Introduction to the Science of Sociology Part 97

Nevertheless, the customs and code of a profession are imperative. They oblige the individual to act in accordance with ends which to him are not his own, to make concessions, to consent to compromises, to take account of interests superior to his own. The consequence is that, even where the society rests most completely upon the division of labor, it does not disintegrate into a dust of atoms, between which there can exist only external and temporary contacts. Every function which one individual exercises is invariably dependent upon functions exercised by others and forms with them a system of interdependent parts. It follows that, from the nature of the task one chooses, corresponding duties follow. Because we fill this or that domestic or social function, we are imprisoned in a net of obligations from which we do not have the right to free ourselves. There is especially one organ toward which our state of dependencies is ever increasing--the state. The points at which we are in contact with it are multiplying. So are the occasions in which it takes upon itself to recall us to a sense of the common solidarity.

There are then two great currents in the social life, collectivism and individualism, corresponding to which we discover two types of structure not less different. Of these currents, that which has its origin in like-mindedness is at first alone and without rival. At this moment it is identified with the very life of the society; little by little it finds its separate channels and diminishes, whilst the second becomes ever larger. In the same way, the segmentary structure of society is more and more overlaid by the other, but without ever disappearing completely.

III. INVESTIGATIONS AND PROBLEMS

1. Forms of Accommodation

The literature upon accommodation will be surveyed under four heads; (a) forms of accommodation; (b) subordination and superordination; (c) accommodation groups; and (d) social organization.

The term accommodation, as has been noted, developed as a differentiation within the field of the biological concept of adaptation. Ward's dictum that "the environment transforms the animal, while man transforms the environment"[238] contained the distinction.

Thomas similarly distinguished between the animal with its method of adaptation and man with his method of control. Bristol in his work on _Social Adaptation_ is concerned, as the subt.i.tle of the volume indicates, "with the development of the doctrine of adaptation as a theory of social progress." Of the several types of adaptation that he proposes, however, all but the first represent accommodations. Baldwin, though not the first to make the distinction, was the first student to use the separate term accommodation. "By accommodation old habits are broken up, and new co-ordinations are made which are more complex."[239]

Baldwin suggested a division of accommodation into the three fields: acclimatization, naturalization, and equilibrium. The term equilibrium accurately describes the type of organization established by compet.i.tion between the different biological species and the environment, but not the more permanent organizations of individuals and groups which we find in human society. In human society equilibrium means organization. The research upon acclimatization is considerable, although there is far from unanimity of opinion in regard to its findings.

Closely related to acclimatization but in the field of social naturalization are the accommodations that take place in colonization and immigration. In colonization the adjustment is not only to climatic conditions but to the means of livelihood and habits of life required by the new situation. Historic colonial settlements have most infrequently been made in inhospitable areas, and that involved accommodations to primitive peoples of different and generally lower cultural level than the settlers. Professor Keller's work on _Colonization_ surveys the differences in types of colonial ventures and describes the adjustments involved. It includes also a valuable bibliography of the literature of the subject.

In immigration the accommodation to the economic situation and to the folkways and mores of the native society are more important than in colonization. The voluminous literature upon immigration deals but slightly with the interesting accommodations of the newcomer to his new environment. One of the important factors in the process, as emphasized in the recent "Americanization Study" of the Carnegie Corporation, is the immigrant community which serves as a mediating agency between the familiar and the strange. The greater readiness of accommodation of recent immigrants as compared with that of an earlier period has been explained in terms of facilities of transportation, communication, and even more in the mobility of employment in large-scale modern industry with its minute subdivision of labor and its slight demand for skill and training on the part of the employees.

The more subtle forms of accommodation to new social situations have not been subjected to a.n.a.lysis, although there is a small but important number of studies upon homesickness. In fiction, to be sure, the difficulties of the tenderfoot in the frontier community, or the awkward rural lad in an urban environment and the _nouveau riche_ in their successful entree among the social elite are often accuately and sympathetically described. The recent immigrant autobiographies contain materials which throw much new light on the situation of the immigrant in process of accommodation to the American environment.

The whole process of social organization is involved in the processes by which persons find their places in groups and groups are articulated into the life of the larger and more inclusive societies. The literature on the taming of animals, the education of juveniles and adults, and on social control belongs in this field. The writings on diplomacy, on statescraft, and upon adjudication of disputes are also to be considered here. The problem of the person whether in the narrow field of social work or the broader fields of human relations is fundamentally a problem of the adjustment of the person to his social milieu, to his family, to his primary social groups, to industry, and to cultural, civic, and religious inst.i.tutions. The problems of community organization are for the most part problems of accommodation, of articulation of groups within the community and of the adjustment of the local Community to the life of the wider community of which it is a part.

