Introduction to the Science of SociologyPark, Robert Ezra
General
Introduction to the Science of Sociology
Park, Robert Ezra
Sociology
In this representation the area of widest cultural influences is
coterminous with the area of commerce, because commerce in its widest
extension is invariably carried on under some restraints of custom and
customary law. Otherwise it is not commerce at all, but something
predacious outside the law. But if the area of the economic process is
almost invariably coterminous with the widest areas of cultural
influence, it does not extend to the smaller social groups. As a rule
trade does not invade the family. Family interests are always personal
even when they are carried on under the forms of commerce. Primitive
society, within the limits of the village, is usually communistic. All
values are personal, and the relations of individuals to one another,
economic or otherwise, are preordained by custom and law.
The impersonal values, values for exchange, seem to be in any given
society or social group in inverse relation to the personal values.
The attempt to describe in this large way the historical, cultural,
political, and economic processes, is justified in so far as it enables
us to recognize that the aspects of social life, which are the
subject-matter of the special social sciences, i.e., history, political
science, and economics, are involved in specific forms of change that
can be viewed abstractly, formulated, compared, and related. The attempt
to view them in their interrelations is at the same time an effort to
distinguish and to see them as parts of one whole.
[Illustration: FIG. 2
a = area of most extended cultural influences and of commerce; b =
area of formal political control; c = area of purely personal
relationships, communism.]
In contrast with the types of social change referred to there are other
changes which are unilateral and progressive; changes which are
described popularly as "movements," mass movements. These are changes
which eventuate in new social organizations and institutions.
All more marked forms of social change are associated with certain
social manifestations that we call social unrest. Social unrest issues,
under ordinary conditions, as an incident of new social contacts, and is
an indication of a more lively tempo in the process of communication and
interaction.
All social changes are preceded by a certain degree of social and
individual disorganization. This will be followed ordinarily under
normal conditions by a movement of reorganization. All progress implies
a certain amount of disorganization. In studying social changes,
therefore, that, if not progressive, are at least unilateral, we are
interested in:
(1) Disorganization: accelerated mobility, unrest, disease, and crime as
manifestations and measures of social disorganization.
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