6 Social Structure

Dr. Meenal Dhall

Table of Content

Definition of Social Structure
Perspectives on Social Structure
Elements of Social Structure
Structuralism
Formal and informal structures
Types of Social Structure (given by TALCOTT PARSONS)
Criticisms
Social Structure and Social Organization (argued by Raymond Firth)
Social Structure and Role
Evolution of social structure
Recent trends in social structure theory
Conclusion

Learning outcomes:

To define and discuss the perspectives of social structures
To know about the types of social structures
To study Social Structure and Role in society and its evolution
To know about recent trends in social structure theory

Definition of Social Structure

Social structure is a part of the social structure of all social relations of person to person (Radcliffe Brown). Study of social structure, the concrete reality is the set of actually existing relations at a given moment of time which link together certain human beings.

SOMETHING ABOUT RADCLIFFE BROWN

A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, in full Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown (Jan. 17, 1881-Oct. 24, 1955), English social anthropologist of the 20th century; developed a systematic framework of concepts and generalizations relating to the social structures of preindustrial societies and their functions.
Widely known for the theory of functionalism and the role in the foundation of British social anthropology.
Radcliffe-Brown went to the Andaman Islands (1906–08), where his fieldwork won him a fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge. On his expedition to Western Australia (1910–12), he focussed on kinship and family organization.
He became director of education for the kingdom of Tonga (1916) and served as professor of social anthropology at the University of Cape Town (1920–25), where he founded the School of African Life and Languages.
His study The Andaman Islanders contained the essential formulation of his ideas and methods.
At the University of Sydney (1925–31) he developed a vigorous teaching program involving research in theoretical and applied anthropology. His theory had its classic formulation and application in The Social Organisation of Australian Tribes (1931).
He concerned to explain social phenomena as enduring systems of adaptation, fusion, and integration of elements. He explained that social structures are arrangements of persons and that organizations are the arrangements of activities; therefore, the life of a society can be viewed as an active system of functionally consistent, interdependent elements.
According to Radcliffe brown; ―Social structures are just as real as are individual organisms. A complex organism is a collection of living cells and interstitial fluids arranged in a certain structure; and a living cell is similarly a structural arrangement of complex molecules. The physiological and psycho- logical phenomena that we observe in the lives of organisms are not simply the result of the nature of the constituent molecules or atoms of which the organism is built up, but are the result of the structure in which they are united. So also the social phenomena which we observe in any human society are not the immediate result of the nature of individual human beings, but are the result of the social structure by which they are united‖.
General definition of social structure,‖ enduring orderly and patterned relationships between the elements of a society‖.
Social structure, in sociology, the distinctive, stable arrangement of institutions in which human beings in a society interact and live together. Social structure is often treated along with the concept of social change, which deals with the forces that brings change in the social structure and the organization of society.
Although it is generally see that the term social structure termed as regularities in social life, its application is inconsistent. For instance, sometimes the term is wrongly applied when other concepts such as custom, tradition, role, or norm would be more accurate.
Raymond Firth: It makes no distinction between the ephemeral and the most enduring elements in social activity and also almost impossible to distinguish the idea of the structure of society from that of the totality of the society itself.

