Before going over this module, the learner must answer the PRE-TEST in order for the teacher
to assess
Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) and pinpoint specific topics that need emphasis during the discussion.
PRE-TEST
Essential Questions for Consideration
How does a society maintain order so that it will persist for a long period of time?
What are the roles of social institutions in reproducing social life?
Why do social scientists argue that society is an objective fact sui generis?
Pre-Lesson Assessment Activities
Try this experiment: Ride a jeep or a bus. Do you pay even if the driver does not notice you have not paid
your fare? How does it feel when you deliberately do not pay your fare? Why do think people pay their fare even if
they can pretend to have paid already? How do people react toward a person who does not pay his or her fare?
What values in our society influence the way we deal with these situations? What institutions do you think are
responsible for making us feel the way we do?
Building Vocabularies People to Remember
Adaptation Louis Althusser
Goal attainment Peter L. Berger
Ideological State Apparatus Emile Durkheim
Integration Talcott Parsons
Latency
Methodological Individualism
Repressive State Apparatus
Social System
Social Reproduction
Society
Sociological Realism
Structuralism
MODULE 3:
SOCIETY AS AN OBJECTIVE REALITY
Learning Outcome(s):
At the end of the lesson, the learner is able to:
explain how society and its institutions shape individuals;
demonstrate curiosity about the basic social institutions and be able to explain
their respective roles in socialization:
compare different social forms of social organization according to their manifest and latent functions;
explain the logic of reproduction of social institutions; and
discuss the relative independence of society and its institutions from the individual's consciousness.
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The Concept of Society as an Objective Reality
The term "society" came from the Latin word societas, which in turn was derived from the
noun socius ("comrade, friend, ally") used to describe a bond or interaction between parties
that are friendly, or at least civil. According to the Greek philosopher Aristotle, human
beings are zoon politikon or political animals. That is, human beings are creatures whose nature is for them to live
in a society or group. According to John Holmwood (2006),
The term "society" is used to describe a level of organization of groups that is relatively self-
contained. However, the boundedness of groups is always relative and so sociologists may refer to human
society, where the reference is to the interdependencies among all social groups, or to subgroups such as
family society, where the reference is to the typical interactions among the individuals making up a
grouping of close kin (p. 592).
In this definition, society may also refer to the persistent interactions among members of a particular
group like kinship group and other institutions. Ordinarily, when sociologists talk about society they often refer to a
bounded territory also called "nation-states" like Philippine society, albeit these two concepts are not completely
synonymous. Today, however, with the advent of globalization, sociologists question the fundamental importance
given to society as a unit of analysis. Globalization tends to integrate societies into a world system that weakens
the territorial boundaries of societies.
A common opinion among ordinary people Is the belief that society does not exist except for the
individuals who compose it. In the early 19 th century, when sociology as a science was still in its infancy, many
social scientists subscribe to methodological individualism. This view states that collective concepts such as groups,
associations, and societies do not exist, but only individual members. A typical class in a school, in this view, does
not exist at all as a collective group, but only the teachers and the students. The army as a collective group does
not exist except for the soldiers composing it.
Emile Durkheim (1858-1917), the founding father of French sociology, argued strongly against this
position. His theory, called sociological realism, states that society is reality sui generis and cannot be reduced
to individual aggregates or parts. Let us take language as an example. Durkheim argued that one cannot invent
new language out of nowhere. One has to use the language system that is already in use in a particular society
where the individual is born. Language, therefore, exists relatively independent of the consciousness and use of
the individual speaker. In addition, Durkheim sought to prove the existence of society by demonstrating the
external constraints that society imposes upon its members. One can deny the existence of the banking system,
but one cannot go to a bank and deposit scratch papers without experiencing formal sanctions.
Durkheim's argument for the existence of society is demonstrated further in his classic work Suicide
(1897). In this book, Durkheim avoided the use of psychological and individualistic explanation for the study of
suicide. He rather looked into the statistics of suicide rates and provided a sociological explanation for the
persistence of suicide. Durkheim showed that the external constraints of society worked through control
mechanism that either prevented people from committing suicide or made them prone to suicide. If a group or
society has a strong social solidarity or sense of belongingness, the individual is most likely to attach herself or
himself to society. Hence, the tendency of the individual to move away from the group is lessened. Strong
regulation of the individuals in a society or group ensures that the members properly follow the norms and
prescribed moral behavior. The situation in which society lacks social regulation through social norms is called
anomie (from the Greek word nomos). Excessive regulation, however, can also lead to higher suicide rates
especially when the norms prescribe altruism among the members, that is, when a group demands self-sacrifice for
the collective like the suicide bombers or Japanese kamikaze pilots. In short, Durkheim is arguing that our actions
are constrained by the norms and sanctions imposed by society, and these norms are internalized through
collective conscience. For Durkheim, collective conscience refers to "The totality of beliefs and sentiments common
to the average members of a society forms a determinate system with a life of its
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own. It can be termed the collective or creative consciousness."The argument of Durkheim that society is an
objective reality is echoed in contemporary sociology by Peter L. Berger (1973):
The objectivity of society extends to all its constituent elements. Institutions, roles, and identities
exist as objectively real phenomena in the social world, though they and this world are at the same time
nothing but human productions. For example, the family as the institutionalization of human sexuality in a
particular society is experienced and apprehended as an objective reality. The institution is there, external
and coercive, imposing its predefined patterns upon the individual in this particular area of his life (p. 23).