Adjustments of personal and social relations in the past have been made unreflectively and with a minimum of personal and social consciousness.

The extant literature reveals rather an insistent demand for these accommodations than any systematic study of the processes by which the accommodations take place. Simmel's observation upon subordination and superordination is almost the only attempt that has been made to deal with the subject from the point of view of sociology.

2. Subordination and Superordination

Materials upon subordination and superordination may be found in the literature under widely different names. Thorndike, McDougall, and others have reported upon the original tendencies in the individual to domination and submission or to self-a.s.sertion and self-abas.e.m.e.nt.

Veblen approaches nearer to a sociological explanation in his a.n.a.lysis of the self-conscious att.i.tudes of invidious comparison and conspicuous waste in the leisure cla.s.s.

The application of our knowledge of rapport, esprit de corps, and morale to an explanation of personal conduct and group behavior is one of the most promising fields for future research. In the family, rapport and consensus represent the most complete co-ordination of its members. The life of the family should be studied intensively in order to define more exactly the nature of the family consensus, the mechanism of family rapport, and minor accommodations made to minimize conflict and to avert tendencies to disintegration in the interest of this real unity.

Strachey's _Life of Queen Victoria_ sketches an interesting case of subordination and superordination in which the queen is the subordinate, and her adroit but cynical minister, Disraeli, is the master.

Future research will provide a more adequate sociology of subordination and superordination. A survey of the present output of material upon the nature and the effects of personal contacts reinforces the need for such a fundamental study. The obsolete writings upon personal magnetism have been replaced by the so-called "psychology of salesmans.h.i.+p," "scientific methods of character reading," and "the psychology of leaders.h.i.+p." The wide sale of these books indicates the popular interest, quite as much as the lack of any fundamental understanding of the technique of human relations.

3. Accommodation Groups

The field of investigation available for the study of accommodation groups and their relation to conflict groups may perhaps be best ill.u.s.trated by the table on page 722.

The existence of conflict groups like parties, sects, nationalities, represents the area in any society of unstable equilibrium.

Accommodation groups, cla.s.ses, castes, and denominations on the other hand, represent in this same society the areas of stable equilibrium. A boys' club carries on contests, under recognized rules, with similar organizations. A denomination engages in fraternal rivalry with other denominations for the advancement of common interests of the church universal. A nation possesses status, rights, and responsibilities only in a commonwealth of nations of which it is a member.

Conflict Groups Accommodation Groups

1. Gangs 1. Clubs 2. Labor organizations, employers' 2. Social cla.s.ses, vocational a.s.sociations, middle-cla.s.s unions, groups tenant protective unions 3. Races 3. Castes 4. Sects 4. Denominations 5. Nationalities 5. Nations

The works upon accommodation groups are concerned almost exclusively with the principles, methods, and technique of organization. There are, indeed, one or two important descriptive works upon secret organizations in primitive and modern times. The books and articles, however, on organized boys' groups deal with the plan of organization of Boy Scouts, Boys' Brotherhood Republic, George Junior Republics, Knights of King Arthur, and many other clubs of these types. They are not studies of natural groups.

The comparative study of social cla.s.ses and vocational groups is an unworked field. The differentiation of social types, especially in urban life, and the complexity and subtlety of the social distinctions separating social and vocational cla.s.ses, opens a fruitful prospect for investigation. Scattered through a wide literature, ranging from official inquiries to works of fiction, there are, in occasional paragraphs, pages, and chapters, observations of value.

In the field of castes the work of research is well under way. The caste system of India has been the subject of careful examination and a.n.a.lysis. Sighele points out that the prohibition of intermarriage observed in its most rigid and absolute form is a fundamental distinction of the caste. If this be regarded as the fundamental criterion, the Negro race in the United States occupies the position of a caste. The prost.i.tute, in America, until recently const.i.tuted a separate caste. With the systematic breaking up of the segregated vice districts in our great cities prost.i.tution, as a caste, seems to have disappeared. The place of the prost.i.tute seems to have been occupied by the demimondaine who lives on the outskirts of society but who is not by any means an outcast.

