We explain what social structure is, the origin of the concept and its four central elements.
What is social structure?
In sociology studies, social structure is the order or stable form of social relations between individuals in a given community. This order can change and adapt to historical transformations, and functions as a system, with its rules, its mechanisms, its processes, its values and its institutions.
The social structure encompasses the entire society, but it is not something tangible, but rather It is an arrangement of practices, norms and values that individuals assume as natural, proper or spontaneous. In this sense, various disciplines, such as sociology, anthropology, social psychology and other social sciences, are concerned with making it visible and studying its scope, characteristics and consequences.
The social structure is made up of a series of elements, among which four particularly important ones can be distinguished:
- normative interactions that is, the accepted or considered correct way of doing things in a given society, according to custom, laws or protocol that regulate forms of social interaction in accordance with moral, political, religious values, among others.
- The structures of inequality such as social classes, castes, estates and other forms of differentiation based on economic, ethnic, age, gender traits, among others, that grant privileges or positions of power to some people or social groups to the detriment of others.
- social institutions that is, the ways of organizing the different components of society that tend to last throughout generations, such as the family, work, the educational system, religious practices, government institutions, political parties, among others. others.
- Demographic and environmental aspects that is, the ways in which society regulates its population growth and relates to its ecological environment. This includes urban dynamics, migration processes, public health, the exploitation of natural resources, among others.
Key points
- Social structure is a stable order of social relations in a given community, which can change over time.
- It has four central elements: normative interactions (accepted modes of interaction), structures of inequality, social institutions and demographic and environmental aspects.
- The concept was first used by Alexis de Tocqueville and popularized by Herbert Spencer in the late 19th century.
- It was developed by sociologists such as Émile Durkheim, Karl Marx, Georg Simmel, Max Weber and Ferdinand Tönnies, and by anthropologists such as Alfred R. Radcliffe-Brown and Claude Lévi-Strauss.
- It generated debate regarding its ability to explain social change, and authors such as Pierre Bourdieu and Anthony Giddens highlighted the relationship between social structure and individual action.
Origin of the concept of social structure
The concept of social structure first appeared in the work of the French thinker Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859), but It began to become popular at the end of the 19th century following the reflections of the English sociologist Herbert Spencer (1820-1903). Until then, the term “structure” was used in biology to refer to the anatomy of living beings, and Spencer introduced it in sociology to describe societies as organisms made up of interdependent parts.
Other authors of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, such as Émile Durkheim (1858-1917), Karl Marx (1818-1883), Georg Simmel (1858-1918), Max Weber (1864-1920) and Ferdinand Tönnies (1855- 1936), also used the concept of social structure to define societies based on the way their parts were related to each other although each one offered their own interpretation. In turn, they influenced the thinking of other intellectuals, such as the sociologist Talcott Parsons (1902-1979).
Beginning in the 1940s, the works of anthropologists such as Alfred R. Radcliffe-Brown (1881-1955) and Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908-2009) introduced the concept of social structure to anthropology and they shaped the structural-functionalist and structuralist approaches (the latter based on the linguistic structuralism of Ferdinand de Saussure).
Since then, There has been much debate regarding the true existence of a social structure and the capacity of this term to explain the dynamics of social change (since the description of the structure of a society usually focuses on its static aspects). Furthermore, some sociological currents deny the possibility of conceiving a social structure that encompasses society as a whole.
However, some sociologists of the late 20th and early 21st centuries (such as Pierre Bourdieu and Anthony Giddens) emphasized the need to study the interrelationship between social structure and individual agency or action which would allow societies to be analyzed in all their complexity and incorporate the dimension of social change in their study. In this way, the social structure is understood as the set of norms and habits that make the practices of individuals possible, but the actions of individuals are understood as practices that at the same time reproduce the social structure and introduce changes in it.
References
- Bobbio, N., Matteucci, N. and Pasquino, G. (Dirs.). (2015). Politics Dictionary. 21st century.
- Crothers, C. (2015). Social Structure: History of the Concept. In J. D. Wright (Ed.), International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences (2nd ed., pp. 719-726). Elsevier.
- Form, W. and Wilterdink, N. (2024). Social structure. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/
- Gallino, L. (2005). Sociology Dictionary. 21st century.
- Martin, J.L., and Lee, M. (2015). Social Structure. In J. D. Wright (Ed.), International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences (2nd ed., pp. 713-718). Elsevier.
