Social Structure Vs Social Systems

The discussion during the class today provided a food for thought about ‘Theory and Social Structure’. The crux of the discussion was about the components of social structure and how they build the who pyramid of society in general and how each component works in particular.
Social Structures play the role of umbrella in a society which helps the society to function socially. It is comprised of various institutions, ideologies and social entities functioning in a social system. For instance, democracy (governance), religion (beliefs), military (security), judiciary (justice) and media (accountability) are the institutions of that social structure in which society functions and integrates the social process.

Social Systems on the other hand are the operational manuals for maintaining the social structure. Social systems have ‘norms, rules, laws and goals’ to execute within its jurisdiction so that the social system may achieve the ultimate objectives for the functioning of society.

Social structure is more about institutions while social system is generally for organizations. For example religion is an institution (social structure) on the other hand church/mosque/synagogue is an organization. Similarly military or democracy is social structures while army or congress are the institutions. The picture gives us a very wonderful view of social organization in which various social structures are shown while one may finds a social systems within each structure.

Social Process on the other hand is the mechanism within the social structure which helps it to function and adapt. Social process includes ‘socialization, integration, power & status distribution & adaptation’. Social process and social structures are catalyst for changing each other. For instance it is the social process which has transformed our social structure from cave age to a modern democratic society. But the dysfunction of the social system (congress) does not mean that social process have stopped believing in the social structures.

But sometimes it is the individuals which influence both on social process and social structures and we have the example of those charismatic leaders such as Gandhee with his non violence movement, Dr. King with his civil rights movement and Nelsen Mandela for the liberation of apartheid Africa. On the other hand one finds the leaders who disrupted the social structure and social process with their leadership such as Hitler and Taliban.

Suicide: Durkehim (March 3, 2009):

How Durkheim's Theory of Suicide fits into Suicide Bombers:

Today we had a guest speaker in our class and she discussed in details about Durkhiem interpretation of ‘suicide’ and then she compared it that how suicidal rate in Russia increased after the demise of communist Soviet Union in 90’s .

She described the three commonly patterns identified by Durkhiem which were commonly found among the people who committed suicide:

Egoistic suicide is committed by people who are not strongly supported by membership in a cohesive social group. As outsiders, they depend more on themselves than on group goals and rules of conduct to sustain them in their lives. In times of stress, they feel isolated and helpless.

Altruistic suicide is committed by people who are deeply committed to group norms and goals and who see their own lives as unimportant. Basically, these suicides involved dying for a cause.

Anomic suicide is committed by people when society is in crisis or rapid change. In such times, customary norms may weaken or break down. With no clear standards of behavior to guide them, many people become confused, their usual goals lose meaning, and life seems aimless.

There were eye-opening findings which she shared in our class about Russia. It was also very helpful to find that how communist Russia was being rule by the Communist Party and how people were coping with that change and most of the suicides committed by them were Anomic Suicides as there was a huge shift from Communism to the ownership of property which people have not seen for two or three generations. This confusion and shifting of goals made many people’s life aimeless and were feeling themselves misfit in the transitory society.

As we had very little time for discussion in the class, she was kind enough to stay for half an hour after the class. I had a question in my mind which I put before her and the group present at that time.

I am from Pakistan, and my country has experienced a wave of suicide bombings which has taken more innocent lives than the innocent lives lost during 9/11. Earlier I used to think about those suicide bombers’ (terrosists) as a behavior issue. As these children are generally admitted in some radical religious schools where they are taught ‘hatred literature’ against other nations, religions and sects and then are motivated and trained to take suicidal action against their enemies.

After reading Durkhiem and then his interpretation of patterns of suicides, I thought these terrorist do not lie in one category but one finds all these three patterns mentioned above in the motivation for suicidal mission.

They have the egotistic tendencies as majority of the suicide bombers are from poor section of society. They are not only poor but are excluded from the society due to disparity of wealth, basic rights and power imbalance prevalent in the society. They find a great deal of respect and empowerment when they have association with those mentors who are preparing them for a suicidal mission. Therefore the hatred for society is pretty natural for them which treated the with incohesivesness.

Ironically, these terrorists altruistic misinterpret religion as the motivating force pursuing them to go for this mission. They argue that death in the suicidal mission with be a great service for religion and would be a great weapon to eliminate the enemies of religion. They are wrongly brainwashed that not only will their suicide mission will be a great service to the religion but also pave the way for heaven for him and his family after his death.

