Figure 1.  NASA is one of many government agencies with programs that were affected by the government shutdown. Can you think of others? What are the short and long-term effects of the furlough?

Examining society from a macrosociological point of view can be difficult, but as you will see, major shifts (i.e., political, technological, economic, and/or social) such as the French Revolution for Auguste Comte, or the Industrial Revolution for Karl Marx, Émile Durkheim, and Max Weber were epochal events that prompted early sociologists to examine the affected societies. 

September 11, 2001 was such a moment that affected not only the society in which the attacks occurred (the United States), but also impacted societies around the world because of the global interconnectedness of market and communication networks. Many societal frames of reference were called into question by this event, and its incomprehensibility produced widespread feelings of what sociologists call anomie—a condition wherein familiar explanatory norms seem inadequate or unavailable.

The 2018-2019 United States government shutdown provides another illustrative example. Although it was not the first government shutdown, it was the longest. What types of essential services were included in this shutdown? How did it affect federal and state employees and other citizens whose livelihood depends on the smooth operation of government offices? What assumptions about state authority and stability did it weaken or otherwise complicate? The number of government workers impacted was approximately 800,000, and the ripple effect on contractors and and other dependents was substantial.

Society, Culture, and Social Institutions

As you recall from earlier modules, culture describes a group’s shared norms (or acceptable behaviors) and values, whereas society describes a group of people who live in a defined geographical area, and who interact with one another and share a common culture. For example, the United States is a society that encompasses many cultures. 

The following video provides a general overview of the meanings of culture and society and how they are related:

What behavioral rules are in effect when you encounter an acquaintance at school, work, or in the grocery store? Generally, we do not step back to consider all of the intricacies of such normative rules. We may simply say “Hello!” and ask, “How was your weekend?” or offer some other trivial question meant to be a friendly greeting. Rarely do we physically embrace or even touch the individual, and this is often because in our culture we see this as the norm, or the standard of acceptable social behavior. Only when confronted with a different norm do we begin to see cultural differences or even understand that this everyday behavior is part of a larger socialization process. In other cultures, not kissing and/or hugging could be viewed as rude, but in the United States, we have fairly rigid rules about personal space.

CONSIDER THIS

Figure 2. The apps on a phone are like the cultural components of society.

One way to think about the relationship between society and culture is to consider the characteristics of a phone. The phone itself is like society, and the apps on the phone are like culture:

• Society and social institutions = the physical phone/protective phone case
  • The phone has a tangible structure, just as society has specific structures and institutions. Social institutions are like the hardware of the phone.
• Culture = software/apps
  • Apps and software are instructions on the phone that are intangible, just as intangible culture provides the rules and input that make society function.

The software and apps on the phone could be compared to culture. These are the pieces that give the phone a recognizable “personality”, just as the culture of a group describes its beliefs, practices, and guidelines for living. And just as phone apps go through updates or changes, culture can also evolve over time.

Social institutions are mechanisms or patterns of social order focused on meeting social needs, such as government, economy, education, family, healthcare, and religion. Some sociological methods focus on examining social institutions over time, or compare them to social institutions in other parts of the world. In the United States, for example, there is a system of free public education but no universal healthcare program, which is not the case in many other affluent, democratic countries. Throughout the rest of this course, we will devote much of our attention to studying these specific social institutions.

Watch this video to see specific examples of social institutions:

Social institutions can be most visible when they break down. For example, for six days in January 2019, public school teachers in California went on strike. The Los Angeles school district (the second-largest in the nation) scrambled to provide substitute teachers and staff to stay with students after 30,000 teachers walked out, demanding smaller class sizes, more teachers and support staff, and a 6.5% raise. They eventually compromised with a 6% raise, more support staff, and a gradual reduction in class size, but the six days out of school cost the district over 125 million dollars. How do breakdowns of social institutions like this one (public education) affect individuals? How does it affect students? Parents? Teachers and administrators? How would the strike affect other school employees such as cafeteria workers or custodial staff? Our system of public education meets many complex societal needs, including the training and preparation of future voters and workers, but on a more pragmatic level it also provides a place for children to go while parents work.  

Let’s examine a complicated social institution—that of the family. When we think about family as a social institution, we might consider the ways in which the definition of family has changed over time and how this has produced new formal norms (i.e., state and federal laws). The family meets a variety of social needs—including legal (i.e., right to make medical decisions), economic (i.e., inheritance), and social/emotional. The legalization of same-sex marriage was an issue that divided many states and serves as an illustrative sociological example of the interplay between society and culture. 

Types of Societies

Figure 3. How does technology influence a society’s daily occupations? (Photo courtesy of Mo Riza/flickr)

Hunting and gathering tribes, industrialized Japanese, suburban Americans—each is a society. But what does this mean? Exactly what is a society? In sociological terms, society refers to a group of people who live in a definable geographic space and share the same or similar culture. Consider the cell phone example: phone (society), hardware (social institutions), and software (culture).

