THE CONCEPT OF SOCIETY

Meaning and Nature of Society

- Society is derived from the Latin term “societas”, from socius, which means
companion or associate.
- It is defined as a group of people with a common territory, interaction, and culture.
- According to Arcinas (2016) in his book, Understanding Culture, Society, and
Politics, he defined society as a group of people who share a common territory and
culture. It is a group of people living together in a definite territory, having a sense of
belongingness, being mutually interdependent of each other, and follow a certain way
of life.

1. Functional Definition
- Society is defined as a complex of groups in reciprocal relationships,
interacting with one another, enabling human organisms to carry on their
life-activities and helping each person to fulfill his wishes and accomplish his
interests in association with his fellows.
-
2. Structural Definition
- Society is the total social heritage of folkways, mores, and institutions; of
habits, sentiments, and ideals.

Reasons people live together as a society:

a. For survival
- No man is an island. No man can live alone. From birth to death, man always
depends upon his parents and from others.

b. Feeling of gregariousness
- This is the desire of people to be with other people, especially of their own
culture. People flock together for emotional warmth and belongingness.

c. Specialization
- Teachers, businessmen, students, physicians, nurses, lawyers, pharmacists, and
other professionals organize themselves into societies or associations to
promote and protect their own professions.
Characteristics of Society
Society or human society is a group of people related to each other through
persistent relations such as kinship, marriage, social status, roles and social
Networks. Society has the following characteristics:
1. It is a social system
- A social system consists of individuals interacting
with each other. A system consists of sub-parts whereby a change in one
part affects the other parts.
2. It is relatively large
- The people must be socially integrated to be considered relatively larger than
if the people are individually scattered. Thus, the people in a family, clan,
tribe, neighborhood, community are socially integrated to be relatively large in
scope.
3. It socializes its members and from those from without
- Since most of society’s members are born to it, they are taught the basic norms
and expectations.
4. It endures, produces and sustains its members for generations
- For society to survive, it must have the ability to produce, endure and sustain
its new members for at least several generations.
5. It holds its members through a common culture
- The individuals in a
societies are held together because that society has symbols, norms, values,
patterns of interaction, vision and mission that are commonly shared by the
members of such society.
6. It has clearly-defined geographical territory
- The members in a society
must live in a certain specific habitat or place and have a common
belongingness and sense of purpose.

Major Functions of Society

1. It provides a system of socialization
- Individual development is influenced by various factors, including family,
peer groups, schools, churches, and other organizations, which transmit
knowledge, skills, behavior patterns, moral values, and personality aspects.
2. It provides the basic needs of its members
- Society must provide essential services such as food, clothing, shelter,
medicine, education, transportation, and communication facilities to meet the
basic needs of its members.
3. It regulates and controls people’s behavior
- Social control is ensured through conformity to prevailing norms, with police,
armed forces, law enforcement agencies, and other organizations playing a
crucial role in creating peace and order.
4. It provides the means of social participation
 - Social participation encourages interaction, problem-solving, and
commitment, while promoting community development through various
organizations like religious, civic, and NGOs.
5. It provides mutual support to the members
- Mutual support is provided to society members through relief and solutions,
ranging from family, neighbors, clans, government agencies, civic and
religious organizations.

Types of Societies
A. According to Economic and Material System
1. Pre-class Societies
- They are characterized by communal ownership of property and
division of labor. Examples of these societies are the earliest clans and
tribes.
2. Asiatic Societies
- The people are economically self-sufficient but their leaders are
despotic and powerful
3. Ancient Societies
- These are characterized by private land ownership. The rich (those
who haves) owned big tracts of private properties while the poor (those
who-have-nots) worked as laborers. Thus, wealth is limited to a few
people.
4. Feudal Societies
- The aristocrats (feudal lords) owned the wealth of the country due to
their ownership of big tracts of lands. The peasants workeed on the
lands of the feudal lords with only few benefits received by them.
However, these types of societies collapsed due to the rise of cities and
metropolis as a result of the rise of trades and industries
5. Capitalists Societies
- These societies existed in societies where two classes of people
appeared. The bourgeoise (property owners) who owned the capital
and the means of production and the ploretariat (the laborers or
workers) who are compelled to work for the capitalists or sell their
small properties to the capitalists
6. Democratic Societies
- These societies are characterized by free enterprise where people are
free to engage in any lawful business for profit or gain. People had to
work on their own livelihood according to what the law mandates.

