Part 1 (1/2)
Sociology and Modern Social Problems.
by Charles A. Ellwood.
PREFACE
This book is intended as an elementary text in sociology as applied to modern social problems, for use in inst.i.tutions where but a short time can be given to the subject, in courses in sociology where it is desired to combine it with a study of current social problems on the one hand, and to correlate it with a course in economics on the other. The book is also especially suited for use in University Extension Courses and in Teachers' Reading Circles.
This book aims to teach the simpler principles of sociology concretely and inductively. In Chapters I to VIII the elementary principles of sociology are stated and ill.u.s.trated, chiefly through the study of the origin, development, structure, and functions of the family considered as a typical human inst.i.tution; while in Chapters IX to XV certain special problems are considered in the light of these general principles.
Inasmuch as the book aims to ill.u.s.trate the working of certain factors in social organization and evolution by the study of concrete problems, interpretation has been emphasized rather than the social facts themselves. However, the book is not intended to be a contribution to sociological theory, and no attempt is made to give a systematic presentation of theory. Rather, the student's attention is called to certain obvious and elementary forces in the social life, and he is left to work out his own system of social theory.
To guide the student in further reading, a brief list of select references in English has been appended to each chapter. Methodological discussions and much statistical and historical material have been omitted in order to make the text as simple as possible. These can be found in the references, or the teacher can supply them at his discretion.
The many authorities to whom I am indebted for both facts and interpretations of facts cannot be mentioned individually, except that I wish to express my special indebtedness to my former teachers, Professor Willc.o.x of Cornell and Professors Small and Henderson of the University of Chicago, to whom I am under obligation either directly or indirectly for much of the substance of this book. The list of references will also indicate in the main the sources of whatever is not my own.
CHARLES A. ELLWOOD.
UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI.
SOCIOLOGY AND MODERN SOCIAL PROBLEMS
CHAPTER I
THE STUDY OF SOCIETY
What is Society?--Perhaps the great question which sociology seeks to answer is this question which we have put at the beginning. Just as biology seeks to answer the question ”What is life?”; zoology, ”What is an animal?”; botany, ”What is a plant?”; so sociology seeks to answer the question ”What is society?” or perhaps better, ”What is a.s.sociation?” Just as biology, zoology, and botany cannot answer their questions until those sciences have reached their full and complete development, so also sociology cannot answer the question ”What is society?” until it reaches its final development. Nevertheless, some conception or definition of society is necessary for the beginner, for in the scientific discussion of social problems we must know first of all what we are talking about. We must understand in a general way what society is, what sociology is, what the relations are between sociology and other sciences, before we can study the social problems of to-day from a sociological point of view.
The word ”society” is used scientifically to designate the reciprocal relations between individuals. More exactly, and using the term in a concrete sense, a society is any group of individuals who have more or less conscious relations to each other. We say conscious relations because it is not necessary that these relations be specialized into industrial, political, or ecclesiastical relations. Society is const.i.tuted by the mental interaction of individuals and exists wherever two or three individuals have reciprocal conscious relations to each other. Dependence upon a common economic environment, or the mere contiguity in s.p.a.ce is not sufficient to const.i.tute a society. It is the interdependence in function on the mental side, the contact and overlapping of our inner selves, which makes possible that form of collective life which we call society. Plants and lowly types of organisms do not const.i.tute true societies, unless it can be shown that they have some degree of mentality. On the other hand, there is no reason for withholding the term ”society” from many animal groups. These animal societies, however, are very different in many respects from human society, and are of interest to us only as certain of their forms throw light upon human society.
