The term “society” came into usage in the 18th century with the rise of European modernity and its distinctive public sphere of civil society and state. The relative openness of association and the range of cultivated activities available created a space for social intercourse among the better-off, who would go out into “society”, meaning “high society”. This period coincided with the emergence of social theory and its differentiation from political theory, as writers became interested in the distinctiveness of modernity and its institutions. With the development of disciplinary social sciences and the formation of sociology as a distinct discipline, sociation and its differentiated forms were seen as the special object of sociology.

The German sociologist Ferdinand Tonnies proposed a highly influential distinction between Gemeinschaft (community) and Gesellschaft (association) to capture the difference between pre-modern and traditional types of societies. Gemeinschaft is characterized by ties of reciprocity and mutuality; customs predominate and they are largely rural. Gesellschaft is characterized by voluntary associations and exchange relationships; rational calculation predominates and such societies are urban and cosmopolitan.

Functionalist and associated structurally oriented sociologies provide an analytical definition of society. It is associated with the level of the social system. Each social system must meet functional imperatives (or structural principles) and societies are classified according to the degree of specialized institutional development around each function. Modern society is characterized by specialized and separated institutions of economy, polity, legal system and societal community (of voluntary association); each is a subsystem and the ensemble of subsystems makes up modern society.

In Marxism, where the mode of economic production is held to dominate, other institutions of law, politics and ideology are sometimes characterized as the social formation. The term “society” is rejected as obscuring the real determinations at work. In liberalism, which gives priority to the market economy, albeit seeing this as positive, there is also suspicion of the term “society”, on whose behalf the state might act in order to restrict the market. Feminists and postcolonial theorists have criticized the dominant sociological representations of society. For Feminists, the sociological concept of society neglects gendered relationships within the family and how these structure other social institutions. For postcolonial proponents, the idea of society as a relatively self-sufficient entity has meant the neglect of the colonial relationships integral to modernity.

References

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