B. According to Evolutionary View

1. Simple Societies
 - These were predominantly small, nomadic and leadership is unstable.
The people had no specialization of skills,thus they lived in a simple
life
2. Compound Societies
- Two or more simple
societies merged to form a new and bigger society. These societies
tended to be predominantly settled agricultural societies and tended to
be characterized by a division of four or five social classes.
3. Double Compound Societies
- These are completely integrated,
more definite in political and religious structure and more complex
division of labor.Considerable progress in infrastructure and
knowledge in arts had taken place.
4. Militant Societies
- characterized
by the following
*the existence of military organization and military rank
*individual lives
and private possessions are at the disposal of the State
*individuals exist to serve the State.
5. Industrial Societies
- Characterized by the following
*people elect their representatives to protect their individual initiatives
*freedom of belief, religion, production of industrial goods exist
*disputes and grievances are settled through peaceful Arbitration
*individual freedom, rights and initiatives are being protected.
6. Post Industrial Societies
- Are characterized by:
*spread of computer machines and existence of information and
Communication
*inventions and discoveries in medicines, agriculture, business
whether in physical and natural sciences
Emerged
*pollution, diseases, calamities are prevalent as a result of the use of
advanced technology.
C. According to People’s Subsistence
1. Food Gathering Societies
- The people survived from day to day through hunting large animals,
collecting shellfish and vegetable gathering. Their tools were made of
stones, wood and bones.
2. Horticultural Societies
- The people planted seeds as means of production for subsistence.
3. Pastoral Societies
 - These societies raised animals to provide milk, fur, and blood for food.
These societies typically are relatively small, wandering communities
organized along male-centered kinship groups

4. Agricultural Societies
- These societies used plow than hoe in food production. By the use of
plow, it turns the topsoil deeper allowing for better aerating and
fertilizing thus improving better yield when harvested. Irrigation
farming was introduced which resulted to a larger yield of production
that can even feed large number of people who did not know how to
produce food by themselves.

5. Industrial Societies
- These societies began in the 18th century during the Industrial
Revolution and gained momentum by the turn of the 19th century. This
period is characterized by the use of machines as means of food
production.

6. Post Industrial Societies or Information Societies

- Information and communication technology is the hallmark of these
modern societies. These are characterized by the spread of computer
technology, advances in this technology are made by highly-trained
computer specialists who work to increase the capabilities of
computers and the internet. The use of modern technology gave rise to
several technological problems such as pollution, lung illness, skin
problems and others.

Dissolution of a Society
Ways by which a society is dissolved:
1. when the people kill each other through civil revolution
2. when an outside force exterminate the members of the society
3. when the members become apathetic among themselves or have no more sense of
belongingness
4. when a small society is absorbed by stronger and larger society by means of conquest
or territorial absorption
5. when an existing society is submerged in water killing all the people and other living
things in it
6. when the people living in such a society voluntarily attach themselves to another
existing societ
 THE CONCEPT OF CULTURE

