Human Society

We are part of society when we share in comprehensive arrangements for living with one another and for managing the environment. The simplest societies are the primitive bands who to this day live in jungles and deserts, and on isolated mountains and beaches around the globe. The most complex technological societies bind the world’s cities together as part of an evolution that, barring catastrophe, is forming a planetary society of mankind.

Whether primitive or civilized, all societies must cope with the parallel problems that are generated by the urgencies of human nature and the necessities of a common life. Arrangements are made for kinship and procreation; for safety, health, and comfort; for producing and consuming commodities and services. Arrangements also develop latent talent into skills of communication, body movement, and environmental management. Institutions specialize in the gathering and dissemination of news and images of the natural and social environment. Some institutions give respect or disrespect to individuals and groups on a temporary or permanent basis, and distinguish between what is considered to be responsible or irresponsible conduct. Government, law, and politics seek to resolve the conflicting demands that arise within or among communities.

At first glance we are less likely to be impressed by the parallels than by the differences among societies. The differences are conspicuous, if we consider, say, a horde of big-city commuters as compared with a band of technologically handicapped people who are continually in search of the next meal. An anthropologist who lived with such a band a few years ago in the rain forests of eastern Bolivia reported that apart from the hammocks they slept in, three-foot digging sticks, and cumbersome long bows and arrows, these naked seminomads carried no material objects with them. Modern urban dwellers usually feel some contempt for these bearers of an Old Stone Age culture and speculate on a possible weakness of the brain to account for their lack of technological progress. Such speculations are dismissed by modern anthropologists as without foundation. As we get acquainted with primitive societies it dawns upon us that they have met some of the same problems that we have by adopting solutions whose ingenuity equals or even excels our own. This may apply, for instance, to arrangements for transmitting political authority from one generation to the next, or for preventing violently aggressive behaviour.

Societies do indeed differ from one another in the degree that they encourage specialization. In the simplest societies everybody does everything, with exceptions that are closely linked to differences of sex and age. On the other hand, many tribes use professional specialists, such as warriors, medicine men, blacksmiths, potters, weavers, musicians, and carvers. The world that we call civilized appeared with the invention of writing. Literacy provides a means of storing and retrieving information without relying exclusively on the memory of the old. Records and education multiply the number of learned professions. Urban civilization marks the emergence of such institutions as the territorial state, formal legislative codes of law, regular taxes, bureaucratized civil and military services, monumental public works, complex systems of taxation, and official records.

One way to bring out the degrees of likeness and difference among societies, whether primitive or civilized, is to compare the priorities that are given to institutions of the same kind. No one doubts that every society must concern itself to some extent with food. It is only in bands of the kind mentioned above that near-total preoccupation with hunger deemphasizes, although without abolishing, all other interests. Where existence is less hard the accumulation of wealth may become the principal value sought, as among some merchant cities and trading tribes. War and preparation for war may take top priority as it did for millennia among the shepherds of Inner Asia and the river-valley agriculturalists who were conquered by herdsmen-warriors. Some agricultural societies emphasize worship and encourage forms of knowledge, like astronomy, that enhance religion. In some societies, notably in East India, the accent is on ritual purity or impurity, and every kin group is assigned a position in the respect system of caste and class.

While priorities may remain stable for generations in a given society, this is not necessarily the case. At one time the peoples of Scandinavia were warriors and brigands. Today we perceive them as among those who are most involved with the values of civil society. In the United States, the early colonizers of New England were heavily oriented toward religion, morality, and political freedom. More recently, the most general trend has been toward secular activities, especially those connected with wealth. Throughout the contemporary world, “development” often carries the connotations of economic modernization, political independence, scientific education and research, personal freedom, and social justice.

Besides allocating priorities, every society strikes a temporary or durable balance between the accumulation and the immediate enjoyment of every value. The modes of accumulation depend on the value in question. Investment in wealth production, for instance, may involve adding fertilizers to the soil, or building an infrastructure of roads and bridges, or inculcating the values of saving and investment. Expanded educational opportunity implies that more per capita hours of teaching and learning, and more physical equipment, are made available, and that the importance of education is successfully communicated. If health opportunities are to be multiplied, it is necessary to add facilities and to spread the practice of personal hygiene. A society cultivates public enlightenment with installations for scientific and scholarly purposes, and for mass communication. Human relations improve as the roles of love, friendship, and loyalty expand in “an era of good feeling,” and as social discrimination wanes. Levels of responsible conduct typically rise as opportunities become more available for worship and more people join in formulating and applying moral standards. During a given period the institutions of government, law, and politics sometimes accumulate more support.

The examples mentioned above refer to the “positive”accumulation of a valued outcome. Accumulations may be “negative,” as when disasters destroy property, spread epidemics, or interfere with education.

All societies necessarily make arrangements for the sharing of wealth, power, and other values. Among individuals and groups these arrangements exhibit all degrees of equality and inequality. Wealth and income are sometimes widely distributed. By contrast, they may be monopolized in the hands of a few. Political participation may be dispersed or concentrated. Opportunities may be equalized or monopolized for health, education, and information; or for respect, affection, and responsible conduct.