SOMETHING ABOUT RAYMOND FIRTH

Sir Raymond Firth (25 March 1901 – 22 February 2002) was born in Auckland, New Zealand. He is well known for the study of Maori culture.
He received basic education at Auckland Grammar School, and then went on to Auckland University College, where he graduated in economics in 1921. He completed his M.A. there in 1922, with the thesis on the Kauri Gum Industry, and in 1923, received a diploma in social science.
In 1924, he went to London to begin his doctoral research at the London School of Economics (LSE). He started to work on a thesis on the ―frozen meat industry in New Zealand.‖
After receiving PhD in 1927, Firth returned to the southern hemisphere to take up a position at the University of Sydney, although he did not start teaching immediately as a research opportunity presented itself.
In 1928, he first visited Tikopia, the southernmost of the Solomon Islands, to study the untouched Polynesian society there, resistant to outside influences and still with its Pagan religion and undeveloped economy.
This was the beginning of a long relationship with the 1200 people of the remote four mile long island, and resulted in ten books and numerous articles written over many years.
The first of these, We the Tikopia: A Sociological Study of Kinship in Primitive Polynesia was published in 1936.
In 1930 he started teaching at the University of Sydney. On the departure for Chicago of Alfred Radcliffe-Brown, Firth succeeded him as acting Professor.
He also took over from Radcliffe-Brown as acting editor of the journal Oceania, and as acting director of the Anthropology Research Committee of the Australian National Research Committee
S.F Nadel: Social Structure refers to a definable articulation and ordered arrangement of parts (outer aspect) and unconcerned with the functional aspect of society, i.e. it refers to the network of social relationship which is created among the human beings when they interact with each other according to their statuses in accordance with the patterns of society.
Ginsberg: The study of social structure is concerned with the principal form of social organization that is types of groups, associations and institutions and the complex of these which constitute societies.
Karl Mannheim: Social structure refers to the web of interacting social forces from which have aroused the various modes of observing and thinking. The institutions and associations are inter-related in a particular arrangement and thus create the pattern of social structure. It refers to the external aspect of society which is relatively stable as compared to the functional or internal aspect of society.
Social structure is a living structure which is created, maintained for a time and changes.
Studies of social structure tried to explain matters such as integration and trends in inequality. In the study of these phenomena, sociologists trying to analyse organizations, social categories (example age groups), or rates (example crime or birth).
This approach, however called Formal Sociology, which does not refer directly to individual behaviour or interpersonal interaction. Therefore, social structure does follow an empirical (observational) approach to research, methodology, and epistemology.
General aspects of the social structure of any society can be seen as in the Social life which is structured along the dimensions of time and space.
Specific social activities take place at specific times, and time is divided into periods that are connected with the rhythms of social life—the routines of the day, the month, and the year.

Perspectives on Social Structure

Levi Strauss: Levi-Strauss conceived of social structure as logic behind reality. He insisted that the term social structure rely on the models which are built up after it and has nothing to do with empirical reality, where social relations are the raw materials out of which the models making up the social structure are built, the structure itselfresult from such re-existing structures.

The structures exhibit the characteristics of a system and are made up of several elements none of which can undergo change without effecting changes in all other elements.

Nadel: Nadel views social structure as reality itself. He regards the role system of any society with its given coherence as matrix of social structure, outlines two specific advantages of structural analysis. These are lending a higher degree of comparability to social data and render such data more readily quantifiable.

Nadel contends that particular social structure as described at a given moment is accurate. Structure and variance are not inherently contradictory rather the former is built up through taking account of the latter. If variance is unlimited there would be absolute chaos and no order in social life.

Murdock

For defining social structure, Murdock’s principle concern is the ethnographic facts and the taxonomic classification, in his book Social Structure (1949), (primarily on varieties of kinship organization) of societies on the basis of discernible characteristics.

The taxonomy is based on statistical correlation instead of functional analysis.

Elements of Social Structure

In this, there are four systems which are described as follows:

(a) Normative system presents society with ideals and value; attach emotional importance to these norms. The institutions and associations are inter-related and the individuals perform their roles in accordance with the accepted norms of society.

(b) Position system refers to the statuses and roles of the individuals. The desires, aspirations and expectations of the individuals are varied, multiple and unlimited. According to their capacities and capabilities, these can be fulfilled only if the members of the society are assigned different roles and statuses. Actually the proper functioning of social structure depends on them.

(c) For the proper enforcement of norms, every society has a sanction system. The integration and coordination of different parts of social structure depend upon conformity of social norms and the effectiveness of this sanction system brings stability of a social structure.

(d) Anticipated response system tells us about the participation of individuals in the social system. Their participation sets the social structure in motion. The successful working of social structure depends upon the realisation of his/her duties by the individuals and his/her efforts to fulfil these duties.

The whole social structure revolves around it. The ACTION is the root cause which helps to weave the web of social relationships and sets the social structure in motion.

Social structure is an abstract entity. Parts are the dynamic and constantly changing.

