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Week 3

The study of society is challenging and confusing. In this lesson, you

will find out what society is, what sociocultural evolution means and

how it happens and types of societies.

At the end of the lesson, you should be able to:

1. Trace the biological and cultural evolution of early to modern

humans

2. Explore the significance of human material remains and

artefactual evidence in interpreting cultural and social,

including political and economic processes

3. Recognize national, local and specialized museums and

archaeological and historical sites as venues to appreciate and

reflect on the complexities of biocultural and social evolution

as part of being and becoming human.

Definition of Society

Society is a group of people living together in a particular place or at a

particular time and having many things in common.

What does society look like?

 Society looks like an object itself (sui generis or unique)

 Then, if society is an object, we can examine it closely and

analyze it like any other subject (We break it into pieces and

explore each piece carefully)

 What a biologist does to a living organism, or a geologist does

to a rock, so as a sociologist does to a society.

 Society becomes something scientifically weighted, measured

and dissected

If we analyze society, we determine what it is made up. It is composed

of culture, working class and ethnicity. These components appear on

their own but they can be broken down into pieces that makes the

study of society more challenging and confusing.

Visions of Society that account for Social Change and Societal

Evolution

Four Diverse Perspectives:

Karl Marx

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- He looked at society that is in conflict (social conflict). This is

a struggle between segments of society over valued resources.

o The capitalists are the people who own and operate

factories and other businesses in pursuit of profits

o Proletariat are people who sell their productive labor for

wages

o Social institutions include all the major spheres of

social life, or societal subsystems organized to meet

human needs

 Infrastructure – society’s economic system

 Superstructure – other social institutions:

family, religion, political institution

o Marx rejected false consciousness or explanation of

social problems as the shortcomings of individuals

rather than the flaws of society

- He believed that the history of all existing society is the history

of class struggle (or class conflict) – conflict between entire

classes over the distribution of a society’s wealth and power

- Marx believed that worker must replace false consciousness

with class consciousness – workers’ recognition of themselves

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as a class unified in opposition to capitalists and, ultimately, to

capitalism itself. Workers would then rise up and destroy

capitalism in a socialist revolution.

Marx’s Model of Society

 Alienation – the experience of isolation and misery

resulting from powerlessness

 Capitalism alienates workers in four specific ways:

 Form the act of working

Workers have no say in production, work is tedious and

repetitive

 Form the products of work

Workers have no ownership in the product that is

merely sold for profit

 Form other workers

Work has become competitive rather than cooperative

 From human potential

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Workers deny, not fulfill themselves in their work

Max Weber

- Rationalization of Society. This is the historical change from

tradition – sentiments and beliefs passed from one generation

to another to rationality – deliberate, matter-of-fact calculation

of the cost effective means to accomplish a task as a dominant

mode of human thought.

- Weber also believes in predestination and God’s favor,

religious ethic and transformed to work ethic.

Weber’s Rational Social Organization. It has seven characteristics:

 Distinctive social institutions

 Large scale organization

 Specialized tasks

 Personal discipline

 Awareness of time

 Technical competence

 Impersonality

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They are expressed in bureaucracy and capitalism

Emile Durkheim

- He describes society as more than individuals. Society has a

life of its own – beyond our personal experiences

- He also said that social facts, any patterns rooted in society

rather than the experience of individuals.

o Society has an “objective reality” beyond our own

subjective perceptions of the world. Examples are

norms, values, religious beliefs, and rituals

o Society has the power to guide our thoughts and actions

- Warned that modern society creates anomie - a condition in

which society provides little moral guidance to individuals

o He said that change is from mechanical solidarity.

Social bonds are based on common sentiment and

shared moral value that are strong among members of

industrial societies

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o To Organic solidarity, social bonds are based on

specialization and interdependence that are strong

among members of industrial societies.

o He said that key to change is an expanding division of

labor – a specialization of economic activity.

Gerhard Lenski

- He said that sociocultural evolution is the change that occurs as

a society acquires new technology

- Societies range from simple to the technologically complex

- Societies that are simple in technology tend to resemble one

another

- More complex societies reveal striking cultural diversity.

Socio-cultural evolution

 It is the change that occurs as a society acquires new

technology

 Technology shapes other cultural patterns and that simple

technology can only support small numbers of people who live

simple lives

 The greater amount of technology a society has within its

grasp, the faster cultural change will take place

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 High-tech societies are capable of sustaining large numbers of

people who are engaged in a diverse division of labor.

Types of Society

The society we live in did not spring up overnight. Human societies

have evolved slowly over millions of years. However, throughout

history, technological developments have sometimes brought about

dramatic change that has boosted human society into its next age.

Hunting and Gathering stage

o During this stage, man used simple tools to hunt

animals and vegetation. The hunting and gathering

societies characteristics are:

a. The primary institution is the family, which

decides how food is to be shared and how

children are to be socialized, and which

provides for the protection of its members.

b. Number of families in this society tend to be

small with fewer than fifty members

c. They were nomadic in search of food

d. Society members have very high level of

interdependence
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e. Division of labor is based on sex: men hunt,

women gather

Horticultural and Pastoral Societies

o Horticultural societies use hand tools to raise crops.

People started to stay in one place and grow their own

food.

o Pastoral societies started the domestication and

breeding of animals for food.

Agricultural Societies

The invention of the plow led to the establishment of

agricultural societies. Members of these societies tend crops

with an animal harnessed to a plow. The use of animals to pull

a plow eventually led to the creation of cities and formed the

basic structure of modern societies.

The development of agricultural societies followed this general

sequence.

a. Animals are used to pull plow

b. Lager areas of land can then be cultivated

c. More crops were yielded for longer periods of time

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d. Productivity increased and people did not move to another place

with abundant supply of food for them

e. Towns form and then cities

f. When yields increased, members engaged in some other forms of

farming, thus developing other skills. Job specialization increased

g. When fewer people are directly involved with production of food,

the economy became more complex

Industrial Societies

Use advanced sources of energy, rather than humans and animals, to

run large machinery. Industrialization started in the mid-1700s, when

the steam engine was first used in Great Britain as a means of running

other machines. In the 20th century, industrialized societies had

changed dramatically.

o People and goods traversed much longer distances because of

innovations in transportation such as train and steamship

o Rural areas lost population because people move to the cities as

factory workers

o Societies became urbanized, which means that the majority of

population lived within commuting distance of a major city

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o Suburbs grew up around cities to provide city-dwellers with

alternative places to live

Postindustrial Societies

This type of society that has developed over the past few decades,

features an economy based on services and technology, not

production. There are three major characteristics of postindustrial

economy:

o These societies focus on ideas as tangible goods no longer

drive the economy

o There has been a need for higher education for the

postindustrial societies because the new focus on information

and technology means that people must pursue higher

education

o There was a shift in working place from cities to homes

because new communications technology allows work to be

performed from a variety of locations.

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References

Acton, Ashton Q. (2014). Issues in international sociology and social

work research and application. USA: Scholarly Editions.

Difference Between Anthropology and Sociology. Retrieved from:

[Link]/miscellaneous/...anthropology-and-sociology on 06

June 2015

Ferrante, J. (2014). Sociology a Global Perspective. 9th edition. USA:

cengage Learning.

Mauss, M. (2005). The Nature of Sociology Berghahn [Link]:

Durkheim Press.

Sociology/Anthropology. Retrieved from

[Link]/catalog/9697/[Link] on 06 June 2015.

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