Characteristic of every society is the attempt to maintain itself by controlling the minds of young and old. People not only hunt or plow, trade or fight. They are also likely to believe in what they do and how they do it. It is not necessarily true that in a system of inequality those who occupy any particular station, however exalted or lowly, entertain any doubts about the justification of the system. A stable society carries on within the framework of a common map of perception, belief, and identity. In such a setting the individual learns from earliest infancy to think, feel, and act in ways that bring positive rather than negative consequences from the social and natural environment. Socialization is the process by which private motivations are channeled into acceptable public acts.

In civilized societies reliance on the results of early education is heavily supplemented by government, law, and politics. The legal system is made up of several sets of authoritative and controlling prescriptions. One set is constitutive. It prescribes “who decides what and how.” It centralizes or decentralizes formal and effective power, and it separates power among agencies and groups. Structures may be differentiated to plan, to promote, to legislate, to execute, or to review and appraise. Regulation defines the degree of protection given to the fundamental institutions of every sector of society. Tradition alleges that a legal order is blind to values and practices that lie outside the established beliefs, faiths, and loyalties (“ideologies”) of the society with which it is involved. In consequence, legal systems may defend widely different balances between value accumulation and enjoyment, and sharply contrasting patterns of equality and inequality in the sharing of political power, wealth, respect, or any other value. The legal order may protect economic systems whose structures are capitalistic, socialistic, or cooperative; family systems that permit one or more members of the sexes to marry and raise children; religious faiths that exalt monotheism and polytheism; and so on through the infinite variety of human practices.

One set of prescriptive norms is supervisory. Individuals and groups may be given wide latitude to make private contractual agreements or to seek redress of private wrongs. Nonetheless, the decision makers of the community are prepared to play a supervisory role by enforcing common norms if an unsettled private controversy is brought to their notice by the parties. Prescriptions also lay down the principles and procedures to be followed if the body politic organizes and administers a continuing enterprise, of which services of transportation, communication, banking, insurance, and housing are examples. A legal system includes correctional or sanctioning measures to obtain compliance with prescribed norms. Value deprivations are imposed on those who have failed or are expected to fail to comply. Deprivations range in severity from capital punishment, confiscation of property, or life imprisonment, to a light fine or reprimand.

A legal system is stabilized when the effective elements in society perceive themselves as relatively better off by continuing the system than by adopting alternative arrangements. To some extent a legal order may exhibit cyclical fluctuations, as when deviations are tolerated within limits which, if exceeded, generate reform activities that restore the former situation with little change. In a capitalist economy “creeping monopoly” may invade trade unions, employers’ associations, or natural resource and industrial enterprises. In a socialist economy “black markets” may introduce “creeping competition.” In either case, cyclical movements may restore the original relationship before they have quietly stabilized a structural innovation, or prepared the way for violent revolutionary change.

If the view is correct that worldwide interdependence is increasing, the traditional blindfold of legal systems must be put aside long enough to give explicit consideration to competing value goals and practices around the globe. Interdependence implies that whether they like it or not, the members of an emerging planetary society must take one another into account. Being taken into account implies that beliefs, faiths, and loyalties, as well as overt behaviours, are examined by public and private decision makers. The demand to be better informed about the social environment creates an enormous opportunity and responsibility for those who study society.

We expect anthropologists to provide us with knowledge of primitive societies and other specialists to focus on the processes and institutions of civilized society. Political scientists and legal scholars concentrate on government, law, and politics. Economists specialize in the production and distribution of wealth. The role of educators is relatively clear. So, too, is the role of sociologists who concern themselves with a sector of society, such as the family, social class and caste, professions and occupations, communication, public health, or comparative morals and religion.

Social scientists are continually under pressure to provide a map of the past and probable future impact of the forces that shape society. They are asked, for instance, to explain the causes of war and other forms of violence, and to suggest strategies that lead to “victory” in a specific conflict or to show how war itself may be eliminated as an instrument of public policy. Social scientists are asked for explanations of why an economy experiences inflation, or how it generates changing levels of employment and unemployment. Specialists are expected to discover the sources of alienation that separate young and old or threaten the unity of a family, a school, a church, a political party, or a national state. These examples suggest the wide-ranging demands that confirm the importance of adding to our knowledge of society.

We recognize the existence of a problem when we perceive that our goals are inconsistent with one another or when there are discrepancies between what we want and what we have or expect. In public policymaking, the first step is to answer the question, “Whose values are to be realized?” The social scientist who participates in tackling or solving a policy problem has an option: he may adopt the criteria of a “client” or he may rely on his own values.

The study of social institutions is sometimes affected by diverging norms of professional responsibility. No conflict need arise if a social scientist is personally committed to a line of research that happens to be popular with influential members of the body politic. No anxiety or guilt is felt if the findings are applied by current decision makers. A frequent example is the study of administrative agencies according to their “dollar efficiency” or according to the accuracy and speed of communication between central offices and field stations.

