SOCIETY

MEANING AND CHARACTERISTCS

• Society/Community is a combination of two elements:

1) A web of relationships among a group of individuals, often

crisscross and reinforce one another
2) A measure of commitment to a set of shared values, norms,
and meanings
 CHARACTERISTICS
• People ought to be related to one another by bonds of
affection.
• Membership to the community is restricted by an exclusive
criteria which maintain some limitations on new membership.
• Society is characterized by consensus among its members.
However there are conflicts which are contained by an
overarching commitment to the bonds and values of the
society. Good society, keeps conflicts within the bounds of
culture
• A set of core values
• Sense of belonging
• A good society, is governed not merely by contracts, voluntary
arrangements, and laws freely enacted, but also by a thick layer of
mores and values

• Society is abstract because social relationships can be felt and

imagined but cant be seen

• Society and culture keeps on changing

• It has a longer period of life

• It forms its own social structure through social institutions, which

ensures the permanence and continuity of the society.
• RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN
INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY
THEORIES OF ORIGIN OF SOCIETY

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• Question of origin of society or state
• Society – A moral consciousness
• State – A political consciousness
• Different theories, but merely based upon
speculations & imaginations
– Divine Right Theory
– Force Theory
– Social Contract Theory
– Evolutionary Theory
 • DIVINE RIGHT THEORY:

– Society the creation of God.

– Just as God created all the animals and inanimate objects

of this world, so he created the society as well.

– This theory in course of time, particularly in the sixteenth

and seventeenth centuries took the form of Divine Right
Theory.

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 FORCE THEORY
• Society the result of superior physical force.

• According to this theory, the society originated in the

subjugation of the weaker by the stronger.
• Force used by the stronger over the weak
• In the primitive times the man of exceptional physical
strength was able to overawe his fellowmen and to exercise
some kind of authority over them.
• Through physical coercion or compulsion men were brought
together and made to live in society

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SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORY

• Hobbes (1588-1679)and Social Contract Theory

• Man in the state of nature was in perpetual conflict with his neighbors on
account of his essentially selfish nature (Psychological egoism),
Hypothetical State of Nature
• Life of man was ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.’
• Every man was an enemy to every man
• Men are naturally self interested yet they are rational
• They have rational capacity to pursue their desires
• State of Nature and Law of Nature
• To protect himself against the evil consequence man organized himself in
society in order to live in peace with all

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• By recognizing the rationality of this basic percept, men entered
into a social contract that will afford them a little more other than
the available to them in the state of nature
• Reciprocal renouncement of the rights
• Establishment of a society
• After these contracts are established then society becomes
possible and people can be expected to keep their promises,
cooperate with one another and so on.
• How poorly a Sovereign manages the affairs of the state, we are
never justified in resisting his powers because it is the only thing
which stands between us and what we most want to avoid, State
of Nature
 LOCKE (1632-1704) AND SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORY

• Locke used Hobbes’ Methodological advice of State of nature but for him
it was not a state of war.
• It was a state of ‘peace, goodwill, mutual assistance, and preservation.
• For Locke State of Nature was state of perfect and complete liberty.
• To conduct one’s life as one’s sees fit, free from interference from others.
• The only disadvantage of the state of nature was that there was no
recognized system of law and justice in it.
• The state of nature was pre-political but it is not pre-moral
• However state of nature may be transformed into state of war because
state of nature lacks civil society.
• To make good this deficiency and ensure the exercise of his liberty man
entered into a contract by which certain powers were conferred upon the
community/society.
• Property plays an essential role in Locke’s argument for civil government.

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• State of nature was a conjugal society of families, populated
by mothers, fathers and their children
• By entering into society men got three things
– Laws
– Judges to adjudicate laws
– Enforcement of laws
• State of nature was peaceful so if society/civil government
don’t behave, men can revert back to the state of nature
 Rousseau and Contract Social

• Men in the state of nature were equal, self-sufficient, and contented

• They lived a life of idyllic happiness and primitive simplicity
• But growth in numbers of men and the quarrels arising among them
necessitated the establishment of civil society
• Consequently men entered into a contract by submitting our individual,
particular wills to the collective or general will, created through
agreement with other free and equal individuals.
• Through the collective renunciation of the individual rights and
freedoms that one has in the state of nature and the transfer of these
rights to the collective body, a new person-sovereign was formed.
• Reciprocal rights and duties
• Democracy a concept of general will rather than individual will

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 CRITICISM
• The above theories of the origin of society do not
provide an adequate explanation of its origin
• The origin of society is not due to God’s intervention in
human history. The society is the outcome of the social
instinct of man. Force, no doubt, is an important factor
in the evolution of society but it cannot be regarded as
the one and the only factor
• The social contract theory seems to assume that man as
individual is prior to society but this assumption is
erroneous because of the fact that sociality is in born in
man. As soon as he saw the light of day with others like
him society became a fact
• So not offer a valid explanation of the origin of society.
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 Evolutionary Theory

• Offers a generally correct explanation of the origin of society

• Society is not a make but a growth
• Result of a gradual evolution
• Continuous development from unorganized to organized, from less
perfect to more perfect and various factors helped in its development from
time to time
• Kinship and family were the earliest bonds uniting man with man
• Kinship creates society
• Patriarchal society was organized on the basis of Kinship through males.
• Religion was another factor to help in the creation of social consciousness.
• As a matter of fact “Kinship and religion were simply two aspects of the
same thing.”

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• After this man gave up his wandering habits, settled in villages
and cities, and took to the pastoral and agricultural life.
• The population began to multiply. Wealth was accumulated. The
idea of property took root. The economic life advanced. All this
necessitated changes in the forms of social relations and man
arrived at such advanced forms of social organizations as the
nation state
• Society did not come into being by virtue of a pact or special
provision; it emerged spontaneously and followed its own line of
development
• It passed through several stages of evolution before reaching its
modern complex form

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 ORGANISMIC THEORY
• Conceives society as a biological system, a greater organism, alike
in its structure and its functions.
• Plato compared society and state to a magnified human being. He
divided society into three classes of rulers, the warriors and artisans
based upon the three faculties of the human soul that is wisdom,
courage and desire.
• Aristotle drew a comparison between the symmetry of the state and
symmetry of the body and firmly held that the individual is an
intrinsic part of society.
• The organismic theory considers society to be similar to that which
characterizes a biological organism. The union of individuals
forming the society has been described as similar to the union
between the several parts of an animal body, wherein all parts are
functionally related.
• Just as the body has a natural unity, so has a
social group.
• The animal body is composed of cells, so is
the society composed of individuals,
• They tried to analyze the structure and
function of society in comparison with those
of an organism
• Herbert Spencer, the chief exponent of this
theory
• However, Spencer is of the view that society
differs from biological organism in the following
important respects:
– In organic growth, nature plays a dominant and
organismic naturally grows. Social growth may be
checked or stimulated by human beings themselves.
– The units of a society are not fixed in their respective
positions like those of the individual organism.
– In an organism, consciousness is concentrated in the
small part of the aggregate, that is, in the nervous
system while in a society it is diffused throughout
whole