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Book No. – 24 (Sociology)
Book Name – The Social System
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1. SOME EMPIRICAL CLUSTERINGS OF THE STRUCTURAL COMPONENTS OF SOCIAL SYSTEMS
1.1. Kinship Systems
1.2. Instrumental Achievement Structures and Stratification
1.3. Territoriality, Force and the Integration of the Power System
1.4. Religion and Value-Integration
2. THE CONSTITUTION OF EMPIRICAL SOCIETIES
3. THE STRUCTURAL IMPERATIVES OF A GIVEN SOCIAL SYSTEM
4. PRINCIPAL TYPES OF SOCIAL STRUCTURE
4.1. The Universalistic-Achievement Pattern
4.2. The Universalistic-Ascription Pattern
4.3. The Particularistic Achievement Pattern
4.4. The Particularistic-Ascriptive Pattern
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LANGUAGE
Empirical Differentiation and Variation in the Structure of Societies
Chapter – 5
Table of Contents
- The classification in the previous chapter brings us closer to systematically analyzing the concrete structure of societies based on internal differentiations and the variability between societies.
- A systematic treatment of these problems would require exploring all logically possible permutations and combinations of the identified structural elements, but this task is too vast for the current work.
- Further work in this area is needed, particularly for more specialized fields of sociology, but the scope of this text does not allow for such detailed exploration.
- Before concluding the treatment of social structure, a shortcut can be taken by leveraging existing empirical and theoretical knowledge to highlight the main lines of internal differentiation and variability in social structures.
- One shortcut is to apply the broad classificatory scheme to assess certain empirical uniformities that are well-established in sociology.
- These uniformities suggest that actual structures are concentrated in empirical “clusterings”, rather than covering the entire theoretically possible variability of social structures.
- The four main areas of empirical clusterings are:
- Kinship, control of sex relations, and socialization
- Organization of instrumental achievement roles and stratification
- Relation between power, force, and territoriality
- Integration of value-orientations, cognitive orientations, and personality adjustment in “religion”
- Validation of these clusterings would justify short-cutting the full exploration of structural possibilities, focusing instead on a fraction of them, thus simplifying the classification of social structures.
- This validation would also serve as a lead into the formulation and testing of fundamental dynamic generalizationsand laws of social process, which explain why empirically observable structures are restricted.
- The second shortcut involves utilizing theoretical results from earlier analysis, particularly regarding variability of structure and patterns of value-orientation.
- Patterns of value-orientation are crucial to the theory of action and the theory of social systems, and empirical evidence that contradicts this would undermine the current conceptual scheme.
- Taking variations in value-orientations (pattern-variable combinations) as a starting point can help develop a provisional classification of generalized types of social systems in structural terms.
- Modifications to the purely logical implications of this classification can be made based on the empirical interdependence of patterns of value-orientation with other components of the social system.
- The final section of the chapter will attempt to integrate the findings of the empirical clusterings with a classification of total societies, focusing on adaptive structures and the integrative imperatives that limit the compatibility of different structural elements within a society.
SOME EMPIRICAL CLUSTERINGS OF THE STRUCTURAL COMPONENTS OF SOCIAL SYSTEMS
Kinship Systems
- From a taxonomic point of view, the prominence of kinship in social structures is problematical.
- The classification of kinship in the previous chapter only covered the principal ascriptive foci: sex, age, and biological relatedness, but did not develop a full classification of kinship types or how they are combined.
- Kinship, in terms of possible combinations of general structural elements of social systems, has high specificity, which eliminates or relegates many other structural permutations in social systems.
- The fact that kinship is present in every society calls for an explanation.
- Kinship systems are important for the initial status ascription of newborns in all societies, and socialization usually occurs within kinship units, with kinship personalities as important socializing agents.
- Child-care is universally ascribed to kinship units and their statuses, despite variation in other agencies such as formal education and health care.
- There is a universal relation between kinship structures and the regulation of erotic relations, with incest taboo and defined sexual privileges within kinship units.
- Kinship units are functionally diffuse and collectivity-oriented; they preclude the primacy of universalistic orientations and limit the relevance of achievement patterns, except in marriage selection.
- Questions arise: Why isn’t initial status ascribed based on individual traits? Why isn’t child care always handled by specialized agencies? Why is sexual regulation tied to child care and status ascription? Why are kinship units not patterned like industrial organizations?
- These questions highlight the persistence of kinship systems despite wide social variability.
- The explanation of this clustering is related to the plasticity, sensitivity, and dependency of the human infant, as well as the role of sex in human personality needs.
- Early child-care, focused on the mother, is linked to the differentiation of sex roles.
- The human infant develops in the context of early attachments, with a strong attachment to the mother, influencing social structures.
- The child’s need for adult attachments and the structuring of attachment along sex discrimination reinforces the central role of kinship in social structures.
- Homosexuality is generally taboo or permitted only within narrow limits, highlighting the regularity of heterosexual development and attachment within kinship units.
- Stable heterosexual attachments naturally lead to family formation, and the forces integrating the child into the family are strong.
- The persistence of the family structure suggests the presence of powerful forces that perpetuate it, despite variations in kinship structures.
- Even in Soviet Russia, where Marxist ideology initially opposed the family, there was a resurgence of strict family morality after the revolution.
- This change could have been driven by psychological insecurity during the revolutionary period, leading to regressionto attachment needs with high security values.
- The persistence of kinship structures and roles despite political and ideological shifts illustrates the difficulty of abolishing deeply rooted social complexes like kinship systems.