Sociologist Gerhard Lenski (1924–) defined societies in terms of their technological sophistication. As a society advances, so does its use of technology, which is defined as the application of science to address the problems of daily life.

Societies with rudimentary technology depend on the fluctuations of their environments, while industrialized societies have more control over the impact of their surroundings and thus develop different cultural features. This distinction is so important that sociologists generally classify societies along a spectrum based on their degree of industrialization—from pre-industrial to industrial to post-industrial.

Pre-Industrial Societies

Before the Industrial Revolution and the widespread use of machines, societies were small, rural, and dependent largely on local resources. Economic production was limited to the amount of labor a human being could provide, and there were few specialized occupations. The very first occupation was that of hunter-gatherer.

Hunter-Gatherer

Hunter-gatherer societies demonstrate the strongest dependence on the environment of the various types of pre-industrial societies. As the basic structure of human society until about 10,000–12,000 years ago, these groups were based around kinship or tribes. Hunter-gatherers relied on their surroundings for survival—they hunted wild animals and foraged for uncultivated plants for food. When resources became scarce, the group moved to a new area to find sustenance, meaning they were nomadic. These societies were common until several hundred years ago, but today only a few hundred remain in existence, such as indigenous Australian tribes referred to as “aborigines,” or the Bambuti, a group of pygmy hunter-gatherers in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Hunter-gatherer groups are quickly disappearing as the world’s population increases and fewer truly remote areas exist.

Pastoral

Changing conditions and adaptations led some societies to rely on the domestication of animals where circumstances permitted. Roughly 7,500 years ago, human societies began to recognize their ability to tame and breed animals and to grow and cultivate their own plants. Pastoral societies, such as the Maasai villagers of East Africa, rely on the domestication of animals as a resource for survival. Unlike earlier hunter-gatherers who depended entirely on existing resources to stay alive, pastoral groups were able to breed livestock for food, clothing, and transportation, and they created a surplus of goods. Herding, or pastoral, societies remained nomadic because they were forced to follow their animals to fresh feeding grounds. Around the time that pastoral societies emerged, specialized occupations began to develop, and societies commenced trading with each other.

Further Research

The Maasai are a modern pastoral society with an economy largely structured around herds of cattle. Read more about the Maasai people and see pictures of their daily lives.

Horticultural

Around the same time that pastoral societies were on the rise, another type of society developed, based on the newly developed capacity for people to grow and cultivate plants. Previously, the depletion of a region’s crops or water supply forced pastoral societies to relocate in search of food sources for their livestock. Horticultural societies formed in areas where rainfall and other conditions allowed them to grow stable crops. They were similar to hunter-gatherers in that they largely depended on the environment for survival, but since they didn’t have to abandon their location to follow resources, they were able to start permanent settlements. This created more stability and more material goods and became the basis for the first revolution in human survival.

Agricultural

While pastoral and horticultural societies used small, temporary tools such as digging sticks or hoes, agricultural societies relied on permanent tools for survival. Around 10,000 B.C.E. an explosion of new technology known as the Agricultural Revolution made farming possible—and profitable. Farmers learned to rotate the types of crops grown on their fields and to reuse waste products as fertilizer, which led to better harvests and greater surpluses of food. New tools for digging and harvesting were made of metal, and this made them more effective and longer lasting. Human settlements grew into towns and cities, and particularly bountiful regions became networked centers of trade and commerce.

This is also the age in which people had the time and comfort to engage in more contemplative and thoughtful activities, such as music, poetry, and philosophy. This period came to be known as the “dawn of civilization” by some because of the increase of leisure time and the development of the humanities. Craftspeople were able to support themselves through the production of creative, decorative, or thought-provoking aesthetic objects and writings.

As resources became more plentiful, social classes became more divisive. Those who had more resources could afford better standards of living and developed into a class of nobility. Differences in social standing between men and women increased. As cities expanded, ownership and preservation of resources became a pressing concern.

Feudal

The ninth century gave rise to feudal societies. These societies contained a strict hierarchical system of power based on land ownership and protection. The nobility, known as lords, placed vassals in charge of pieces of land. In return for the resources that the land provided, vassals promised to fight for their lords.

These individual pieces of land, known as fiefdoms, were cultivated by the lower class. In return for maintaining the land, peasants were guaranteed a place to live and protection from outside enemies. Power was handed down through family lines, with peasant families serving lords, often across many generations. Ultimately, the social and economic system of feudalism failed and was replaced by the more non-centralized and entrepreneurial system of capitalism, enabled by the technological advances of the industrial era.