Meaning and Nature of Culture

- It was E.B. Taylor who conceptualized the definition of culture in1860s. According to
him, culture is a complex whole which consist of knowledge, beliefs, ideas, habits,
attitudes, skills, abilities, values, norms, art, law, morals, customs, traditions, feelings
and other capabilities of man which are acquired, learned socially transmitted by man
from one generation to another through language and living together as members of
the society (Arcinas, 2016).
- Other definitions of culture according to a book, “Sociology: Exploring Society and
Culture.”
- Culture is a historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols,
a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic form by means of
which men communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and
attitudes towards life.
- Culture consists of learned systems of meaning, communicated by means of
natural language and other symbol systems, having representational, directive,
and affective functions, and capable of creating cultural entities and particular
senses of reality.
- Culture consists in the shared patterns of behavior and associated meanings
that people learn and participate in within the groups which they belong to.
- Culture is an instrumental reality, and apparatus for the satisfaction of the
biological and derived need”. It is the integral whole consisting of implements
in consumers’ goods, of constitutional characters for the various social
groupings, of human ideas and crafts, beliefs and custom.
- Culture in general as a descriptive concept means the accumulated treasury of
human creation: books, paintings, buildings, and the like; the knowledge of
ways of adjusting to our surroundings, both human and physical; language,
customs, and systems of etiquette, ethics, religion and morals that have been
built up through the ages.
- Culture refers to that part of the total setting [of human existence] which
includes the material objects of human manufacture, techniques, social
orientations, points of view, and sanctioned ends.
- A culture is the total socially acquired life-way or life-style of a group of
people. It consists of the patterned, repetitive ways of thinking, feeling, and
acting that are characteristic of the members of a particular society or segment
of a society.

Characteristics of Culture
A. From the Perspective of Sociologists
1. Dynamic, flexible and adaptive
- Culture necessarily changes, and is changed by, a variety of
interactions, with individuals, media, and technology. Culture is
 adaptive and dynamic, once we recognize problems, culture can adapt
again, in a more positive way, to find solutions.

2. Shared and maybe challenged

- As we share culture with others, we are able to act in appropriate ways
as well as predict how others will act. Despite the shared nature of
culture, that doesn’t mean that culture is homogenous (the same). It
may be challenged by the presence of other cultures and other social
forces in society like modernization, industrialization, and
globalization.

3. Learned through socialization or enculturation

- Culture is not biological, people do not inherit it but learned as interact
in society.

4. Patterned social interactions

- Culture as a normative system has the capacity to define and control
human behaviors.
- Human interactions are guided by some forms of standards and
expectations which in the end regularize it.

5. Transmitted through socialization or enculturation

- As we share our culture with others, we are able to pass it on to the
new members of society or the younger generation in different ways.
In the process of socialization/enculturation, we were able to teach
them about many things in life and equip them with the culturally
acceptable ways of surviving, competing, and making meaningful
interaction with others in society.

6. Requires language and other forms of communication

- In the process of learning and transmitting culture, symbols and
language are needed to communicate with others in society.

B. From the Perspective of Anthropologist

1. Learned
- learned, as each person must learn how to “be” a member of that
culture
- Through language, the cultural traits of society are passed on to
younger members in the process of growing up and through teaching.
- Every human generation potentially can discover new things and
invent
better technologies. The new cultural
skills and knowledge are added onto what was learned in previous
generations.
 2. Symbolic
- Culture is symbolic, as it based on the manipulation of symbols
- Culture renders meaning to what people do. Beliefs, religion, rituals,
myths, dances, performances, music, artworks, sense of taste,
education, innovations, identity, ethnicity, and soon are meaningful
human expressions of what people do and how they act.
3. Systemic and integrated
- Culture is systemic and integrated as the parts of culture work together
in an integrated whole.

4. Shared
- Since culture is shared within exclusive domains of social relations,
societies operate differently from each other leading for cultural
variations. Even culture is bounded, it does not mean that there are no
variations in how people act and relate with each other within a given
system of their respective societies.
- On the contrary, the same society can be broadly diverse wherein
people, for example, profess connections to each other yet practice
different religion, values, or gender relations.

5. Encompassing
- Culture covers every feature of humanity. Around the world, people as
members of their own societies establish connections with each other
and form relationship guided by their respective cultural practices and
values.

