Social organization

“ Our present social organization, however, will and must endure until our middle class is provided with some better ideal of life than it has now. Our present organization has been an appointed stage in our growth ”

“ Social organization comes next in order and because its process was associated with the organization of relief—the first social activity—the sociological factors observed in the latter call for descriptive treatment. ”

“ Literally a system of social organization, commonly a designation for all those teachings and aspirations which contemplate a radical change of the existing social and economical order, in favor of a new order more in harmony with the requirements of the general welfare and the sense of justice than the existing order. ”

“ No doubt the higher the life we secure to the individual by wise social organization, the greater his value is to the community, and the more pains we shall take to pull him through any temporary danger or disablement. ”

“ In regard to cultural associations we may note the privately endowed universities and state universities, privately organized churches and state churches, private charities and public charities. This dualism in social structure is supported by Professor Giddings on the grounds that private associations are needed for purposes of initiation, experimentation, and stimulation; and the public associations serve the useful purposes of regulation and maintenance of balance among various contending386 factors.
The highest test of social organization is the development of social personality. ”

“ Vital Changes in All the Basic Institutions of Society.—There are five basic institutions in modern social organization. They may be named the family, the school, the church, the industrial order, and the state. They have all come to us as parts of our social inheritance from time too remote to reckon. They have mingled and intermingled their tendencies of control and 9influence in varieties of social functioning too numerous to mention. They are now emerging to distinctness only to be engaged in new forms of interaction that make the highest ideals of each and all seem fundamentally akin. ”

“ Today we realize that one step in social organization led 11gradually to another, that institutions were not created but evolved, that various social factors and forces exerted an influence upon their development, and that the strongest institutions survived while the weaker disappeared. ”

“ It is true that all organizations, even those which are most free, are influenced by the fixed material conditions and the established customs and laws of a given community. But in these associations the self-determining element is most conspicuous and characteristic. Such a social organization is usually less permanent and rigid, and its membership more fluctuating and unstable than is true of the great and recognized institutions, such as the family, state and church. ”

“ If the Social Organization, which is the external medium in which these forces operate, is based on those laws, it will, it is evident, be adapted to the forces—to the nature of man. This will secure their true, natural and harmonious development, and with it the solution of the fundamental problem of social order and harmony. ”

“ As soon as he forms part of a social organization which benefits by his particular activity, the organization compensates for the personal disadvantages by its collective activity, and a social community not only finds room for such special developments, but it even encourages and promotes them. ”

“ A social institution can be understood and modified only if we do not limit ourselves to the study of its formal organization but analyze the way in which it appears in the personal experience of various members of the group and follow the influence which it has on their lives. And an individual can be understood only if we do not limit ourselves to a cross-section of his life as revealed by a given act, a court record or a confession, or to the determination of what type of life-organization exists, but determine the means by which a certain life-organization is developed. ”

“ And, simultaneously, there develops a further organization, still akin in its fundamental principle, which restrains individual activities in such wise that social safety shall not be endangered by the disorder consequent on unchecked pursuit of personal ends. So that this kind of social organization is distinguished from the other, as arising through conscious pursuit of public ends, in furtherance of which individual wills are constrained, first of all by the joint wills of the entire group, and afterward more definitely by the will of a regulative agency which the group evolves. ”

“ But no steady, safe progress in social organization can be made unless we fully recognize the coordinate value of these three, nor in the science of sociology unless we approach the subject from these three sides. ”

“ Unless the mass of citizens have sentiments and beliefs in something like harmony with the social organization in which they are incorporated, this organization cannot continue. These sentiments proper to each type of society will inevitably sway the sociological conclusions of its units. And, among other sentiments, this awe of embodied power will take a large share in doing this. ”

“ It is not necessary to repeat the fact, which the reader has already seen, that the process of complete social organization was largely expedited by the organization of relief, and materially reacted upon by it. The community's “big men,” the men of prominence, the men of broad experience in civic and philanthropic work, the men who knew the resources of the city and had the prestige to command them, were deeply immersed in the relief work while the businesses and the departments of the shattered body politic waited or went forward in a more or less indifferent way. ”

“ Now the intensification of the social organization is what gives us greater social power. It is to it that we owe our increased comfort and abundance. We are none of us ready to sacrifice this. On the contrary, we want more of it. ”

“ Incomplete as the ancient democracies were, they pointed to the world the great lessons of the duties of man to man and the relations of mankind in social life. When we consider the greatness of the social function and the prominence of social organization in modern life, we shall see how essential it is that, though the development of the individual may be the highest aim of civilization, the social organization must be established upon a right basis to promote individual interests. ”

