What is Society?

Most people have a 'common sense' understanding of what 'society is', and many posts here on Steemit focus on the strategies we should adopt to 'get on' in society, but what actually is this thing we call society?

'Society is a concept used to describe the structured relations and institutions among a large community of people which cannot be reduced to a simple collection or aggregation of individuals.’ (1)

Origins of the Concept of Society

A strong argument can be made for the view that it was Emile Durkheim who first developed the sociological meaning of ‘society’ which he used when he established sociology as a new discipline which dealt with the collective reality of human life as opposed to studying individuals.

Durkheim argued that society has an independent reality from individuals, and exists in its own right, exerting an influence over individuals within a ‘bounded territory’, which for Durkheim essentially meant the ‘nation state’.

However, the relevance of bounded-societies has been questioned since the 1970s due to globalisation, and the increasing amount of people, money, and communications moving across national borders.

Because of this, some sociologists argue that sociology should shift its analysis from ‘societies’ to (global) mobilities.

Sociological Conceptions of ‘Society’

For most of sociology’s history, sociologists have studied and compared societies, and nowhere is this more obvious than in the historic division between ‘first’, ‘second’ and ‘third’ world societies, and in theories of development such as modernisation theory, which outline why certain societies (or ‘nation states’) are less developed in comparison to other ‘more developed’ societies (or ‘nation states’).

There have been many attempts to understand social change by focusing one specific driving force, for example sociological theorising has developed the following conceptualisations of society:

• Industrial society
• Capitalist society
• Post-industrial society
• Postmodern society
• The knowledge society
• Risk society
• The network society.

Most leftists subscribe to a crude notion that society is 'capitalist' - structured along social class lines defined by one's access to economic capital, but are such crude structural concepts still applicable?

Criticisms of the ‘bounded society’ concept

A dualistic conception of society as a thing apart from the individual may be more of a reflection of the dualistic legacy of western philosophy rather than being based on actual empirical reality.

To this end, many sociologists have proposed focusing more on interactions rather than ‘society’ and the ‘individual’. Norbert Elias was one of the first to develop a sociology which focused more on social processes, concentrating more on shifting relationships at a variety of levels, from individual interactions to inter-state conflicts.

Globalisation has also put into question the usefulness of focussing on individual nation states: large TNCs are now more powerful than most nation states, and criminal organisation and social movements cut across national borders, making them seem less useful as a focus for social analysis.

John Urry has suggested that sociology might usefully move its analytical focus ‘beyond societies’ – as global networks and flows become more effective and powerful, they tend to cross national boundaries, which are now seen as more permeable than ever.

Finally, the fact that people increasingly interact in the hyperreal environment of social media sites (such as Steemit) with their ever shifting (‘evolving’?) and frequently obscure architectures, populations and norms (such as Steemit) suggests that answering even the apparently basic question ‘what is society’ is more difficult than ever.

Is it even possible to talk of 'society' in the age of complex virtual flows of information?