Ant 358 Definitions

ANT 35801 Social Anthropology Dr. Dorothy D. Wills

A Few Definitions

Social anthropology - the comparative study of social systems and how they work; focus on the collective aspect of human life

Social system - the interdependent activities, institutions, and values by which people live, including the hidden theories or assumptions associated with these

Social organization - the systematic ordering of social relations by acts of choice and decision; these acts are guided by precedents provided by the social structure and limited by the range of possible alternatives; in other words, actual behavior.
- social organization involves unified, planned, and concerted efforts or
actions by individuals or groups cooperating over a period of time
- acts may lead to changes in structure

Social structure - the ideals values, expectations, norms, rules, etc., which provide members of society with a reliable guide to action (e.g., status, role)
- it is like the blueprint, and organization like the actual building; or like a
code, while organization is the message

Both social structure and social organization are aspects of every social system; structure refers to the static and organization to the dynamic aspects of the system. The functional aspects of social relations concern the ways they serve given ends, either individual or collective. Theoretically, it is possible to distinguish society as the external, visible activities of people in groups and culture as the internal rules and knowledge they have that enable them to behave in an organized fashion. However, you can't have one of these things without the other, so we sometimes call the whole a sociocultural system (namely, a society plus a culture). This sociocultural system is the characteristic form for human life. Animals don't have them, even though many animals have some form of social behavior or organization. All human beings since Australopithecus have been part of at least one sociocultural system.

Some Basic Questions in Social Anthropology

How are we like other (social) animals?
How are we different from them?
How can we study ourselves?
How did we get to be the way we are?
How can anthropology contribute to contemporary life and the solution of modern problems?