move from group A to group C via group B without any firsthand contact between A and C)

2. Acculturation – the exchange of cultural features that result when groups have continuous firsthand contact.
Eg. A pidgin, a mixed language that develops to ease communication between numbers of different cultures in contact.

3. Independent Invention – the process by which humans innovate, creatively finding solutions to problems. This is one
reason for cultural generalities to exist.

4. Globalization – encompasses a series of processes including diffusion and acculturation, working to promote change
in a world in which nations and people are increasingly interlinked and mutually dependent.

5. Intervention

6. Discovery – introducing the culture of one group to another, encouraging changes.

Eg. Introducing civilization with/to discovered uncivilized group.

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