They are spatially widespread and therefore difficult to see as wholes. Social structure denotes patterns which change more slowly than the particular personnel who constitute them.

Structuralism

Structuralism, sometimes called French structuralism (as a school of thought) emphasizes the perception that society is prior to individuals. It employs the nature of social interaction as patterned behaviour and uses it as a tool in all sociological analysis.
French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss derived theory from structural linguistics, developed by the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. According to Saussure, any language is structured in the sense that its elements are interrelated in no arbitrary, regular, rule-bound ways; a competent speaker of the language largely follows these rules without being aware of doing so.
The task of the theorist is to detect this underlying structure, including the rules of transformation that connect the structure to the various observed expressions.
Claude Levi-Strauss used this method by providing necessary analysis to study the myth. The structural method purposely detects the common structure of widely different social and cultural forms.
The elements i.e. which is basic to human mind and universally applicable persist the possible varieties of social structure.
Marxist sociologist, Louis Althusser refer structure of mode of production, has adopted a structuralise framework in explaining social phenomena by criticising Berger and Luckman in their view that the dialectical processes of human interaction in which meaning given by individuals when institutionalized becomes social structure.
Instead Louis argued that the human agency is only the agents of the structure of social relation, which should form the basis of analysing the social structure.
Anthony Giddens used the term Structuration to express mutual dependency of human agency and social structure. Social structure should be perceived as associated with social action.
Social institutions (as organized patterns of social behaviour) are proposed as the elements of social structure by the functionalists.
Karl Marx analysed to sustain inequalities in society how social relations are structured. By using the concept of structurehe denotes the distribution of resources. Therefore, Structure is the symbolic, material and political resources which actors employ in their interactions and therefore produce the structure of their social relations.
In the Interaction process, Marx used the concept of dialectics, which in turn tend to change and transform the nature of social relations thereby changing the social structure.
French philosopher, Michel Foucault used this approach in the study of corporal punishment.
The research concluded that the abolition of corporal punishment by liberal states was an illusion, because the state changes punishment of the ―soul‖ by maintaining and controlling both the behaviour of prisoners and the behaviour of everyone in the society.
DIFFERENCE: Social structure theory and structuralism brings out distinction. Analysis of social structure uses standard empirical (observational) methods to arrive at generalizations about society, while structuralism uses subjective, interpretive, phenomenological, and qualitative analysis.
As most of the sociologists prefer the social structure approach and refer the structuralism as philosophical which is more compatible with the humanities than with the social sciences. Whilst, a significant number of sociologists argued that structuralism occupies a legitimate place in their discipline.

Formal and Informal Structure

Social structure can be both formal and informal. In the words of Maciver and Page, those factors which give rise to the primary groups in industrial organization are present in all formalized social structures.
Thus in government agencies, political parties, schools, labour unions; the complete organisational picture includes the formal blue-print arrangements and informal spontaneous grouping.

Types of Social Structure (given by TALCOTT PARSONS)

Talcott Parsons has described 4 principal types of social structure, based on four social values

(a) Universalistic social values are those which are found almost in every society and are applicable to everybody.

(b) Particularistic social values are the features of particular societies and these differ from society to society.

(c) When the statuses are achieved on the basis of efforts it means that such societies attach importance to Achieved social values.

(d) When the statuses are hereditary even the society gives importance to Ascribed social statuses.

UNIVERSALISTIC-ACHEIVEMENT PATTERN-This is the combination of the value patterns which built mostly around kinship,community,class and race; when sometimes opposed to the values of a social structure. Under this type of social structure, the choice of goal of an individual and his/ her pursuits must be in accord with the universalistic values.Such a system is dynamically developing norms with an encouragement for initiative.

UNIVERSALISTIC ASCRIPTION PATTERN – Under this type of social structure, the elements of value-orientation are dominated by the elements of ascription. Therefore in such a social structure strong emphasis is laid on the status of the individual rather than on his specific achievements, on what an individual is rather than on what he has done. Status is ascribed to the group rather than to the individuals. Therefore, in this type, all resources are mobilized in the interest of the collective ideal.