Surprisingly, there is anomic factor for the increase of suicide bombing. There was a great transition in Afghanistan after 9-11. The extremists were having a safe haven in Afghanistan before 9-11 and life for them was stable. But with the invasion of foreign forces in Afghanistan and then use of military in Pakistan brought a great change in their lives. They were enjoying their barbarian rule but without any external interference. But suddenly, they were at run as the attack from all sides had brought them to react with suicide bombings which was not only to annihilate themselves but also the people around them.

Ii is just an observation but your suggestions and comments may be helpful to look into the issue with a researcher lens.

Source: Blogspot for Cartoon

SOCIAL POWER

Social Power has been central issues in Sociology. Power has a great role in our day to day life, in our society and in our system as a whole. It begins from micro level (home), to mezzo level (community) and deals at macro level (nations, geo political).
Though idea of social power has been debated in one way or the other among various scholars such as Archyia Kautalyia in his book “Arthshaastir” in which he depicts how a state may be run by keeping the power within the hands of ruler. Though coercive power has been used by various rulers in the history from every region and creed but somehow coercive power was legitimize philosophically by Machiavelli during the Renaissance period in his famous book “The Prince” where he clearly legitimizes ‘End justify the means’ notion.
Karl Marx has also commented on social power when he discusses that labor in this capitalistic society is coercive labor and it is the industrialist who controls the resources and has power over the means of production including the labor. It is that power imbalance of Capitalistic society he believes may be erased by revolution rather than reformation in the system.
There are several bases of social power and are well classified by French and Raven :
Coercive Power: “ability to punish those who not conform to your ideas or demands”. Coercive power has widely been discussed and debated by the sociologist in both classical and modern power. Coercive power may also be called as a misuse or abuse of power. Many states where Military governments topple the democratic setups are the part of coercive powers. But it does not necessarily means that coercive power does not exist in democratic setups. One finds various levels of use of coercive powers various institutions, in various parts of the world. These Islamic militants are another example of using coercive power in the domain of religion when exert their believes on the society as a whole and one who defies is punished for setting a lesson for the society in general. The reign of terror is another example when coercive power was in its climax.
Legitimate power or Organizational Authority: “This form is based on the perception that someone has the right to prescribe the behavior due to election or appointment to a position of responsibility also called normative power”. In the modern days, this legitimate power concept is more prevalent. Though the legitimacy was also prevalent in monarchy but that was top to bottom and one finds number of wars, fratricides and revolts within the monarchs to topple and overthrow the King/Queen by challenging its legitimacy and also using coercive power. But in democracy, this concept is from bottom to top, when people elect their officials and give them power or authority to decide on certain issues on behalf of their constituency. The process of election somehow legitimize the power and discretions which elected officials use at local, state, national or international level. Similar is the situation when on is appointed on some powerful post through a transparent and accountable process of induction to perform certain duties and use certain power lying within his/her domain.
Referent Power (Power through association with others who possess power) : This type is prevalent in our modern society no matter it is developed or developing world. It is somehow a subtle abuse of power when one associates oneself with a person who already has power and then acquire certain powers sometimes violates merit. It is very common when holds power then s/he wants to behold the surrounding power bases among ones peers. Therefore the second or third tier powers are normally referent powers (who sometimes are not eligible for those posts) rather than legitimate persons.
“Expert Power” is the ‘ability to have distinctive knowledge, expertise or skills’. Though one finds this power structure in ancient societies but they were rare in number and their role in power was limited. But industrial revolution has created another class of professionals (not workers) who ‘know more and more about less and less’ are called specialist or expert in their field. In government domain they are considered as Technocrats. They are the one who are bridge between the working and industrialist class. Their skills, knowledge and expertise bring them into the category of value added human resources which has more social capital value as compare to totalitarians. One finds that this expert class enjoys a power as a representative of the capitalist and directly deals with the working class. Therefore the power struggle at the moment is more between expert group and the worker group rather than worker and the owner of the factory.
Informative Power ‘deals with controlling information needed by others in order to attain a goal’.
Reward Power: “perceived ability to give positive consequences or remove negative ones”.
Personal View: I had an opportunity to work for a non profit organization in Pakistan and its motto was ‘Challenging Power Imbalances’. Its great to share that on hand experience that how power plays its role in various tiers of society and then how it may be challenged in a non confrontational way in order to bring the tiers of system accountable and transparent from bottom to top approach rather than other way round.
We were working on eradicating poverty through rights based approach rather than focusing on service delivery approach. And within that goal my area of work was to look into the issue of Food Rights at household, community, national and global level.
So the interesting finding was that there had been and has been abundant food production at global level which can easily feed the current world’s population. Then we tried to figure out that why about 856 million people are malnourished or food insecure. It came up that its not the production which matters but rather it’s the distribution which is more important. Ironically, most of the rich countries have abundant food and even millions of people go to bed hungry in those countries. Infact, the power of food production and distribution is not in the hands of government rather than in the corporate sector which sees food as a commodity not a human right. Therefore skewed distribution of food leaves many people manlnourished all around the world.
Then we looked into the national levels and particularly, the poor countries which want to overcome this food insecurity but sometimes their policy makers do not have ‘ Food ‘ as their top political agenda or sometimes are arm twisted by the donors who look more into the corporate interests of their countries rather than eradicating poverty and food insecurity in those countries. Therefore government which is normally run by the elite group do not know that what are the sufferings of poor who are suffering from food insecurity and malnourishment.
Similarly at community level it was found out that those who owns some land, business or some entrepreneur (As Marx calls it private property), are somehow food secure but those who do not have ownership or are tenants are more powerless and chronically food insecure. The power at local level is concentrated which have more assets and money.
At household level, we found that patriarchy plays very important role in poor countries and poor societies. Women who cook the food for the whole family is the last one to eat and the man who is considered as the head of the family gets the best out of that meal. So for him, its feast and for women it is just a left over if there is any !
Therefore, this power has vertical tiers as well as horizontal tiers. Though challenging power imbalances is somehow a defiance in that society but one needs to understand its dynamics at every level and then challenging strategies may be adopted with adaptations at each leve.

