The Concept of Social Structure

The Concept of Social Structure

[Citation: Gaurang R. Sahay, The Concept of Social Structure (2012, Unpublished)] 

Social structure is a general social science concept. It contributes in a major way to a fuller and a scientific understanding of human society and its various dynamics by referring to its relatively long-lasting basic characteristics. In this note, there has been an effort to expound the important connotations attached with the concept and its explanatory importance in social science discourse.

I

The contemporary references to the concept of social structure in social science is generally traced to Emile Durkheim who has argued that human society constitutes interrelated and interdependent parts which are social in nature, and that this interdependency among parts regulates systematically the behaviour of institutions and their members. Although the concept of social structure has been defined or understood in many ways, it constitutes some general connotations which are following:

First, the concept of social structure calls for the specification of basic units or elements of society for analysis. The basic units of analysis are social relations which are generally of three types: first, the social relations that arise from the interactions among human beings such as role relationships (landlord-agriculture labour); second, the social relations that arise from the interactions within and among groups or associations involving common pattern of interaction, membership, sense of belonging and identification such as caste groups, classes, ethnic groups, gender groups, political parties, voluntary associations, etc.; and third, the social relations that arise from the interactions among elements of an institution or institutions such as family, kinship, caste, religion, panchayat, agrarian economy, etc.

Second, the concept also implies that the basic units of analysis have some kind of special or non-random relationships to one another. In other words, social relations are not arbitrary and coincidental but exhibit some regularity and continuity. For example, the relationships between husband and wife within a family and between the groups of labour buyers and sellers in a labour market are of a relatively definite and non-random character.

Third, interactions among the basic units of analysis are repetitive in nature. This implication of the concept of social structure spells out the dynamic or process side of the relationships among units.

Fourth, the concept implies that human society is differentiated into certain groups, positions, institutions, etc. that are interdependent or functionally interrelated. However, the relationships among units within a structure are different from the relationships with units that lie outside the structure. This idea spells out that the notion of social structure carries an implication of boundary or an idea of ‘difference-from-outside’.

Fifth, this idea of ‘difference-from-outside’ gives rise to the idea of ‘structure-in-situation’ or ‘structure-in-environment’ as well as the idea of the degree to which the structure is closed from or opens to influences or interactions with units outside the structure. For example, caste structure exists in an environment that includes various other structures such as property system, legal system, occupational system and educational system. Changes in the environment affect the caste structure and vice versa.

Sixth, the concept of social structure creates a discursive space for accounting the reasons for or causes of a structure and its various elements. It tries to explain questions: why does a particular set of relationships hang together and differentiate itself from other sets of relationships? Ideas of differentiation, adaptation, integration, domination, consent, coercion, etc. figure prominently in the analysis of reasons and causes.

Lastly, the notion of social structure implies that human beings are not completely free and autonomous in their choices and actions, but are instead influenced and constrained by the social relations they form with one another.

II

The concept of social structure has been of greater theoretical importance in social science. It is regarded as an explanatory concept, a key to the understanding human society and its various dimensions. To bring out its explanatory importance, social scientists with different theoretical backgrounds have conceptualised the idea of social structure in different ways for understanding certain aspects of human society which they have regarded as fundamentally critical. The more prominent conceptualisations have taken place in the realms of structural functionalism, Marxism and structuralism.

Structural functionalism and the concept of social structure

Structural functionalism has been a dominant theoretical framework in social science which has conceptualized the idea of social structure for understanding the effective functioning of society. Structural functionalists such as Emile Durkheim, A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, Brownislaw Malinowski, Talcott Parsons and Robert Merton have given the concept of social structure a central place in their work and connected it to the concept of function. They have defined social structure as a set of relatively stable patterned social relations or relations amongst units of human society including individuals. Such relations are patterned or normal because they are defined or controlled by institutions, i.e., socially established values and norms or patterns of behaviour. The continuity of the social structure is being maintained in any circumstances by the interdependent components of the social structure which have indispensable functions for one another and for the society as a whole which is seen as a continuing structurally differentiated but integrated organic entity. These functions have been categorised broadly as: situational (organizing the roles of institutions and individuals), instrumental (specifying the mechanisms for the attainment of specific goal), and integrative (regulating the relations of individuals as to promote cooperation and consensus). For most of the structural functionalists, social structure is essentially normative—that is, consisting of ‘institutional patterns of normative culture’. Put differently, social structure consists of norms, values, and rules that direct social and individual behaviour by defining status and role in specific situations. Moreover, these norms vary among different situations and spheres of life and lead to the creation of social institutions—for example, property relations, economic and social exchange, rites and marriage. Norms, roles, and institutions are all components of the social structure on different levels of complexity.

