Sociology Society Types of Societies, Norms, Status and Roles
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Types of Societies
The society we live in did not spring up overnight; human societies have evolved slowly over many millennia. However, throughout history, technological developments have sometimes brought about dramatic change that has propelled human society into its next age.
Hunting and Gathering Societies
Hunting and gathering societies survive by hunting game and gathering edible plants. Until about 12,000 years ago, all societies were hunting and gathering societies.
There are five basic characteristics of hunting and gathering societies:
- 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.
- They tend to be small, with fewer than fifty members.
- They tend to be nomadic, moving to new areas when the current food supply in a given area has been exhausted.
- Members display a high level of interdependence.
- Labor division is based on sex: men hunt, and women gather.
The first social revolution—the domestication of plants and animals—led to the birth of the horticultural and pastoral societies.
Twilight of the Hunter-Gatherers
Hunting and gathering societies are slowly disappearing, as the encroachment of civilization destroys the land they depend on. The Pygmies in Africa are one of the few remaining such societies.
Horticultural Societies
In a horticultural society, hand tools are used to tend crops. The first horticultural societies sprang up about 10,000–12,000 years ago in the most fertile areas of the Middle East, Latin America, and Asia. The tools they used were simple: sticks or hoe-like instruments used to punch holes in the ground so that crops could be planted. With the advent of horticultural machinery, people no longer had to depend on the gathering of edible plants—they could now grow their own food. They no longer had to leave an area when the food supply was exhausted, as they could stay in one place until the soil was depleted.
Pastoral Societies
A pastoral society relies on the domestication and breeding of animals for food. Some geographic regions, such as the desert regions of North Africa, cannot support crops, so these societies learned how to domesticate and breed animals. The members of a pastoral society must move only when the grazing land ceases to be usable. Many pastoral societies still exist in Africa, Latin America, and parts of Asia.
Job Specialization
As techniques for raising crops and domesticating and breeding animals improved, societies began to produce more food than they needed. Societies also became larger and more permanently rooted to one location. For the first time in human history, not everyone was engaged in the gathering or production of food. As a result, job specialization emerged. While some people farmed or raised animals, others produced crafts, became involved in trade, or provided such goods as farming tools or clothing.
Agricultural Societies
The invention of the plow during the horticultural and pastoral societies is considered the second social revolution, and it led to the establishment of agricultural societies approximately five thousand to six thousand years ago. Members of an agricultural or agrariansociety 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 most modern societies.
The development of agricultural societies followed this general sequence:
- Animals are used to pull plows.
- Larger areas of land can then be cultivated.
- As the soil is aerated during plowing, it yields more crops for longer periods of time.
- Productivity increases, and as long as there is plenty of food, people do not have to move.
- Towns form, and then cities.
- As crop yields are high, it is no longer necessary for every member of the society to engage in some form of farming, so some people begin developing other skills. Job specialization increases.
- Fewer people are directly involved with the production of food, and the economy becomes more complex.
Around this same time, the wheel was invented, along with writing, numbers, and what we would today call the arts. However, the invention of the steam engine—the third social revolution—was what took humans from agricultural to industrial society.
Roots of Gender Inequality
As people moved toward domesticating animals and using them to do work, males tended to dominate more of the workforce, since physical strength was necessary to control animals. By the time societies became agricultural, males all but dominated the production of food. Since then, more prestige has been accorded to traditionally male jobs than to traditionally female jobs, and hence, to males more than to females.
Industrial Societies
An industrial society uses advanced sources of energy, rather than humans and animals, to run large machinery. Industrialization began in the mid-1700s, when the steam engine was first used in Great Britain as a means of running other machines. By the twentieth century, industrialized societies had changed dramatically:
- People and goods traversed much longer distances because of innovations in transportation, such as the train and the steamship.
- Rural areas lost population because more and more people were engaged in factory work and had to move to the cities.
- Fewer people were needed in agriculture, and societies became urbanized, which means that the majority of the population lived within commuting distance of a major city.
- Suburbs grew up around cities to provide city-dwellers with alternative places to live.
The twentieth century also saw the invention of the automobile and the harnessing of electricity, leading to faster and easier transportation, better food storage, mass communication, and much more. Occupational specialization became even more pronounced, and a person’s vocation became more of an identifier than his or her family ties, as was common in nonindustrial societies.
Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft
Sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies divided societies into two large categories: Gemeinschaft societies and Gesellschaft societies. Gemeinschaft societies consist primarily of villages in which everyone knows everyone else. Relationships are lifelong and based on kinship. A Gesellschaft society is modernized. People have little in common with one another, and relationships are short term and based on self-interest, with little concern for the well-being of others.
Postindustrial Societies
The Industrial Revolution transformed Western societies in many unexpected ways. All the machines and inventions for producing and transporting goods reduced the need for human labor so much that the economy transformed again, from an industrial to a postindustrial economy.