“ There are in general two sorts of forces, one personal and one institutional, which hold people together in wedlock. By the personal I mean those which spring more directly from natural impulse, and may be roughly summed up as affection and common interest in children. The institutional are those that come more from the larger organization of society, such as economic interdependence of husband and wife, or the state of public sentiment, tradition and law. ”

“ But, above all, their social organization is firmer and more efficient, because their respect for and obedience to their chiefs, and their loyalty to their community, are much greater; each man identifies himself with the whole community and accepts and loyally performs the social duties laid upon him. ”

“ But human societies, although providing for the expression of original tendencies, are organized about tradition, mores, collective representations, in short, consensus. And consensus represents, not biological adaptations, but social accommodations.
Social organization, with the exception of the order based on competition and adaptation, is essentially an accommodation of differences through conflicts. ”

“ The American economic, political, and social organization has given to its citizens the benefits of material prosperity, political liberty, and a wholesome natural equality; and this achievement is a gain, not only to Americans, but to the world and to civilization. ”

“ From its earliest beginnings in the consolidation of family life, the process of social organization has successively moved from the simple structures of clan and tribe, through multitudinous forms of urban society, to the eventual emergence of the nation-state, each stage opening up a wealth of new opportunities for the exercise of human capacity. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Those who despair of the future of society, and who feel that effective co-operation between social groups is impossible, should remember that the organs of the human body have been gaming experience in co-operative and harmonious [Pg 82] function for hundreds of thousands or for millions of years, while the organization of society is an art that is still in its extreme infancy. The astonishing thing about the various social groups is not that they work so badly together, but that they work so well. ”

“ In attaining self-government, the working people in the social-political communities shall decide on the course of economic and social development, on the distribution of the social product, and on other matters of common concern.
Citizens and representatives of organizations concerned and of the social community may participate in the management of a working organization in affairs of special concern to the social community. ”

“ In order to protect the welfare of each political unit, these principles must form the basis of all scientific politics. In the social units evolved by co-operative life, these conditions are embodied and expressed. In them, we shall find the basis upon which to build a grand, social, industrial and political organization. An organization, which shall truly represent Liberty and Justice ”

“ History knows of more than one community of rough tillers of the soil and artisans, and small traders, who maintained in orderly and successful working, barring occasional turmoils, a democratic social and political organization without any effective system of popular organization without any effective system of popular or of higher education to open to them wider fields of inquiry and invention, or to aid them in the solution of problems of government. ”

“ To define the really democratic organization as one which makes expressly and intentionally for individual distinction and social improvement is nothing more than a translation of the statement that such an organization should make expressly and intentionally for the welfare of the whole people. The whole people will always consist of individuals, constituting small classes, who demand special opportunities, and the mass of the population who demand for their improvement more generalized opportunities. ”

“ No doubt, however, our growing system of voluntary institutions—churches, philanthropic societies, fraternal orders, labor unions and the like—are training us in the habit of expressing ourselves through the check-book and other indirect agents. ”

“ The problem of the person whether in the narrow field of social work or the broader fields of human relations is fundamentally a problem of the adjustment of the person to his social milieu, to his family, to his primary social groups, to industry, and to cultural, civic, and religious institutions. The problems of community organization are for the most part problems of accommodation, of articulation of groups within the community and of the adjustment of the local Community to the life of the wider community of which it is a part. ”

“ If now we are asked, what questions we have determined, what results we may fairly claim to have accomplished through our nine years of associated life and efforts at organization, we may answer in brief, that so far as the members of this body are concerned, we meet the universal demand of this day with institutions which guarantee the rights of labor and the products thereof, of education, and a home, and social culture. ”

“ The great institutions are the outcome of that organization which human thought naturally takes on when it is directed for age after age upon a particular subject, and so gradually crystallizes in definite forms—enduring sentiments, beliefs, customs and symbols. And this is the case when there is some deep and abiding interest to hold the attention of men. Language, government, the church, laws and customs of property and of the family, systems [Pg 314] of industry and education, are institutions because they are the working out of permanent needs of human nature. ”

“ Part two, on Social institutions, does not take up the evolution of social institutions, but is a study of the organization and control of society through its institutions, taking up the state, property, the family, the church, the school, occupation and under minor institutions, charity, amusement, art, science, business, and war. ”

“ A wide variety of national associations or bodies which can be dominated or influenced by such penetration. These include: labor unions, youth leagues, women's organizations, racial societies, religious societies, social organizations, cultural groups, liberal magazines, publishing houses, etc. ”

“ These will come when the intelligent and moneyed classes awake to the importance of the subject; to the understanding that the knowledge of methods for securing immense social improvements is in existence; and to a determination to possess that knowledge and to apply it to its legitimate ends—the organization of a social providence for the ignorant and weak, and the binding of all classes of society into relations of mutual sympathy and assistance. ”