The Definition of Society
by Michael G. Heller
Published in Social Science Files; March 16, 2025
My definition of society is, I believe, simple, robust and relevant for the study of all societies and in all periods.
I conceptualise ‘society’ as a governed, bordered, bonded and bound socio-economic unit that demonstrates a long-lived fitness for the joint human purposes of peaceful cohabitation and satisfaction of human needs.
The basic needs met by society are subsistence, safety, shelter, social support and social order. Bordering requires capabilities for defence, closure, and integration. The invention and evolution of a common identity helps to promote the bordering and bonding of society.
The establishment of common rules is indispensable for the binding of society. The unity of a society is maintained by prioritising the society over the individual. Unity may be achieved in various ways. A feeling and belief of being united as a tangible ‘unit’ is fostered by
visible and audible representations of the ethereal aspect of society,
visible and audible calculable actions for the common good,
visible and audible rule enforcements,
common identities formed through the visible and audible resolutions of conflicts within and between societies.
I then conceive governance as the process and mechanism for making decisions that affect the whole of society. Since prehistoric times the three elemental sets of decisions were about subsistence, keeping order, and selecting the mechanisms to be employed for making the decisions.
The mechanism or method of deciding is the single factor that differentiates one type of society from another. As my definition of society-as-governance suggests, I take for granted that some characteristics of societies remain constant or equivalent across most if not all types. On the other hand, the decision making mechanism changes fundamentally whenever a society transitions to a new evolutionary pathway. The change in decision making is the change in governance.
Change from one kind of society to another is in every case established by the mode of governance — the mechanism through which all decisions affecting the whole society are instituted. The mode of governance is the typological definition of a differentiated society.
The term ‘governance’ suggests human intentionality. Internal and external environmental constraints and threats were the incentives that drove societies to try actively to manage their own destinies.
In addition I incorporate my own theory of social action and human reasoning under five categories — rationalism, reckoning, rightness, rules and representationism.
By rationality I mean the criterion of harmonising means with ends.
Reckoning refers to deliberate calculation of an optimal society-preserving equilibrium between the satisfying of the common good as against individual gratifications.
Rules and enforcements of social conventions of governance are rationally devised to supply the bedrock conditions of social order.
Rightness refers to the nature and volume of factual and presumptive knowledge or ‘truth’ in society, and the mechanisms and mentalities employed to create and interpret knowledge.
Representation is the externalisation in symbolic or literal form of the sensation experienced when society represents persons, when persons represent society, or when a ‘belief’ represents society.
In summary, a unit of people can only be called a society if it is self-consciously self-governing, self-bordered, self-identified, and self-regulated.
Empire makes such a condition impossible. …
[NEXT — Empire kills Society]
The Great Parade (definitive state) by Fernand Léger, 1954 France