We may dismiss with a word certain faulty conceptions of society. In some of the older sociological writings the word society is often used as nearly synonymous with the word nation. Now, a nation is a body of people politically organized into an independent government, and it is manifest that it is only one of many forms of human society. Another conception of society, which some have advocated, is that it is synonymous with the cultural group. That is, a society is any group of people that have a common civilization, or that are bearers of a certain type of culture. In this case Christendom, for example, would const.i.tute a single society. Cultural groups no doubt are, again, one of the forms of human society, but only one among many. Both the cultural group and the nation are very imposing forms of society and hence have attracted the attention of social thinkers very often in the past to the neglect of the more humble forms. But it is evident that all forms of a.s.sociation are of equal interest to the sociologist, though, of course, this is not saying that all forms are of equal practical importance.
Any form of a.s.sociation, or social group, which may be studied, if studied from the point of view of origin and development, whether it be a family, a neighborhood group, a city, a state, a trade union, or a party, will serve to reveal many of the problems of sociology. The natural or genetic social groups, however, such as the family, the community, and the nation, serve best to exhibit sociological problems.
In this text we shall make particular use of the family, as the simplest and, in many ways, the most typical of all the forms of human a.s.sociation, to ill.u.s.trate concretely the laws and principles of social development. Through the study of the simple and primary forms of a.s.sociation the problems of sociology can be much better attacked than through the study of society at large, or a.s.sociation in general.
From what has been said it may be inferred that _society_ as a scientific term means scarcely more than the abstract term _a.s.sociation_, and this is correct. a.s.sociation, indeed, may be regarded as the more scientific term of the two; at any rate it indicates more exactly what the sociologist deals with. A word may be said also as to the meaning of the word _social_. The sense in which this word will generally be used in this text is that of a collective adjective, referring to all that pertains to or relates to society in any way. The word social, then, is much broader than the words industrial, political, moral, religious, and embraces them all; that is, social phenomena are all phenomena which involve the interaction of two or more individuals. The word social, then, includes the economic, political, moral, religious, etc., and must not be thought of as something set in opposition to, for instance, the industrial or the political.
Society and its Products.--Beneath all the forms and processes of human society lies the fact of a.s.sociation itself. Industry, government, and civilization itself must be regarded as expressions of collective human life rather than _vice versa_. Industry, for example, is one side or aspect of man's social life, and must not be mistaken for society itself. Industry, government, religion, education, art, and the like, are all products of the social life of man. Among these coordinate expressions of collective human life, industry, being concerned with the satisfying of the material needs of men, is perhaps fundamental to the rest. But this must not lead to the mistaken view that the social life of man can be interpreted completely through his industrial life; for, as has just been said, beneath industry and all other aspects of man's collective life lies the biological and psychological fact of a.s.sociation. This is equivalent to saying that industry itself must be interpreted in terms of the biology and psychology of human a.s.sociation.
In other words, industrial problems, political problems, educational problems, and the like must be viewed from the collective or social standpoint rather than simply as detached problems by themselves. We must understand the biological and psychological aspects of man's social life before we can understand its special phases.
The Origin of Society.--From the definition of society that we have given it is evident that society is something which springs from the very processes of life itself. It is not something which has been invented or planned by individuals. Life, in its higher forms at least, could not exist without a.s.sociation. From the very beginning the a.s.sociation of the s.e.xes has been necessary for reproduction and for the care and rearing of offspring, and it has been not less necessary for the procuring of an adequate food supply and for protection against enemies. From the a.s.sociation necessary for reproduction has sprung family life and all the altruistic inst.i.tutions of human society, while from the a.s.sociation for providing food supply have sprung society's industrial inst.i.tutions. Neither society nor industry, therefore, has had a premeditated, reflective origin, but both have sprung up spontaneously from the needs of life and both have developed down to the present time at least with but little premeditated guidance. It is necessary that the student should understand at the outset that social organization is not a fabrication of the human intellect to any great degree, and the old idea that individuals who existed independently of society came together and deliberately planned a certain type of social organization is utterly without scientific validity. The individual and society are correlatives. We have no knowledge of individuals apart from society or society apart from individuals. What we do know is that human life everywhere is a collective or a.s.sociated life, the individual being on the one hand largely an expression of the social life surrounding him and on the other hand society being largely an expression of individual character. The reasons for these a.s.sertions will appear later as we develop our subject.