Importance/Functions of Culture
1. it serves as the “trademark” of the people in the society
2. it gives meaning and direction to one’s existence
3. it promotes meaning to individual’s existence
4. it predicts social behavior
5. it unifies diverse behavior
6. it provides social solidarity
7. it establishes social personality
8. it provides systematic behavioral pattern
9. it provides social structure category
10. it maintains the biologic functioning of the group
11. it offers ready-made solutions to man’s material and immaterial problems
12. it develops man’s attitude and values and gives him a conscience
Elements of Culture
1. Symbols
- refers to anything that is used to stand for something else. It is anything that
gives meaning to the culture. People who share a culture often attach a specific
meaning to an object, gesture, sound, or image.
- Examples: feasts, and cross (significant symbol to christians)
2. Language
- is known as the storehouse of culture ( Arcinas, 2016). It is a system of words
and symbols used to communicate with other people.
- We have alot of dialects in the Philippines that provide a means of
understanding. Through These, culture is hereby transmitted to future
generation through learning(David and Macaraeg, 2010)
3. Technology
- refers to the application of knowledge and equipment to ease the task of living
and maintaining the environment; it includes artifacts, methods and devices
created and used by people (Arcinas, 2016).
4. Values
- are culturally defined standards for what is good or desirable. Values
determine how individuals will probably respond in any given
circumstances.Members of the culture use the shared system of values to
decide what is good and what is bad. This also refers to the abstract concept of
what's important and worthwhile.
- What is considered as good, proper and desirable, or bad, improper or
undesirable, in a culture can be called as values
- It influences people’s behavior and serves as a benchmark for evaluating the
actions of others. Majority Of Philippine population is bonded together by
common values and traits that are first taught at home and being applied in our
day to day lives.
- Filipinosare known for the following values:
- (a) compassionate;
- (b) spirit of kinship and camaraderie;
- (c) hardwork and industry;
- (d) ability to survive;
- (e) faithand religiosity;
- (f) flexibility, adaptability and creativity;
- (g) joy andhumor;
- (h) family orientation;
- (i) hospitality; and
(j) pakikipagkapwa-tao.
5. Beliefs
- refers to the faith of an individual ( David and Macaraeg, 2010). They Are
conceptions or ideas people have about what is true in the environment around
them like what is life, how to value it and how one's belief on the value of life
relates with his or her interaction with others and the world. These maybe
 based on common sense, folk wisdom, religion, science or a combination of
all of these.
6. Norms:
- are specific rules/standards to guide for appropriate behavior
A. Types:
1. Proscriptive norm
- defines and tells us things not to do
2. Prescriptive norm
- defines and tells us things to do
B. Forms:
1. Folkways
- are also known as customs (customary/repetitive ways of doing
things); they are forms of norms for everyday behavior that
people follow for the sake of tradition or convenience.
- Breaking them does not usually have serious consequences. We
have certain customs that were passed by our forebears that
make up a large part of our daytoday existence and we do not
question their practicality. Since they are being practiced, it is
expected that we do them also. For Example, we Filipinos eat
with our bare hands.
2. Mores
- are strict norms that control moral and ethical behavior; they
are based on definitions of right and wrong
- They are norms also but with moral undertones
(DavidandMacaraeg, 2010). For example, since our country
Philippines is a Christian nation, we are expected to practice
monogamous marriage. So if a person who has two or more
partners is looked upon as immoral. Polygamy is
consideredtabooinPhilippine society.
3. Laws
- are controlled ethics and they are morally agreed, written down
and enforced by an official law enforcement agency(Arcinas,
2016). They are institutionalized norms and mores that were
enacted by the state to ensure stricter punishment in order for
the people to adhere to the standards set by society(David and
Macaraeg, 2010).

Two Components of Culture

1. Material Culture
- Material culture encompasses tangible objects, resources, and spaces used by
individuals to define their culture, influencing behaviors and perceptions.
2. Non-material Culture
 - Non-material culture encompasses intangible ideas, beliefs, values, rules,
norms, morals, language, and institutions, shaping thoughts, feelings, and
behaviors. It can be categorized into cognitive and normative cultures.

