Social Grouping: From Tribes to Globalization
Forms of Social Grouping: Group, Society, State
Another important way to study the relationships between the individual and society refers to forms of social grouping. The individual is the smallest unit, the building block of society.
A social group is the set of people who interrelate with one another because they share the same rules, values, and purposes. They share a common identity.
We tend to differentiate between:
- Primary groups: Families and groups emanating from kinship ties.
- Secondary groups: School, work, etc.
Modern societies are characterized by the prominence given to secondary clusters. Society is the broader term for a social group, usually understood as the totality of individuals.
A society is a large number of individuals who act together to meet their social needs and who share a common culture.
This definition clearly distinguishes the group from the company because this covers only one sector of society, and culture, because a society is much broader. You could say the group is made up of people, and society is made up of groups.
Sometimes society and state are confused:
The state is a form of political organization constituted by the political system of a society.
In the notion of the state, there is a new category: politics, the organization of power. It is not a proper object of sociology but of political science.
Three Different Forms of Social Organization
Changing Forms of Social Organization
The forms of social organization have evolved from primary groups, based on familial relationships, to increasingly complex societies based on shared interests and projects.
It has gone through different phases, looking for more effective forms of organization. Its development could be summed up in:
- Tribal: Small groupings based on kinship. Economic relations are based on subsistence and the exchange of products. It is a form of self-organization of prehistory. Today, some tribal groups still exist.
- Slave: It starts from the earliest civilizations in antiquity. They are large groupings of individuals in cities or empires, where only a few lead and hold the position of citizens, and the rest are engaged in production; most farmers are slaves.
- Feudal: It belongs to the Middle Ages, where the feudal lords were the political and military leaders, responsible for social order and organization. The economy was fundamentally rural, and every gentleman had his fief and his own subjects.
- Modern: Based on the development of industry and commerce. It is a time of great industrial and social revolutions. Social organization is transformed radically. Nations around the claim: all humans are equal, regardless of status, role, or position.
Modernity is a before and after in social organization. Before modernity, the organismic model prevailed.
The Organismic Model
These are the patterns of social organization prior to modernity. Social organization is above the individual.
The individual is only a part that must satisfy its function within the whole, which is the most important. The society is an organized whole; the parts are interrelated by ties of need, whether family (in tribal societies) or economic dependence (in slave and feudal societies).
An individual cannot exist isolated from the social; the individual’s life outside of society is meaningless.
In this model, the individual has no freedom. Autonomy and decision-making are only for the powerful or the prince. Achieving them has been a sign of social progress and has required struggles and claims.
Social revolutions from the 17th century, culminating with the French Revolution, were essential. Following these, a new social model will be forged.
The Individualistic Model
Modernity is the origin of a new social model, a new form of understanding the individual and their relationship with society. The fight that took place in this era ended with the recognition of a series of equal rights and freedoms for all by the creators of society.
The fall of the old regime brings new forms of social and political organization. The sovereign is no longer the prince but the individual.
Human beings are social because they are interested, they agree to create a common power. It’s the time of philosophical theories of the social contract (T. Hobbes, J.-J. Rousseau, J. Locke) that brought about a revolution in political philosophy and represent the theoretical model on which existing democracies have been constructed.
Characteristics of Social Organization Today
- They are indebted to the model developed in social and political modernity: The value of the individual, freedom, and autonomy, as well as the aspiration of a life based on equality and dignity of all human beings.
- Autonomy has been overvalued, and the value of the individual, to the point that we speak of “selfish individualism.” It is the rise of capitalism, consumerism that felt that the freedom of the social and private duties of citizens. Some define the actual human being as a “being consumed.”
- The problem lies in achieving the appropriate balance between state power and the individual. The state has its institutions to exercise power, but to legitimize its power, it depends on the value of individuals as people.
- The intervention of civil society in the field of social and political organization is encouraged and believed in. Civil society is an association of individuals outside interests, and political institutions are united because they share common interests and concerns: family, religious, etc. All these associations are very important, representing the value of the individual and the individual, but associated so that forces can join to achieve a common goal. These associations can exercise control over state power, prompting a call for independent public opinion and achievements of common interest. Philosophers and intellectuals strengthen educated and informed civil society. They appeal to solidarity and responsibility of civil society as an alternative future.
- Globalization: Social organization has exceeded the limits of the state, and they resort to supranational organizations such as the United Nations or the European Union. New times demand global solutions. Civil society, the union of solidarity, and human groups also have an open task. The education of the younger generation is a social challenge that can contribute to a solution but requires solutions from personal initiatives, even though they have a social implication. The individual and the social are intertwined again.