Peter Berger's remarks could be extended to all other social institutions. Before we deal with the coercive
characteristics of the various social institutions, let us first discuss the process of social reproduction. One has to
know how society persists through time.
Social Reproduction or How Societies Persist
If one defines society as "organization of groups that is relatively self-contained," then the next question is
how societies manage to exist and persist across time and space. The problem of explaining how societies manage
to exist over a long period of time is called reproduction by the French philosopher and sociologist, Louis
Althusser. No society can endure over time if it does not support its very own reproduction. To do this, all
societies require the creation of institutions to perpetuate the existence of society. There are two types of
institutions that reproduce the condition of social life, namely, the ideological state apparatuses and the
repressive state apparatuses.
The ideological state apparatuses are institutions that are created and used by society to mold its
members to share the same values and beliefs that a typical member of that society possesses. Repressive
ideological state apparatuses, on the other hand, refer to those coercive institutions that use physical force to
make the members conform to the laws and norms of society like courts, police, and prisons. This view is often
adopted by critical sociologists to explain the persistence of societies and social systems across time and space.
From a structural functionalist perspective, social reproduction is carried out through four functional
prerequisites as elaborated by the American sociologist, Talcott Parsons:
According to Parsons, all societies will have to take care of its own reproduction if they are to persist
across time and space. He listed four general functional prerequisites that all societies must attend to in order to
survive. These are encapsulated in his famous A-G-I-L scheme. In his work with Smelser, Economy and Society
(1956), Parsons elaborated on theeconomic system (A), the political system (G), the societal community (I), and
the fiduciary system (L).
Adaptation is the capacity of society to take resources from society and distribute them accordingly. This
function is carried out by the economy which includes gathering resources and producing commodities to
social redistribution.
Goal Attainment is the capability to set goals and mobilize the resources and energies necessary to
achieve the goals set forth by society. This is set by the political subsystem. Political resolutions and
societal objectives are part of this necessity.
Integration, or the harmonization of the entire society to achieve consensus. By integration, Parsons
meant the coordination, adjustment, and regulation of the rest of the subsystem so that society will
continue to function smoothly. It is a demand that the values and norms of society are solid and
sufficiently convergent. This requires, for example, the religious system to be fairly consistent, and even in
a more basic level, a common language.
Latency, or latent pattern maintenance, requires that society is able to constantly produce and socialize
actors who will follow the norms and roles given to them by society. This means institutions like family and
school, which mediate belief systems and values between an older generation and its successor.
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The main goal of a social system is how to make these four functional prerequisites work so that the social
system will maintain a state of equilibrium. For Parsons, any entity that was relatively self-subsistent with respect
to an environment qualified as a social system. The most important of these functions is system integration. When
social integration and the continuous production of motivated actors are disrupted society experiences breakdown.
When people, for instance, begin to withdraw from social life, when they begin to experience distrust about the
social system, society suffers from legitimation crisis.
The problem with structural functionalism and its counter-part in radical social sciences, like the
reproduction theory of Louis Althusser, is that they simply reduce people to mere appendages of self-perpetuating
social system. On the macro-level or on the level of social system, these explanatory schemes are very helpful in
showing how societies exist and persist across time and space. Social reproduction, in these theories, is not carried
out consciously by people while doing their daily routines. Yet the overall accumulation of these daily routines tend
to strengthen the prevailing social institutions. People, in most cases, act to achieve certain goals, but they end up
doing others things which they did not originally intended. This is called "manifest function" or the unintended
effects of people's actions. In most cases, these manifest functions become dysfunctional to the system. So, while
a politician may not intend his or her dole outs for his or her supporters to lead to corruption, it may nonetheless
lead to corruption by strengthening patronage politics, Patronage politics happens when a politician uses his or her
public office for personal benefits.
The strength of reproduction theory is also its weakness. It fails to explain how peopledo not simply
reproduce the very social conditions that they are born with, but they also possess the power of agency. The
notion of manifest function tends to downplay thecapacity of people to monitor the effects of their actions. One
can be born as a slave ina slave-owning society, but it does not mean that being born a slave, one has no power
and opportunities to ameliorate and change the conditions of one's birth. People can also change the social
structures that they themselves created. For if societies simply reproduce their own existence, then no radical
change is forthcoming. This criticism is echoed in the famous statement of Marx (1937):
Men (sic) make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under
circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly found, given and transmitted from the past.
This Part will discuss the first part of Marx's famous statement: "they do not make it under circumstances
chosen by themselves." The next Part will discuss the other part of the statement: "Men make their own history."
POST-TEST
Summative Assessment
Bring "play money" and "play coins." During break time, using these play coins and play money, try to buy
from your classmate certain things such as paper, snacks, or candies. Observe and record how your
classmates react. Using the concepts learned in this lesson, explain the reactions of your classmates. What do
you think are the differences between play money and real money?
Write an analysis of your family using Parson's AGIL scheme. How does your family mobilize resources, set
goals, integrate, and maintain intimacy among members. Who do you think acts as the government in your
family? How about the economy?
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Subject Title Teacher