Social circle

“ Secondly, there is a circle of peoples whose ideas are thrown into the arena of rivalry, to suffer extinction or to gain universal acceptance. This circle also is constantly widening by the inclusion of peoples hitherto outside it; and each new admission, as of Japan in recent years, is a new stimulus to the further evolution of the collective mind of each nation concerned. Both these conditions depend upon improved social organisation. ”

“ On the practical side, they were found to have their cause in the divisions of society into more or less rigidly marked-off classes and groups—in other words, in obstruction to full and flexible social interaction and intercourse. ”

“ By this method we discover, for example, as such forms, superiority and inferiority, the erection of hierarchies, competition, division of labor, imitation, representation, and countless other types of human socialization. Only after all their separate forms, from their most primitive to their most developed types, have been inductively determined and psychologically interpreted, can we gradually solve the riddle: “What is society in its essence?” For society is surely not a structure so unitary that a single exhaustive definition is possible. ”

“ They rather serve to exemplify the principle which alone, in my opinion, can found an independent science of sociology, viz., the abstraction of socialization, as a form of existence with and for others, from the concrete conditions, interests, emotions, which make up the content of that form. Neither hunger nor love, neither labor nor the religious sentiment, neither technique nor the contents of intelligence, are in and of themselves alone social in character; but the coexistence and reciprocal influence of human beings make them factors actual and effectual. ”

“ In this way the diverse contents of the forms of socialization nullify each other, and that which is formally the same, the societary form as such, must clearly appear. For instance, we observe the formation of parties on political and artistic, on religious and economic ground. ”

“ To what extent do children follow the vocations of their parents and why? To what extent do individuals move from one class to another, and how does this fact modify the character of class relationships? News and the mobility of the social group.—The division of labor, in making individual success dependent upon concentration upon a special task, has had the effect of increasing the interdependence of the different vocations. A social organization is thus created in which the individual becomes increasingly dependent upon the community of which he is an indivisible part. ”

“ Its aim, in fact, was to end this isolation.
But the community from which the worker is isolated is a community of quite a different nature from and of quite other dimensions than the political community. This community, from which his own labour separates him, is life itself, physical and intellectual life, human morality, human activity, human enjoyment, the human community. ”

“ The origin of these divisions we have found in the hard and fast walk which mark off social groups and classes within a group: like those between rich and poor, men and women, noble and baseborn, ruler and ruled. These barriers mean absence of fluent and free intercourse. This absence is equivalent to the setting up of different types of life-experience, each with isolated subject matter, aim, and standard of values. ”

“ If you can once see that a working majority is obtained for the handsome passions, for the feelings that draw us together, rather than for the feelings that separate us, then you have laid the foundation of a community and a free government and, therefore, if you can do nothing else in the community center than draw men together so that they will have common feeling, you will have set forward the cause of civilization and the cause of human freedom. ”

“ And if, as seems probable, this group activity is to remain a dominant feature of social progress, even in a fairly coherent society, it is manifest that there will result more or less of competition among groups. ”

“ It may be literally true, that the chief formation of a long-drawn social life is not the relation of authority and subordination between parts of the group, not the gradation of its members into classes, not the systems of sustaining, transporting or regulating organs, but certain ideals and standards, certain likes and dislikes, certain admirations and abhorrences become common to its members. Here then, I venture to suggest, is the ultimate test of association. The abiding of men in the same neighborhood without conflict is mere aggregation. ”

“ Consider how by a thousand actions and interactions the members of every community are linked together, and how in the present condition of things even the fortunate few who stand upon the apex of the social pyramid must suffer, though they know it not, from the want, ignorance, and degradation that are underneath. Consider these things and then say whether the change I propose would not be for the benefit of every one—even the greatest land holder? ”

“ As he grows, the community in which he lives pours itself into his being in the language he learns and the social atmosphere he breathes, so that the content of his being implies in its every fibre relations of community. He is what he is by including in his essence the relations of the social State.... ”

“ Indeed, the highest or ruling class nowhere appears to keep up its numbers without considerable recruitment from below. So society, as at present organized, is always dying off at the top, and proliferating at the bottom, of the social pyramid.
The disastrous consequences of this sort of social organization may easily be apprehended, with a little reflection. (1) All societies, even those whose social structure is most rigid, have need of ability, discover it, and reward it by social promotion. ”

“ Importance of social environment I take the explanation of the differences that distinguish communities to be this: That each society, small or great, necessarily weaves for itself a web of knowledge, beliefs, customs, language, tastes, institutions and laws. Into the web woven by each society (or rather, into these webs, for each community above the simplest is made up of minor societies that overlap and interlace each other) the individual is received at birth and continues until his death. ”

“ We turn to some of the normal uses of this form of social organization, and mention first the satisfaction of transitory wants of society or the needs of a local group or of a limited class. Differentiation carries with it variation of tastes. We must expect with higher civilization a growing unlikeness of aptitudes and inclinations. People who like the same things drift together. ”