It is difficult to dissociate the materials upon nationalities from those upon nations. The studies, however, of the internal organization of the state, made to promote law and order, would come under the latter head. Here, also, would be included studies of the extension of the police power to promote the national welfare. In international relations studies of international law, of international courts of arbitration, of leagues or a.s.sociations of nations manifest the increasing interest in the accommodations that would avert or postpone conflicts of militant nationalities.

In the United States there is considerable literature upon church federation and the community church. This literature is one expression of the transition of the Protestant churches from sectarian bodies, engaged in warfare for the support of distinctive doctrines and dogmas, to co-operating denominations organized into the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America.

4. Social Organization

Until recently there has been more interest manifested in elaborating theories of the stages in the evolution of society than in a.n.a.lyzing the structure of different types of societies. Durkheim, however, in _De la division du travail social_, indicated how the division of labor and the social att.i.tudes, or the mental accommodations to the life-situation, shape social organization. Cooley, on the other hand, in his work _Social Organization_ conceived the structure of society to be "the larger mind," or an outgrowth of human nature and human ideals.

The increasing number of studies of individual primitive communities has furnished data for the comparative study of different kinds of social organization. Schurtz, Vierkandt, Rivers, Lowie, and others in the last twenty years have made important comparative studies in this field. The work of these scholars has led to the abandonment of the earlier notions of uniform evolutionary stages of culture in which all peoples, primitive, ancient, and modern alike, might be cla.s.sified. New light has been thrown upon the actual accommodations in the small family, in the larger family group, the clan, gens or sib, in the secret society, and in the tribe which determined the patterns of life of primitive peoples under different geographical and historical conditions.

At the present time, the investigations of social organization of current and popular interest have to do with the problems of social work and of community life. "Community organization," "community action,"

"know your own community" are phrases which express the practical motives behind the attempts at community study. Such investigations as have been made, with a few s.h.i.+ning exceptions, the Pittsburgh Survey and the community studies of the Russell Sage Foundation, have been superficial. All, perhaps, have been tentative and experimental. The community has not been studied from a fundamental standpoint. Indeed, there was not available, as a background of method and of orientation, any adequate a.n.a.lysis of social organization.

A penetrating a.n.a.lysis of the social structure of a community must quite naturally be based upon studies of human geography. Plant and animal geography has been studied, but slight attention has been given to human geography, that is, to the local distribution of persons who const.i.tute a community and the accommodations that are made because of the consequent physical distances and social relations.h.i.+ps.

Ethnological and historical studies of individual communities furnish valuable comparative materials for a treatise upon human ecology which would serve as a guidebook for studies in community organization. C. J.

Galpin's _The Social Anatomy of an Agricultural Community_ is an example of the recognition of ecological factors as basic in the study of social organization.

In the bibliography of this chapter is given a list of references to certain of the experiments in community organization. Students should study this literature in the light of the more fundamental studies of types of social groups and studies of individual communities listed in an earlier bibliography.[240] It is at once apparent that the rural community has been more carefully studied than has the urban community.

Yet more experiments in community organization have been tried out in the city than in the country. Reports upon social-center activities, upon community councils, and other types of community organization have tended to be enthusiastic rather than factual and critical. The most notable experiment of community organization, the Social Unit Plan, tried out in Cincinnati, was what the theatrical critics call a _succes d'estime_, but after the experiment had been tried it was abandoned.

Control of conditions of community life is not likely to meet with success unless based on an appreciation and understanding of human nature on the one hand, and of the natural or ecological organization of community life on the other.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. THE PSYCHOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY OF ACCOMMODATION

A. _Accommodation Defined_

(1) Morgan, C. Lloyd, and Baldwin, J. Mark. Articles on "Accommodation and Adaptation," _Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology_, I, 7-8, 14-15.

(2) Baldwin, J. Mark. _Mental Development in the Child and the Race._ Methods and processes. Chap, xvi, "Habit and Accommodation," pp. 476-88.

New York, 1895.

(3) Simmel, Georg. _Soziologie._ Untersuchungen uber die Formen der Vergesellschaftung. "Kompromiss und Versohnung," pp. 330-36. Leipzig, 1908.

(4) Bristol, L. M. _Social Adaptation._ A study in the development of the doctrine of adaptation as a theory of social progress. Cambridge, Ma.s.s., 1915.

(5) Ross, E. A. _Principles of Sociology._ "Toleration," "Compromise,"