Essay on Society: The Meaning and Nature of Society

Here is your essay on society, it’s meaning and nature!

In common parlance, the word ‘society’ is used in several of meaning, for example, a group of women is called a women society. The word is also used for some specific institutions like Brahmo Samaj (society) or Arya Samaj.

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Society is neither an agglomeration of men, women and children nor their coming together to achieve an object with an eye on their eventual disagreement. In sociology, the term society refers not to a group of people but to the complex pattern of the norms of interaction that arise among them.

It is according to Maclver and Page, “a system of usage and procedures, authority and mutual aid, of many groupings and divisions, of controls of human behaviour and of liberties. Society involves the whole gamut of relations. It is structural and functional arrangement. From structural point of view it concerns role, status, norms, values, institutions.

Functionally, society may be defined as a complex of groups in reciprocal relationships interacting upon one another, enabling each person to achieve the fulfillment of life. Further society may be viewed dynamically. Society may be viewed as the process of stimulus response relationship which result in interaction, communication and consensus.

The stimulus-response relationship is at the core of organised living. In order to carry out on their life-activities, men must make successful responses not only to the nature but to fellowmen and to the culture of their group. Social interaction is that dynamic force which modifies the attitudes and behaviour of the participants.

It takes place through communication. In communication one person infers from the behaviour of another the idea or feeling of the other person. He then reacts not to the behaviour as such but to the inferred meaning of it, and the other person likewise reacts to his response.

This give rise to common understanding and common definition of the situation, in short, consensus. Society consists in mutual interaction and inters relation of individuals and of the structure formed by their relations. Therefore, society refers not to a group of people but to the complex pattern of norms of interaction that arise among them. Society is process rather than a thing, motion rather than structure. The important aspect of society is the system of relationships by which the members of the society maintain themselves.

According to Ginsberg, “A society is a collection of individuals united by certain relations or modes of behaviour which mark them off from others, who don not enter into those relations or who differ from them in behaviour”

As Giddings defines, “Society is the union itself, the organisation, the sum of formal relations in which associating individuals are bound together.” This definition of society places the emphasis upon its organisational aspect. In this way, Giddings, like Ginsberg, has accepted society as an organised group, and has professed to a unity in the relation between its members and their modes of behaviour.

Society may be defined as the total complex of human relationships in so far as they grow out of action in terms of means-end relationship, intrinsic or symbolic”, says Parsons. Maclver, Parsons, Cooley have given functional definition of society.

Hence, society is to be interpreted in a wider sense. It is both structural, functional and dynamic organisation.

Nature of Society:

(i) Society is abstract:

Society may be visualised as the behaviour of human beings and the consequent problems of relationships and adjustments that arise. According to Renter, “Society is an abstract term that connotes the complex of interrelations that exist between and among the members of the group. In this way, society exists wherever there are good or bad, proper or improper relationships between human beings. These social relationships are not evident, they do not have any concrete from, hence society is abstract.

(ii) Society is not a group of people:

Some sociologists have viewed society as a group of people. Wright writes, “Though society is real thing, it means in essence a state or condition, a relationship and is therefore necessarily an abstraction”.

(iii) Society is organisation of relationships:

Society is the total complex of human relationships. It includes whole range of human relations.

(iv) Physical element in social relationship:

According to Maclver and Giddings and some other sociologists, social relationships invariably possess a psychical element, which takes the form of awareness of another’s presence, common objective or common interest etc.

There is neither any society nor any social relationship, without this realisation. Society exists only where social beings behave towards one another in a manner determined by recognition of each other. Only those relationships which are so determined are social. Social relationship differ from relations between other objects, only by virtue of this psychic element. They have in them an element of emotion and feeling, urges, sympathy and sentiments.