PARTICULARISTIC ACHEIVEMENT PATTERN-This type combines achievement values with particularism.The primary criterion of valued achievement is focussed on certain points of reference within the relational system itself or are inherent in the situation. The emphasis on achievement leads to the conception of a proper pattern of adaption which is a product of human achievement and which are maintained by continuous efforts.

PARTICULARISTIC ASCRIPTIVE PATTERN – In this type also the social structure is organized around the relational reference points notably those of kinship and local community but it differs from the particularistic achievement type in as much as the relational values are taken as given and passively adapted to rather than make for an actively organized system. The structure tends to be traditionalistic and emphasis is laid on its stability.

CRITICISMS

Theories of Class and Power

American sociologist Robert K. Merton, provided these ―distributional‖ properties a central place in their concepts of social structure. According to Merton and others, social structure consists inequalities of power, status, and material privileges, that provide the members of a society widely different opportunities and alternatives, as not only of distributive patterns according to Talcott Parsons
In complex societies, these inequalities referred as different strata, or classes, which form the stratification system, or class structure, of the society, which is contrary to structural functionalism which tells us that certain norms in a society may be established because of any general consensus about their moral value; but in contrary they are forced upon the population by those who have both the interest in doing so and the power to carry it out.
For instance, the ―norms‖ of apartheid in South Africa which reflected the interests and values of that one sect of the population that had the power to enforce them upon the majority.
The most significant and influential theory was Marxism, or historical materialism. In Marx’s phrase ―The ideas of the ruling class are, in every age, the ruling ideas.‖ This model was claimed to be particularly valid for capitalist societies, has met with much criticism.
The basic problem is its distinction between economic structure [Struktur] and spiritual superstructure [Überbau], which are identified with social being and consciousness, respectively. This suggests that economic activities and relations are in themselves somehow independent of consciousness, as if they occur independently of human beings.
Therefore, apart from these issues, Social structure here refers to the ways people are interrelated or interdependent; culture refers to the ideas, knowledge, norms, customs, and capacities that they have learned and share as members of a society.

Social Structure and Social Organization (argued by Raymond Firth)

According to the perception of Raymond Firth social structure is concerned with the ordered relation of parts to the whole with an arrangement in which the elements of social life are linked together and mainly, are concerned about institutional arrangements and relation between social groups.
Therefore, the term social structure means a more permanent and continuous pattern of social reality.
Firth has proposed the concept of social organization in this context which as opposed to social structure is concerned about temporary and changing nature of social reality.
Individuals choose between alternative modes of behaviour and take decisions as they evaluate them according to their perceptions to the fulfilment of a goal which are set by the group they belong.

Social Structure and Role

In a social structure, roles are significant than role occupants. Role occupants in turn divide themselves into sub-groups.
According to Johnson it is untrue to talk about that all the stability, regularity and recurrence which can be observed in social interaction because of the normative patterning; Roles and sub-groups are also the parts of social structure for stability, regularity and recurrence in social interaction because of the social norms that define the roles and obligation of sub-groups.
Sub-groups and roles are closely related to each other because those who required performing certain roles have some duties and obligations towards the group to which they belong.
The responsibilities of role occupant can be broadly divided into Obligatory and Permissive. However, each social structure has also quasi-structural aspect.
In complex society there can be standardised or institutionalized norms.

EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL STRUCTURE

According to Lester F. Ward The Man’s construction and production are called the Structure.
Social structure can be identical with both the inorganic and organic structures.
Also, they are the production of the interaction of antagonistic forces.
―Social Differentiation‖ can be seen in the division of clans which results from the wider separation of clans. They also persists different languages.
The stage of Social differentiation is succeeded by ―Social Integration‖. In this, the social structure is the simple forms, and the clan is composed altogether of similar elements.
The great institution takes its rise at this stage, is that of PROPERTY.
It can be defined as the establishment of the state and with its recognition of rights under the law, it can be enjoyed by distribute object which can be rightfully acquired.
According to author, Leslie F. Ward, the conquering race or superior class or caste represents the social ectoderm (as used in biology, as outer layer of tissue).
The conquered race or inferior class or caste represents the social ectoderm (the inner layer of the tissue).
The Social Mesoderm is not so simple, but it is not less real. It is one of the most important consequences of race amalgamation. In this, the social mesoderm is referred to Industrial, commercial or Business class which is the real life of the society.
The superior or ruling class is more dependent on them for the supply of resources of the state and gradually the members of this class acquire more or less influence or power.
Then the stage of Differentiation is succeeded by ―Social Assimilation‖. It, also, can be referred as the Compound Assimilation.
Compound assimilation results when people or nations of lower social elements gets amalgamate on a higher plane and repeat the process. Therefore, the new society is of a higher grade and a more potent factor in the world.
Thus, the state becomes a vast systemized organization.
The existence of Wealth creates another kind of leisure class who turn their attention to various higher pursuits.
Then, Educational systems are established and the study of human existence and nature is undertaken.
The era of Science, that is, the invention and discovery are stimulated and the conquest of nature and mastery of the world begin.
Every one of these civilizing agencies is a social structure and all of them are the product of the one universal process.
Now, further, we talked about that how the social structure is formed. It can be viewed as that spontaneous products of a great cosmical law i.e. organized, firm, compact and durable mechanisms ; lesson taught by the science of Sociology.
Therefore the Human institution is the product of the evolution, which cannot be destroyed and modified by the same process of evolution.
For the Structures, that is easily modified and always undergoing changes.
At last, all social structures taken together constitute the social order. But the problem is to inaugurate the condition of Social progress, which cannot be done by disturbing the social order.
A Structure referred to a state of equilibrium, but never a perfect equilibrium and the conversion of this partial equilibrium, into a moving equilibrium provided its move in the right direction is Social Progress.

RECENT TRENDS IN SOCIAL STRUCTURE THEORY

In contemporary theories, they mainly focus on the development of theories, laws, generalizations, calculi, and methods which account for structural regularities in the society.
However, it is not concerned about the demonstration of the limitless structural regularities in society (such as linguistic routines, the permanence of national boundaries, the stability of religious practices, or the durability of gender or racial inequality).
In concrete terms, the primary task of structural analysis is to account for the rates of poverty, not just account for the poverty. Also, the analysis focuses on empirical data as well.
Only a few sociologists have developed structural theories that apply to institutions and whole societies—an approach known as Macro sociology. Gerhard Lenski in Power and Privilege (1966) classified societies on the basis of their main tools of subsistence and, explained statistically that variations in the primary tools used in a given society systematically demonstrated for different types of social stratification systems.
An entire specialty in sociology is built on a structural theory developed by Amos Hawley in Human Ecology (1986). For Hawley, the explanatory variables are the makeup of the population, the external environment, the complex of organizations, and technology.
Research has revealed that these variables account for differences in the spatial characteristics, rhythm of activities, mobility patterns, and external relations between communities in various parts of the world.
Hawley focused on the problem of its expansion and growth by applying this framework to the world ecosystem.
Hawley’s work has emphasized technology as the critical factor, apart from the political factors, according to Marxian model.
He explained that the growth and spread of technology brings about population growth, burdens the land, and influence changes in the organization of institutions.
In Structural Contexts of Opportunities (1994), Peter M. Blau developed a formal Macrosociological theory tells us about the influences of large population structures on social life by identifying how different population groups relate to each other. He found that occupational heterogeneity increases the chance for contact between people in different status groups.
For populations with multiple-group affiliations, in-group associations tend to promote intergroup relations.
These are some examples of ways in which logically drawn abstract generalizations provide insights about society.

Conclusion

Social structure and social change, exclusively in the fields of sociology and social and cultural anthropology, are general concepts used by social scientists.
They are often perceived as polarized concepts, with social structure and social change reflecting the opposite.
Whereas, the relationship between the two concepts is more complicated. Social structure, for instance, cannot be conceptualized adequately without some recognition of actual or potential change, also social change, is structured over time and without the notion of continuity.
Both concepts, in the last, can contribute to a fuller understanding of society, its patterns, and patterns of change.

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REFERENCES

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