Modes of Acquiring Culture

1. Imitation
- Both children and adults often imitate social environment values, attitudes,
and language, which can internalize into their personality, character, and
behavioral patterns.
2. Indoctrination or Suggestion
- Formal or informal teaching involves learning behaviors from school,
listening, watching, reading, attending training activities, or through
interaction.
3. Conditioning
- The acquisition of values, beliefs, and attitudes is influenced by conditioning,
which can be reinforced through rewards and punishments.

Adaptation of Culture
1. Parallelism
- means that the same culture may take place in two or more different places.
2. Diffusion
- This is the transfer or spread of culture traits from
one another brought about by change agents such as people or media
3. Convergence
- takes place when two or more cultures are fused or merged into one culture
making it different from the original culture.
4. Fission
- takes place when people break away from their original culture and start
developing a different culture of their own.
5. Acculturation
- refers to the process wherein individuals incorporate the behavioral patterns of
other cultures into their own either voluntarily or by force.
6. Assimilation
- occurs when the culture of a larger society is adopted by a smaller society, that
smaller society assumes some of the culture of the
larger society or cost society.
7. Accomodation
- occurs when the larger society and smaller society are able to respect and
tolerate each other’s culture even if there is already a prolonged contact of
each other’s culture.

Causes of Cultural Change

1. Discovery
 - The process of finding a new place or an object, artifact or anything that
previously existed. For example, the discovery of fire led to the art of cooking;
discovery of oil, of organisms and substances; of diseases; of
atoms and sources of energy.

2. Invention
- A creative mental process of devising, creating, and
producing something new.

3. Diffusion
- The spread of cultural traits or social practices from a society or group to
another belonging to the same society or to another through direct contact with
each other and exposure to new forms.

a. Acculturation
- Cultural borrowing and cultural imitation

b. Assimilation
- The blending or fusion of two distinct cultures through long periods of
interaction

c. Amalgamation
- The biological or hereditary fusion of members of different societies

d. Enculturation
- The deliberate infusion of a new culture to another
-
4. Colonization
- It refers to the political, social, and political policy of establishing a colony
which would be subject to the rule or governance of the colonizing state. For
example, the Hispanization of Filipino culture when the Spaniards came and
conquered the Philippines.

5. Rebellion and revolutionary

- These movements aim to change the whole social order and replace the
leadership. Challenging the existing folkways and mores, and propose a new
scheme of norms, values and organization.

Ethnocentrism, Xenocentrism and Cultural Relativism As Orientation In Viewing

Other Cultures
1. Ethnocentrism
- It is a perception that arises from the fact that cultures differ and each culture
defines reality differently. This happens when judging another culture solely
by the values and standards of one’s own culture. This is the tendency to see
 and evaluate other cultures in terms of one’s own race, nation or culture. This
is the feeling or belief that one’s culture is better than the rest.

2. Xenocentrism
- The opposite of ethnocentrism, the belief that one’s culture is inferior
compared to others. Culture is inferior compared to others.

3. Cultural relativism
- It is an attempt to judge behavior according to its cultural context. This
concept emphasizes the perspective that no culture is superior to any other
culture because different societies have different moral code.

Other Important Terms Related to Culture

1. Cultural diversity
- refers the differentiation of culture all over the world
which means there is no right or wrong culture but there is appropriate
culture for the need of a specific group of people.
2. Sub-culture
- refers to a smaller group within a larger culture.
3. Counterculture
- refers cultural patterns that strongly oppose those widely accepted within a
society
4. Culture lag
- is experienced when some parts of the society do not change as fast as with
other parts and they are left behind
5. Culture shock
- the inability to read meaning in one’s surroundings, feeling
of lost and isolation, unsure to act as a consequence of being outside the
symbolic web of culture that binds others.
6. Ideal culture
- refers to the social patterns mandated by cultural values and norms.
7. Real culture
- refers to the actual patterns that only approximate cultural expectations.
8. High culture
- refers to the cultural patterns that distinguish a society’s elite
9. Popular culture
- refers to the cultural patterns that are widespread among a society’s
population.
10. Culture change
- the manner by which culture evolves.