A postindustrial society, the 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 a postindustrial economy:
- Focus on ideas: Tangible goods no longer drive the economy.
- Need for higher education: Factory work does not require advanced training, and the new focus on information and technology means that people must pursue greater education.
- Shift in workplace from cities to homes: New communications technology allows work to be performed from a variety of locations.
Mass Society
As industrialized societies grow and develop, they become increasingly different from their less industrialized counterparts. As they become larger, they evolve into large, impersonal mass societies. In a mass society, individual achievement is valued over kinship ties, and people often feel isolated from one another. Personal incomes are generally high, and there is great diversity among people.
Norms
Every society has expectations about how its members should and should not behave. A norm is a guideline or an expectation for behavior. Each society makes up its own rules for behavior and decides when those rules have been violated and what to do about it. Norms change constantly.
How Norms Differ
Norms differ widely among societies, and they can even differ from group to group within the same society.
- Different settings: Wherever we go, expectations are placed on our behavior. Even within the same society, these norms change from setting to setting.
Example: The way we are expected to behave in church differs from the way we are expected to behave at a party, which also differs from the way we should behave in a classroom.
- Different countries: Norms are place-specific, and what is considered appropriate in one country may be considered highly inappropriate in another.
Example: In some African countries, it’s acceptable for people in movie theaters to yell frequently and make loud comments about the film. In the United States, people are expected to sit quietly during a movie, and shouting would be unacceptable.
- Different time periods: Appropriate and inappropriate behavior often changes dramatically from one generation to the next. Norms can and do shift over time.
Example: In the United States in the 1950s, a woman almost never asked a man out on a date, nor did she pay for the date. While some traditional norms for dating prevail, most women today feel comfortable asking men out on dates and paying for some or even all of the expenses.
Norm Categories
Sociologists have separated norms into four categories: folkways, mores, laws, and taboos.
Folkways
A folkway is a norm for everyday behavior that people follow for the sake of convenience or tradition. People practice folkways simply because they have done things that way for a long time. Violating a folkway does not usually have serious consequences.
Example: Holding the door open for a person right behind you is a folkway.
Mores
A more (pronounced MORE-ay) is a norm based on morality, or definitions of right and wrong. Since mores have moral significance, people feel strongly about them, and violating a more usually results in disapproval.
Example: Parents who believe in the more that only married people should live together will disapprove of their son living with his girlfriend. They may consider their son’s action a violation of the moral guidelines for behavior.
Laws
A law is a norm that is written down and enforced by an official agency. Violating a law results in a specific punishment.
Example: It is illegal in most countries to drive a car while drunk, and a person violating this law may get cited for driving under the influence (DUI), which may bring a fine, loss of driver’s license, or even jail time.
Status and Roles
Most people associate status with the prestige of a person’s lifestyle, education, or vocation. According to sociologists, status describes the position a person occupies in a particular setting. We all occupy several statuses and play the roles that may be associated with them. A role is the set of norms, values, behaviors, and personality characteristics attached to a status. An individual may occupy the statuses of student, employee, and club president and play one or more roles with each one.
Example: Status as student
Role 1: Classroom: Attending class, taking notes, and communicating with the professor
Role 2: Fellow student: Participating in study groups, sharing ideas, quizzing other students
Status as employee
Role 1: Warehouse: Unloading boxes, labeling products, restocking shelves
Role 2: Customer service: Answering questions, solving problems, researching information
Status as club president
Role 1: Administrative: Running club meetings, delegating tasks to club members
Role 2: Public: Distributing flyers, answering questions, planning community volunteer activities
At any given time, the individual described above can also occupy the statuses of athlete, date, confidant, or a number of others, depending on the setting. With each change of status, the individual plays a different role or roles.
Society’s Definition of “Roles”
Societies decide what is considered appropriate role behavior for different statuses. For example, every society has the “mother” status. However, some societies consider it inappropriate for a mother to assume the role of authority in the family. Other societies ascribe lots of power to the status of mother. In some societies, students are expected to be completely obedient to teachers. In American society, the student role involves asking the teacher questions and even challenging the teacher’s statements.
Role Conflict
Role conflict results from the competing demands of two or more roles that vie for our time and energy. The more statuses we have, and the more roles we take on, the more likely we are to experience role conflict.
A member of a nonindustrialized society generally has just a few statuses, such as spouse, parent, and villager. A typical middle-class American woman, meanwhile, probably has many statuses, and therefore many roles. She may be a mother, wife, neighbor, member of the PTA, employee, boss, town council president, and part-time student. Because people in modernized societies have so many roles, they are more likely than people in nonindustrialized societies to experience role conflict.
Example: A working father is expected at work on time but is late because one of his children is sick. His roles as father and employee are then in conflict. A role for his father status dictates that he care for his sick child, while a role for his employee status demands that he arrive at work on time.