Marxism and the concept of social structure

Marxists, including critical theorists, have used the concept of social structure for understanding social relations characterised by inequality, domination, subordination, contradiction, etc. that generate conditions for change within the structure and of the structure. In the Marxist theoretical framework the concept of social structure consists not only of normative patterns but also of the inequalities of power, status, and material privileges, which give the members of a society widely different opportunities and alternatives. These inequalities define different strata, or classes, castes and gender groups, which form the stratification system, or class, caste and gender structure, of the society. Both aspects of the social structure, the normative (norms and values) and the distributive (wealth, status and power) aspect, are strongly interconnected, as may be inferred from the observation that members of different political strata, castes and classes often have different and even conflicting norms and values.

This leads to a consideration, which is contrary to structural functionalism, that certain norms in a society may be established not because of any general consensus about their moral value but because they are forced upon the others by those who have both the interest in doing so and the power to carry it out. For example, the norms of caste or race apartheid reflect the interests and values of only one small section of the population, which has the power to enforce them upon the majority. In some forms of Marxism this argument has been generalized: norms, values, and other normative ideas are explained as the result of the inequalities of power between groups with conflicting interests. This Marxian view is succinctly summarized in Marx's phrase, ‘The ideas of the ruling class are, in every age, the ruling ideas’.

In Marxism, the concept of social structure represents a reality being constituted by various levels of the structure – economy, polity and ideology (caste, gender and ethnicity) – which are interrelated and relatively autonomous of one another, but not in a predetermined way. Relatively autonomous and interdependent character of the various levels or units of the structure are possible because each is due to more than one cause and has several raison d’etre. The relationships among the different components or levels of the structure may be of different nature and weightage that keeps on changing from one situation to another.

Contrary to structural functionalism, Marxism holds the view that the reality being represented by the concept of social structure is not always empirically present to the senses. It underlies behind the apparent or observable relations as an unconscious structure. For example, various apparent phenomena like wages, income and profit conceal the fact they are not things in themselves but relations between people of different classes. Put differently, profit or income for one is the unpaid labour for others. To quote Marx, ‘The final pattern of economic relations as seen on the surface, in their real existence and consequently in the conceptions by which the bearers and agents of these relations seek to understand them, is very much different from, and indeed quite the reverse of, their inner but concealed essential pattern and the conception corresponding to it’. This aspect of Marxist understanding of social structure has been highlighted particularly by structural Marxists such as Louis Althusser, Etienne Balibar, Nicos Poulantzas and Maurice Godelier.

Structuralism and the concept of social structure

Another important conceptualisation of social structure in social science has taken place within the theoretical framework of structuralism. In structuralism, social structure has been conceptualised as a deep structure or sub-structure that underlies all apparent social relations. It is an unconscious cognitive model which is unobservable but has observable effects on individual and social behaviour. For structuralists like Claude Levi-Strauss, this model or structure also acts as an epistemological construct which is characterised by four important features. First, the structure exhibits the characteristics of a system, i.e., it is made up of several elements, none of which undergo a change without effecting changes in all the other elements. Second, for any given structure or model there is a possibility of ordering a series of transformations resulting in a group of models of the same type. Third, the above properties make it possible to predict how the model will react if one or more of its elements are submitted to certain modifications. Finally, it makes immediately intelligible all aspects of empirical facts.

This conceptualisation of social structure is largely based on the lessons from structural linguistics. In structural linguistics, it is believed that language is a structured supra-individual unconscious reality and its elements are interrelated in non-arbitrary, regular, rule-bound ways. A speaker follows grammar or rules of the language without being aware of doing so. Structural linguistics detects this underlying reality, including the rules of transformation that connect structure of the language to the various observed expressions.

Structuralist notion of social structure has been developed and used by various scholars such as Lévi-Strauss, Michel Foucault and Jacques Lacan to understand various dynamics of individual and social behaviour. For example, Lévi-Strauss has studied the different forms of kinship systems, myths, and customs of cooking and eating and detected the common structure lying behind the various forms of a social or cultural phenomenon. He argues that the variety of individual and social behaviour the structure generates is potentially unlimited. The structure is not readily observable; it must be discerned from intensive interpretive analysis of myths, language, texts or symbolic order (the real, symbolic and imaginary).