“ It is, therefore, the competition of life which is the societal element, and which produces societal organization. The number present and in competition is another of the life conditions. At a time and place the life conditions are the same for a number of human beings who are present, and the problems of life policy are the same. This is another reason why the attempts to satisfy interest become mass phenomena and result in folkways. The individual and social elements are always in interplay with each other if there are a number present. ”

“ And thence would spring society, free association, hundreds of associations which would regulate social life; though at the same time they would remain variable, in fact often opposed and hostile to one another. ”

“ The subject-matter of sociology is, therefore, the forms or ways in which human beings exist beside, for, and with each other. The purposes for the sake of which these socializations come into being—economic and social, [2] religious and criminal, sexual and military, political and ethical, etc.—will be treated by other sciences. ”

“ To the practice of these social amenities is doubtless ascribable the absence of any rancor from the rough contests and collisions of public life, and thus men of every shade of politics and party, differing even in class and condition, formed admirable social elements, and cohered together to perfection. ”

“ This relation, in which the mutual rendering of services is unforced and neither individual subordinated, becomes the predominant relation throughout society, in proportion as the industrial activities predominate. Daily determining the thoughts and sentiments, daily disciplining all in asserting their own claims, while forcing them to recognize the correlative claims of others, it produces social units whose mental structures and habits mould social arrangements into corresponding forms. ”

“ Moreover the gradations of social rank thus originated in the upper circles reproduced themselves in the middle and lower strata of local society, which accordingly became subdivided into mutually exclusive cliques and sets. ”

“ In its deepest aspect, consequently, the social problem is the problem of preventing such divisions from dissolving the society into which they enter—of keeping such a highly differentiated society fundamentally sound and whole. ”

“ Without a social capital, with twenty or more communities divided by distance and political barriers, her people, who are really more homogenous than any other of the same numbers in the world perhaps, possess no standard for opinion, manners, social maxims, or even language. ”

“ The social separation reflected in the spectacle is inseparable from the modern state — the product of the social division of labor that is both the chief instrument of class rule and the concentrated expression of all social divisions. ”

“ All the shiftings, surgings, and upheavals of society arise from the strained relations between the individual and the social organization through which the individual attempts to realize his life. Sociology seizes at once upon social organization as a means of personal development. ”

“ The problem, however, of how those established and more or less deeply grooved systems of interaction which we call social groups, big and small, modify the activities of individuals who perforce are caught-up within them, and how the activities of component individuals remake and redirect previously established customs is a deeply significant one. ”

“ On that basis a company of gladiators or a pugilist's club ranks below a village improvement society; that in turn yields in importance to a learned association of physicians discussing the best means of relieving human suffering. In the slow process of social evolution those forms that do not contribute to the welfare of the race will lose their place in society.
11. Results of Association.—The results of association are among the permanent assets of the race. Man has become what he is because of his social relations, and further progress is dependent upon them. ”

“ The purposeful and systematic types, in common with the Individualist and Marxist, regard the Normal Social Life, for all the many thousands of years behind it, as a phase, and as a phase which is now passing, in human experience; and they are prepared for a future society that may be ultimately different right down to its essential relationships from the human past. ”

“ Most that has been written thus far has been based upon general observation, and almost no systematic methods exist for the study of this type of social organization. The practical methods which practical men like the political boss, the labor agitator, the stock-exchange speculator, and others have worked out for the control and manipulation of the public and the crowd furnish a body of materials from which it is possible to make a more detailed, a more intimate study of what may be called, in order to distinguish it from that of more highly organized groups, collective behavior. ”

“ Since now socialization only occurs among human beings for the sake of such purposes, we shall discover the laws of social forms only by collecting such societary phenomena of the most diverse contents, and by ascertaining what is common to them in spite of their diversity. ”

“ Lack of success has led to the search for causes, and investigation has revealed the obstacles, as well as the aids, to reform embodied in influential persons, "political bosses," "union leaders," "the local magnate," and in powerful groups such as party organizations, unions, associations of commerce, etc. Social control, it appears, is resident, not in individuals as individuals, but as members of communities and social groups. ”

“ The friends of humanity start out with certain benevolent feelings toward "the poor," "the weak," "the laborers," and others of whom they make pets. They generalize these classes, and render them impersonal, and so constitute the classes into social pets. They turn to other classes and appeal to sympathy and generosity, and to all the other noble sentiments of the human heart. Action in the line proposed consists in a transfer of capital from the better off to the worse off. ”

“ The view of theoretic civics as concrete sociology, and of practical civics as applied sociology may be more simply expressed as the co-adjustment of social survey and social service, now becoming recognised as rational, indeed in many cities being begun. ”

“ We must therefore regard social action as proceeding not only from above downwards, but also from below upwards, and indeed mutually and reciprocally through all the members and departments of society, from the centre to the extremities and from the extremities to the centre. ”

“ The secret of the difference in the expansion of the two peoples is the difference of innate mental quality that we are considering, enhanced by the differences of custom and of political and family organisation engendered by it. For, like all other innate tendencies, the two to which we are referring obtain accentuated expression through moulding customs, institutions and social organisation in ways which foster in successive generations just those tendencies of which these institutions are themselves the traditional outcome and expression. ”