In contrast to this harmonious relationship is the inner and perhaps visible turmoil of social scientists whose research interests are unacceptable to many members of the current establishment. The researchers may want to study the effect of military expenditures on society. The problem may be to find how a given level of military outlay modifies the structure of the civilian economy and influences both the production and delivery of services specialized for health, education, public information, family welfare, and other social outcomes. If the information gathered in the course of a given project is classified as secret, no scientist can lawfully report his findings. Perhaps the investigator will violate the letter of the law in the hope of mobilizing an effective demand for change. But it may be that such a strategy will backfire. Instead of arousing community protest against authority, the revelations may result in established leaders successfully taking advantage of an alleged “breach of security” to suppress inquiry and discussion.

Another complication affecting the social investigator is the degree of genuine consent that he must obtain from those whom he proposes to study. Physicians, surgeons, and biologists confront similar questions when they plan to give a test, run an experiment, administer a drug, or perform an operation. Is it always necessary to explain to a prospective subject the risks he will run? Is the investigator professionally or legally bound to make sure that the language of explanation can be understood by the individual concerned? If a social scientist plans to study the facts of life in a prison or a mental hospital, should he reveal his purpose, even when it would be easier to gain confidence by posing as a fellow prisoner or a fellow patient? Similar issues rise in connection with field studies of primitive tribes, of peasant communities, of foreign societies, and of many other social settings.

In recent times, professional opinion has emphasized the importance of obtaining “shared participation” in the pursuit of knowledge. Many investigators willingly accept the challenge of cultivating group demand for a project and for a hand in data gathering and analysis. At every stage, arrangements are made for laymen to work side by side with professional sociologists, social psychologists, political scientists, and other investigators. As a result, some communities have learned to study themselves, assessing the degree to which they are involved in ethnic and other forms of discrimination. Unusual groups have joined in self-study. For instance, murderers and persons who have survived as targets of murderous assault have cooperated in scientific research on the causes and consequences of murder, and on possible strategies of prevention. Instead of resenting the role of “guinea pig” in science, it is typical for those who choose to participate in programs of self-observation to improve their individual insight while contributing to the enhancement of society’s stock of knowledge.

Whether the client or the investigator is the source of the value criteria adopted for a policy problem, questions of value priority are bound to arise. The relative importance of political, economic, and other aims cannot be satisfactorily settled in programs of national or regional development unless the full range of possible goals is considered. It is essential to take timing into account. When a new nation-state first secedes from an empire, political power has top priority. The “ex-colony” tries to ensure its independence of external control, to obtain support from outside powers, and to unify its people. Economic development occupies a high priority position. Other targets, such as health, education, the expressive arts, and environmental protection, seem to be less urgent. The allocation of manpower and facilities to various institutions depends on the priority of the specific outcomes in which these institutions specialize.

Social scientists have an indirect influence on priorities by asking questions about them, and also by presenting a factual map of past trends, causes, and future contingencies. Scientists often devise small-scale pretests in order to try out solutions that may eventually be applied on a larger scale.

In adapting to the needs of this interdependent world, the scientists of society require of themselves that they measure the direction and intensity of the value demands of political, economic, ethnic, and all other identifiable groups anywhere on the globe. Acknowledging the perils of a divided and militant world, the most compelling task is to discern and make public the conditions under which a world public order of government and law could become a more perfect instrument of human dignity, security, and welfare. Many small-scale programs show how to reduce the human cost of transforming today’s inadequate institutions into more effective systems of communication and organization.

For the first time in history it can be truly asserted that the scientists of society have been provided with technological instruments of sufficient sophistication to assist in meeting the demands that are made upon them. Retrieval and dissemination make it possible to map past, present, and future events. Social analysts know that the key question for the future is to resolve whether or not the spectacularly changing technology of knowledge, and especially knowledge of society, will be in the hands of a limited class or caste that seeks to serve its own advantage. The alternative is to share the control of information widely among all territorial and pluralistic groups. Unless individuals and groups are able to obtain access to cornprehensive stocks of information, they will be blind judges of public policy. Without adequate access, their criticism will be dismissed as exercises in ignorance and bias. Critics will be in no position to develop realistic alternatives to the plans of governmental or private monopolists of knowledge. “Knowledge is power”; if there is to be self-control, there must be prompt and total access to information.

The chief novelty about the computer and other technically advanced means of processing and transmitting information is that, in principle, everyone can be given prompt access to a selective “map of the whole.” An image of the total deployment of man in space or of the total activities of a corporate enterprise can be made available to everyone from the highest official to the humblest worker. The salient facts can be made vivid, concise, and substantially accurate in images that may be supplemented in whatever detail is desired. The range of possible expenditures for any political, economic, or social program can be summarized and related to its potential impact on society.

Human society has attained an unparalleled height of danger and opportunity. The study of society shares in both. The unprecedented accumulation of knowledge enables us to recognize that the scale of our problems is also without precedent.