Ethics and Society

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 Society (noun): A large group of people who
live together in an organised way, making
decisions about how to do things and sharing
the work that needs to be done. All the people
in a country or several similar countries, can be
referred to as a society.

 Let’s get down to the basics of the dictionary

definition, which is the idea of the group, or
social group to be more precise.
 Why do humans stick together in groups?

 For survival in our immediate natural environment as

individuals and as a species, like most other species in the animal
kingdom—monkeys, elephants, birds, wolves, ants etc.

 However, there is a difference between us and most other

species—we need a lot of parental care and take longer to grow
and evolve into adults who can then shoulder the responsibility
of procreation.

 Therefore, being part of a social group throughout our lifetimes

is more important for human beings than perhaps other species.
 Who do we stick together with in a group?

 With our families, right? Today, it may be the nuclear family

that we begin our lives as children in, but the nuclear family is
actually a modern invention.

 If we were to look at the origins of the family, it has an

extensive reach and broader meaning, so much so that
anthropologists and sociologists call it kinship.

Kinship revolved around a system in which large groups of

people or relatives were bound together in mutual
responsibilities and obligations (including financial ones)
through marriage. In other words, an alliance.
 In kinship systems, relationships between families matter more than the individual
himself/herself.

 This system is the building block of societies according to Claude Levi Strauss, an
anthropologist, and we call it structuralism.
The basic idea behind structuralism is that individual and collective behaviors
emerge from some underlying structure. 

 Women are at the center of this system, and laws first evolved around which woman
depending on her status (sister, mother etc) in the group.

 It is the need for women and children, that one family began to form alliances and
relations with other families, (or those outside the immediate family group) and with
the process started trade, gift exchange etc.
 Thus started the process of formation of what we call culture and the
beginning of social structures, which emerge first through repeated
patterns of doing things which over time becomes part of our
unconscious (or culture schools us into doing certain things in a certain
manner and not any other and we do it without even thinking about it).

 An individual’s relationship with his kin or the larger group is

mediated through these structures—you ‘belong’ to the group because
you follow these structures.

 Under the rubric of culture we include language, myths, stories,

common values, moral codes, rituals, world views etc.
How do societies function?

 Through social interaction on the basis of shared codes, values,

morals, attitudes etc.—or what the sociologist Emile Durkheim
called collective consciousness. He showed us how individual
behavior is radically different from collective behavior as a group.

What prompts individuals within a group to act in similar ways?

 “If I do not submit to the conventions of society, if in my dress I

do not conform to the customs observed in my country and in my
class, the ridicule I provoke, the social isolation in which I am
kept, produce, although in an attenuated form, the same effects as
punishment” (Durkheim 1895)
  Durkheim thought of society as a living
organism, in which each organ (in this
context, each individual) has a role to play in
keeping the organism alive and functioning.

 Our takeaway—each individual has a role to

play in keeping our society alive, integrated,
growing and flourishing.
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Different types of societies:

 Hunter-gatherer society
 Agricultural society and feudalism
 Industrial society
 Post-industrial society—informational society,
digital society
Networked society