Industrial Society

In the eighteenth century, Europe experienced a dramatic rise in technological invention, ushering in an era known as the Industrial Revolution. What made this period remarkable was the number of new inventions that influenced people’s daily lives. Within a generation, tasks that had until this point required months of labor became achievable in a matter of days. Before the Industrial Revolution, work was largely person or animal-based, and relied on human workers or horses to power mills and drive pumps. In 1782, James Watt and Matthew Boulton created a steam engine that could effectively do the work of twelve horses.

Steam power began appearing everywhere. Instead of paying artisans to painstakingly spin wool and weave it into cloth, people turned to textile mills that produced fabric quickly at a better price and often with better quality. Rather than planting and harvesting fields by hand, farmers were able to purchase mechanical seeders and threshing machines that caused agricultural productivity to soar. Products such as paper and glass became available to the average person, and the quality and accessibility of education and health care soared. Gas lights allowed increased visibility in the dark, and towns and cities developed both a nightlife and greater economic productivity.

One of the results of increased productivity and technology was the rise of urban centers. Workers flocked to factories for jobs, and the populations of cities became increasingly diverse. The new generation became less preoccupied with maintaining family land and traditions and more focused on acquiring wealth and achieving upward mobility. People wanted their children and their children’s children to continue to rise, and as capitalism expanded, so too did social mobility.

Figure 5. John D. Rockefeller, co-founder of the Standard Oil Company, came from an unremarkable family of salesmen and menial laborers. By his death at age 98, he was worth $1.4 billion. In industrial societies, business owners such as Rockefeller hold the majority of the power. (Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

It was during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries of the Industrial Revolution that sociology was born. Life was changing quickly and the long-established traditions of the agricultural eras did not apply to life in the larger cities. Masses of people were moving to new environments and often found themselves faced with horrendous conditions of filth, overcrowding, and poverty. Social scientists emerged to study the relationship between the individual members of society and society as a whole.

It was during this time that power moved from the hands of the aristocracy and “old money” to business-savvy newcomers who amassed fortunes in their lifetimes. Families such as the Rockefellers and the Vanderbilts became the new elites and used their influence in business to control aspects of government as well. Eventually, concerns over the exploitation of workers led to the formation of labor unions and consequently to laws that set mandatory working conditions for employees. Although the introduction of new technology at the end of the nineteenth century ended the industrial age, much of our social structure and many of our social ideas—like family, childhood, and time standardization—have a basis in industrial society.

Post-Industrial Society

Information societies, sometimes known as postindustrial or digital societies, are a recent development. Unlike industrial societies that are rooted in the production of material goods, information societies are based on the production of information and services.

Digital technology is the steam engine of information societies, and computer moguls such as Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are its John D. Rockefellers and Cornelius Vanderbilts. Since the economy of information societies is driven by knowledge and not material goods, power lies with those in charge of storing and distributing information. Members of a postindustrial society are likely to be employed as sellers of services—software programmers or business consultants, for example—instead of producers of goods. Social classes are divided by access to education, since without technical skills, people in an information society lack the means to achieve success.

Where Societies Meet—The Worst and the Best

When cultures meet, technology can help, hinder, and even destroy. The Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska nearly destroyed the local inhabitants’ entire way of life. Oil spills in the Nigerian Delta have forced many of the Ogoni tribe from their land and forced removal has meant that over 100,000 Ogoni have sought refuge in the country of Benin (University of Michigan, n.d.). And the massive Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2006 drew great attention as it occurred in an affluent, highly developed country, the United States. Environmental disasters continue as Western technology and its need for energy expands into less developed regions of the globe.

Figure 4. Otherwise skeptic or hesitant villagers are more easily convinced of the value of the solar project when they realize that the “solar engineers” are their local grandmothers. (Photo courtesy of Abri le Roux/flickr)

Of course not all technology is destructive. We take electric light for granted in the United States, Europe, and the rest of the developed world. Such light extends the day and allows us to work, read, and travel at night. It makes us safer and more productive. But regions in India, Africa, and elsewhere are not so fortunate. Meeting the challenge, one particular organization, Barefoot College, located in District Ajmer, Rajasthan, India, works with numerous less-developed nations to increase access to solar electricity, clean water, and educational resources. The implementation of the solar projects falls to the village elders. They agree to select two grandmothers to be trained as solar engineers and then choose a village committee composed of men and women to help operate the solar program.

The program has brought light to over 450,000 people in 1,015 villages. The environmental rewards include a substantial reduction in the use of kerosene and thus in carbon dioxide emissions. Additionally, the fact that the villagers are operating the projects themselves helps minimize their sense of dependence.

Think It Over

• In which type or types of societies do the benefits seem to outweigh the costs? Explain your answer, and cite social and economic reasons.
• Is Gerhard Lenski right in classifying societies based on technological advances? What other criteria might be appropriate, based on what you have read?