LESSON 7: THE

HUMAN PERSON
IN SOCIETY

•At the end of this lesson,

students should be able to:
Recognize how individuals
form societies and how
individuals are transformed
by societies.
•Compare different forms of
societies and individualities
(eg. Agrarian, industrial, and virtual)
•Explain how human relations
are transformed by social systems.
•Evaluate the transformation
of human relationships by
social systems and how
societies transform
individual human beings.

WHAT IS SOCIETY?
➢Refers to a group of people who live
in a definable community and share
the same culture.

Sociologist Gerhard
Lenski (1924)
•Defined societies in terms
of their technological
sophistication.
•As a society advances, so
does its use of technology.

Sociologist Gerhard
Lenski (1924)
●Societies with rudimentary
technology depend on the
fluctuations of their
environments, while
industrialized societies have
more control over the
impact of their surroundings
and thus develop different
cultural features.

PREINDUSTRIAL
SOCIETIES

PRE-INDUSTRIAL SOCIETIES

*Hunter-Gatherer
*Pastoral
*Horticultural
*Agricultural
*Feudal

Hunter-Gatherer Societies
●Hunter-gatherers relied on
their surroundings for
survival. they hunted wild
animals and foraged for
uncultivated plants for
food.

Hunter-Gatherer Societies

●Hunter-gatherer
groups are quickly
disappearing as the
world’s population
explodes.

Pastoral Societies
•Rely on the domestication of
animals as a resource for
survival.
•Pastoral groups were able to
breed livestock for food,
clothing, and transportation,
and they created a surplus of
goods.

Pastoral Societies
●Herding, or pastoral,
societies remained
nomadic because they
were forced to follow their
animals to fresh feeding
grounds.

Horticultural Societies
●Formed in areas where rainfall and
other conditions allowed them to
grow stable crops.
•Since they didn’t have to abandon
their location to follow resources,
they were able to start permanent
settlements.

Agricultural Societies
•Around 3000 B.C.E., an
explosion of new
technology known as the
Agricultural Revolution
made farming possible
and profitable.

Agricultural Societies
●Farmers learned to rotate
the types of crops grown
on their fields and to reuse
waste products such as
fertilizer, which led to
better harvests and
bigger surpluses of food.

Agricultural Societies
●New tools for digging
and harvesting were
made of metal, and
this made them more
effective and longer
lasting.

Agricultural Societies
●This period became
referred to as the “dawn
of civilization” by some
because of the
development of leisure
and humanities.

Feudal Societies
●The nobility, known as
lords, placed vassals in
charge of pieces of land.
In return for the resources
that the land provided,
vassals promised to fight
for their lords.

Feudal Societies
●These individual pieces of
land, known as fiefdoms,
were cultivated by the
lower class.

Feudal Societies
●Power was handed
down through family
lines, with peasant
families serving lords
for generations and
generations.

INDUSTRIAL
SOCIETY

INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY
➢In the 18TH century, Europe
experienced a dramatic rise in
technological invention, ushering in
an era known as the Industrial
Revolution.

INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY
➢In 1782, James Watt and
Matthew Boulton created a
steam engine that could do the work
of twelve horses by itself.
Steam power began appearing
everywhere. Instead of paying
artisans to painstakingly spin
wool and weave it into cloth,
people turned to textile mills
that produced fabric quickly at
a better price and often
with better quality.

INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY
➢Rather than planting and
harvesting fields by hand,
farmers were able to purchase
mechanical seeders and
threshing machines that caused
agricultural productivity to soar.
Gas lights allowed increased
visibility in the dark, and towns
and cities developed a nightlife.

INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY
➢The new generation became
less preoccupied with maintaining
family land and traditions and
more focused on acquiring
wealth and achieving upward
mobility for themselves and their families.

SOCIAL
SYSTEM

SOCIAL SYSTEM
➢Refers to an orderly
arrangement, an interrelationship
of parts. In the arrangement, every
part has a fixed place and a
definite role to play. The parts are
bound by interaction.

SOCIAL SYSTEM
●It is Talcott Parsons who
has given the concept of
“system” current in
modern sociology.

SOCIAL SYSTEM
●According to Talcott Parsons,
it is a plurality of social
actors who are engaged in
more or less stable interaction
“according to shared
cultural norms and meanings”
Individuals constitute the basic
interaction units. However, the
interacting units may be groups or
organizations of individuals within the
system.

SOCIAL SYSTEM
●According to Charles P.
Loomis, is composed of the
patterned interaction of visual
actors whose relation to each
other are mutually oriented
through the definition of the
mediation of pattern of
structured and shared symbols
and expectations.

ELEMENTS OF
SOCIAL SYSTEM

FAITH AND KNOWLEDGE

●The faiths and knowledge
bring about uniformity in
behavior. They act as the
controlling agency of
different types of human
societies.

SENTIMENT
●Sentiments - filial,
social, notional, etc.,
have played an
immense role in
investing society with
continuity.

END GOAL OR OBJECT

●Man and society exist
between needs and
satisfactions, end and goal.
These determine the nature of
the social system.They
provided the pathway of
progress and the receding
horizons.

IDEALS AND NORMS

●The society lays down certain
norms and ideals for keeping
the social system intact and for
determining the various functions
of different units.
•These norms prescribe the rules and
regulations on the basis of which
individuals or persons may acquire
their cultural goals and aims.

IDEALS AND NORMS

●These norms and ideals
include folkways,
customs, traditions,
fashions, morality,
religion, etc.

STATUS-ROLE
●He goes by status-role
relation. It may come
to the individual by
virtue of his birth, sex,
caste, or age.

ROLE
●Role is the external expression
of the status. While
discharging certain jobs or
doing certain things, every
individual keeps in mind his
status. This thing leads to social
integration, organization, and
unity in the social system.

POWER
●The authority exercising
power will differ from
group to group; while the
authority of father may be
supreme in the family, in
the state it is that of the
ruler.

The Individual and The

Social Construct
Theory

Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes proposed
that a society without rules
and laws to govern our
actions would be
a dreadful place to live.
Hobbes described a society
without rules as living in a
“state of nature.”

John Locke
Social contract theory says
that people live together in
society in accordance with
an agreement that
establishes moral and
political rules of behavior.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Rousseau's social
contract theory holds
that a people is free
when it is governed by
its own laws.