Social structure: what it is, characteristics and elements

We explain what social structure is, its history and main characteristics, as well as its analytical and empirical elements.

Every social structure is dynamic and subject to change.

What is social structure?

In sociology, social structure is the the way in which dynamic interaction occurs between people, organized within and around a given structureThis structure is formed by the interaction between production and consumption relations, power relations and experience relations.

Every social structure is dynamic and subject to change.. This happens because of the individuals in the community themselves, who can also change. The social structure operates as a system, with its rules, mechanisms and processes, as well as its values ​​and content.

Although every social structure encompasses the entirety of society, it is not a visible structure, but rather it is the ordering that individuals assume as natural, their own or spontaneous. Different disciplines, such as sociology, social psychology, social anthropology and other similar social sciences, are concerned with making the social structure visible and, furthermore, understanding its scope, characteristics and consequences.

The study of social structures leads to the study of the set of relationships that exist at a certain moment in time, which unite certain human beings in a certain place. The social structure is not a figure or the arrangement of a series of elements on a Cartesian axis. It should be understood as a system of forces oriented in a specific direction, which is determined according to each case.

The concept of social structure emerged in the 19th century thanks to the work of the German philosophers and sociologists Georg Simmel (1858-1918) and Ferdinand Tönnies (1855-1936).Simmel and Tönnies wanted to explain how, in the same community, two unknown individuals with no contact whatsoever can be socially related.

Social structure is a controversial concept within sociology, as there have been many debates regarding its true existence, especially in some sociological currents that deny the possibility of conceiving a social structure that encompasses society as a whole.

However, the different sociological currents agree that a social structure is an organizational framework that determines how people relate in a society. This structure influences the way resources are distributed, decisions are made, and even how power is exercised in a society. Furthermore, the social structure can affect the identity and the way in which different social groups perceive themselves.

History of social structure

The study of social structures It has its origin in the study of institutions, culture and historyas well as social interaction and other elements that intervene in the different social dynamics.

Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) is believed to have been the first theorist to use the term “social structure.”although it is disputed whether he did so in its contemporary sense. Various theorists such as Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), Ferdinand Tönnies (1855-1936), Max Weber (1864-1920), Émilie Durkheim (1858-1917) and Karl Marx (1818-1883) later contributed to generating a structural concept of the social.

The first in-depth approaches to the structural study of society were made by Marx. Marx related the political, cultural and religious aspects to the modes of production. For him, the modes of production determined the political and cultural superstructure of society.

In 1905, Ferdinand Tönnies, a German sociologist and economist, published his study The current problems of the social structure. There he argued that only the constitution of a multitude into a unit could create a social structure. This conception was close to the idea of ​​“social will.”

For his part, Durkheim introduced the idea that different institutions and social practices could play an important role in ensuring the functional integration of society, through the assimilation of different parts into a unified and self-reproducing whole. In this process, there are, according to Durkheim, two structural forms: mechanical solidarity and organic solidarity.

However, The person who formally introduced the concept of social structure was Georg Simmel (1858-1918). Simmel developed a general sociological approach to the idea of ​​structure that allowed for a general analysis of different forms of relationships. For example:

• Domination and subordination
• Competition
• Division of labour
• Formation of parties
• Representation
• External solidarity and external exclusivity
• Religious communities
• Economic associations
• Art schools

Characteristics of the social structure

The concept of social structure varies depending on the sociological school to which it belongs. However, each time it is used, certain common characteristics are maintained. These are:

• Social structures are the result of forces acting in a certain arrangement.
• The forces that generate social structures are not constant. They vary in intensity and direction.
• Social structures change and shift, just as the ingredients of a real society do.
• Every social structure has a programmatic trajectory, constituted at each instant by a dynamic distension, a coming from the past and a going to the future.
• Social structures are characterized by having the features of conservation (maintain elements of the past) and the anticipation (project elements into the future).
• A social structure is old, since it comes from the past, but at the same time it is conservative, unstable and made of the future.
• The social structure is defined by its own “argument”: there is in the structure an intrinsic historicity to society.

Analytical elements and empirical elements of social structure

A social structure is the form of collective life. That is, it is what shapes the life of a society, unlike a scheme or a static figure. However, It is not the same to say that a social structure is the form of every society than of “a” society..

Sociology distinguishes, within the social structure, between analytical elements and empirical elements.

• Analytical elements. These are the elements that are among the requirements of any society. That is, they are the elements that constitute the necessary conditions for a society to be a society.
  • An analytical element is the fact that every society, as such, is the coexistence and plurality of human beings who live together and subject to a system of common values.
• Empirical elementsThese are the elements that are found every time a real and concrete society is analyzed. These elements, however, remain structural.
  • An empirical element is the meaning given to the word “together” used in the analytical element indicated. Being together in a big city is not the same as being together in a country or a village.

Social structures, when their analytical and empirical elements are taken into account, are crossed by decisive factors that characterize them in different ways. For example: relations of subordination or coordination between different societies, the isolation of one of them, the colonial character of a people with respect to an original city, among others.

References

• Murdock, George (1949). Social Structure. New York: MacMillan.
• Tönnies, F. (2015). The birth of my concepts of” community” and “society”. Sociological Mexico, (1).
• Gurvitch, G., & Villegas, O.U. (1955). The concept of social structure. Mexican Journal of Sociology, 299-343.
• Gurvitch, G. (1962). Treatise on sociology.

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