What is Sociology?--The science which deals with human a.s.sociation, its origin, development, forms, and functions, is sociology. Briefly, sociology is a science which deals with society as a whole and not with its separate aspects or phases. It attempts to formulate the laws or principles which govern social organization and social evolution. This means that the main problems of sociology are those of the organization of society on the one hand and the evolution of society on the other.
These words, _organization_ and _evolution_, however, are used in a broader sense in sociology than they are generally used. By organization we mean any relation of the parts of society to each other.
By evolution we mean, not necessarily change for the better, but orderly change of any sort. Sociology is, therefore, a science which deals with the laws or principles of social organization and of social change. Put in more exact terms this makes sociology, as we said at the beginning, the science of the origin, development, structure, and function of the forms of a.s.sociation. We may pa.s.s over very rapidly certain faulty conceptions of sociology. The first of these is that it is the study of social evils and their remedies. This conception is faulty because it makes sociology deal primarily with the abnormal rather than the normal conditions in society, and secondly, it is to be criticized because it makes sociology synonymous with scientific philanthropy. It is rather the science of philanthropy, which is an applied science resting upon sociology, that studies social evils and their remedies. This is not saying, of course, that sociology does not consider social evils, but that it considers them as incidents in the normal processes of social evolution rather than as its special matter. A second conception of sociology which is to be dismissed as inadequate is the conception that it is the science of social phenomena. This conception is not incorrect, but is somewhat vague, as there are manifestly other sciences of social phenomena, such as economics and political science. Such a conception of sociology would make it include everything in human society. A third faulty conception is that it is the science of human inst.i.tutions. This is faulty because it again is too narrow. An inst.i.tution is a _sanctioned_ form of human a.s.sociation, while sociology deals with the ephemeral and unsanctioned forms, such as we see in the phenomena of mobs, crazes, fads, fas.h.i.+ons, and crimes, as well as with the sanctioned forms. A fourth conception which might be criticized is that sociology is the science of social organization. This makes sociology deal with the laws or principles of the relations of individuals to one another, and of inst.i.tutions to one another. It is to be criticized as faulty because it fails to emphasize the evolution of those relations. All science is now evolutionary in spirit and in method and believes that things cannot be understood except as they are understood in their genesis and development. It would, therefore, perhaps be more correct to define sociology as the science of the evolution of human interrelations than to define it simply as the science of social organization.
The Problems of Sociology.--The problems of sociology fall into two great cla.s.ses; first, problems of the organization of society, and second, problems of the evolution of society. The problems of the organization of society are problems of the relations of individuals to one another and to inst.i.tutions. Such problems are, for example, the influence of various elements in the physical environment upon the social organization; or, again, the influence of various elements in human nature upon the social order. These problems are, then, problems of society in a hypothetically stationary condition or at rest. For this reason Comte, the founder of modern sociology, called the division of sociology which deals with such problems _Social Statics_. But the problems which are of most interest and importance in sociology are those of social evolution. Under this head we have the problem of the origin of society in general and also of various forms of a.s.sociation.
More important still are the problems of social progress and social retrogression; that is, the causes of the advancement of society to higher and more complex types of social organization and the causes of social decline. The former problem, social progress, is in a peculiar sense the central problem of sociology. The effort of theoretical sociology is to develop a scientific theory of social progress. The study of social evolution, then, that is, social changes of all sorts, as we have emphasized above, is the vital part of sociology; and it is manifest that only a general science of society like sociology is competent to deal with such a problem. Inasmuch as the problems of social evolution are problems of change, development, or movement in society, Comte proposed that this division of sociology be called _Social Dynamics_.
The Relations of Sociology to Other Sciences. [Footnote: For a fuller discussion of the relations of sociology to other sciences and to philosophy see my article on ”Sociology: Its Problems and Its Relations”