Resources:
Bases of Social Power
Google.com

Alienation and the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844

Marx argues that worker with his work produces commodity. Infact his work is transformed into commodity. He involves into the level of commodity and himself becomes indeed the most miserable commodity. The more he produces the commodity the more commodities become cheaper ‘Labor produces not only commodities it produces itself and the worker as cheap commodity.’ The proposition is that the object which labor produces confronts it as something alien. The output or commodity does not belong to him(worker). The labor arises as loss of reality of the workers’ objectification. This loss of the object and object dissociation may be called as estrangement or alienation.

The worker becomes a slave of his object, as he receives and object of labor, in that he receives work (employment) and secondly in that he receives means of subsistence. This estrangement is not only demonstrated in the products of his labor. It also integrates production activity as the product is after all the outcome of the activity of production. Therefore its not only the product (commodity) itself but the production process which brings alienation.

Hence the labor is external to worker and it is not associated with to his essential being. During his work he does not feel free or happy infact he feels himself outside his work. His labor is not voluntary but a coerced or forced labor. The labor is not contentment of his needs but means to fulfill his subsistence needs. Man who is alienated from himself due to external labor, therefore it is a labor of ‘self sacrifice of mortification.’ It appears the fact that labor of the worker is not his own as it does not belong to him but to someone else.

I never thought about the concept of ‘alienation’ before reading Marx. He has explained it in such a wonderful and vivid way that one can grasps this concept so easily and I assume it is applicable to all of us who are born and brought up in the Capitalist society. But it is more apparent in the industrial sector particularly in the developing countries. I was just thinking about the Charlie Chaplin’s movie and similar thing happen when I was on field visit to Columbus Junction (IA). There were some immigrant workers who work at a meat processing plant in the area. They said, we are pressurized all the time to work more and more. Their team/shift was processing 1000 hogs a day and this year the company has set the target of processing 1200 hogs per day with a little incentive if the process more. I was just thinking of Marx at that time that how the work of these people is transformed into a commodity and how the profit of that commodity would be calculated in the head of the company at some coastal area.

The workers had no control over commodity but were more interested in their subsistence income to meet their both ends meet. They were dissociated with the object they were producing and estrangement and alienation with reality.

Photo Credit: Flickr.com