Introduction to the Science of Sociology Part 60

[154] _The Social Process_, p. 28.

[155] P. xiv.

[156] P. 41.

CHAPTER VII

SOCIAL FORCES

I. INTRODUCTION

1. Sources of the Notion of Social Forces

The concept of interaction is an abstraction so remote from ordinary experience that it seems to have occurred only to scientists and philosophers. The idea of forces behind the manifestations of physical nature and of society is a notion which arises naturally out of the experience of the ordinary man. Historians, social reformers, and students of community life have used the term in the language of common sense to describe factors in social situations which they recognized but did not attempt to describe or define. Movements for social reform have usually met with unexpected obstacles. Public welfare programs have not infrequently been received with popular antagonism instead of popular support. Lack of success has led to the search for causes, and investigation has revealed the obstacles, as well as the aids, to reform embodied in influential persons, "political bosses," "union leaders,"

"the local magnate," and in powerful groups such as party organizations, unions, a.s.sociations of commerce, etc. Social control, it appears, is resident, not in individuals as individuals, but as members of communities and social groups. Candid recognition of the role of these persons and groups led popular writers on social, political, and economic topics to give them the impersonal designation "social forces."

A student made the following crude and yet illuminating a.n.a.lysis of the social forces in a small community where he had lived: the community club, "the Davidson clique," and the "Jones clique" (these two large family groups are intensely hostile and divide village life); the community Methodist church; the Presbyterian church group (no church); the library; two soft-drink parlors where all kinds of beverages are sold; the daily train; the motion-picture show; the dance hall; a gambling clique; s.e.x attraction; gossip; the "sporting" impulse; the impulse to be "decent."

"The result," he states, "is a disgrace to our modern civilization. It is one of the worst communities I ever saw."

The most significant type of community study has been the social survey, with a history which antedates its recent developments. Yet the survey movement from the _Domesday Survey_, initiated in 1085 by William the Conqueror, to the recent _Study of Methods of Americanization_ by the Carnegie Corporation, has been based upon an implicit or explicit recognition of the interrelations of the community and its const.i.tuent groups. The _Domesday Survey_, although undertaken for financial and political purposes, gives a picture of the English nation as an organization of isolated local units, which the Norman Conquest first of all forced into closer unity. The surveys of the Russell Sage Foundation have laid insistent emphasis upon the study of social problems and of social inst.i.tutions in their context within the life of the community.

The central theme of the different divisions of the Carnegie _Study of Methods of Americanization_ is the nature and the degree of the partic.i.p.ation of the immigrant in our national and cultural life. In short, the survey, wittingly or unwittingly, has tended to penetrate beneath surface observations to discover the interrelations of social groups and inst.i.tutions and has revealed community life as a _constellation of social forces_.

2. History of the Concept of Social Forces

The concept of social forces has had a history different from that of interaction. It was in the writings of the historians rather than of the sociologists that the term first gained currency. The historians, in their description and interpretation of persons and events, discerned definite motives or tendencies, which served to give to the mere temporal sequence of the events a significance which they did not otherwise possess. These tendencies historians called "social forces."

From the point of view and for the purposes of reformers social forces were conceived as embodied in inst.i.tutions. For the purposes of the historian they are merely tendencies which combine to define the general trend of historical change. The logical motive, which has everywhere guided science in formulating its conceptions, is here revealed in its most nave and elementary form. Natural science invariably seeks to describe change in terms of process, that is to say, in terms of interaction of tendencies. These tendencies are what science calls forces.

For the purposes of an adequate description, however, it is necessary not merely to conceive change in terms of the interplay of forces, but to think of these forces as somehow objectively embodied, as social forces are conceived to be embodied in inst.i.tutions, organizations, and persons. These objects in which the forces are, or seem to be, resident are not forces in any real or metaphysical sense, as the physicists tell us. They are mere points of reference which enable us to visualize the direction and measure the intensity of change.

Inst.i.tutions and social organizations may, in any given situation, be regarded as social forces, but they are not ultimate nor elementary forces. One has but to carry the a.n.a.lysis of the community a little farther to discover the fact that inst.i.tutions and organizations may be further resolved into factors of smaller and smaller denominations until we have arrived at individual men and women. For common sense the individual is quite evidently the ultimate factor in every community or social organization.

Sociologists have carried the a.n.a.lysis a step farther. They have sought to meet the problem raised by two facts: (1) the same individual may be a member of different societies, communities, and social groups at the same time; (2) under certain circ.u.mstances his interests as a member of one group may conflict with his interests as a member of another group, so that the conflict between different social groups will be reflected in the mental and moral conflicts of the individual himself.

Furthermore, it is evident that the individual is, as we frequently say, "not the same person" at different times and places. The phenomena of moods and of dual personality has sociological significance in just this connection.

From all this it is quite evident that the individual is not elementary in a sociological sense. It is for this reason that sociologists have invariably sought the sociological element, not in the individual but in his appet.i.tes, desires, wishes--the human motives which move him to action.

3. Cla.s.sification of the Materials

The readings in this chapter are arranged in the natural order of the development of the notion of social forces. They were first thought of by historians as tendencies and trends. Then in the popular sociology social forces were identified with significant social objects in which the factors of the situations under consideration were embodied. This was a step in the direction of a definition of the elementary social forces. Later the terms interests, sentiments, and att.i.tudes made their appearance in the literature of economics, social psychology, and sociology. Finally the concept of the wishes, first vaguely apprehended by sociologists under the name "desires," having gained a more adequate description and definition in the use made of it by psychoa.n.a.lysis, has been reintroduced into sociology by W. I. Thomas under the t.i.tle of the "four wishes." This brief statement is sufficient to indicate the motives determining the order of the materials included under "Social Forces."

In the list of social forces just enumerated, att.i.tudes are, for the purposes of sociology, elementary. They are elementary because, being tendencies to act, they are expressive and communicable. They present us human motives in the only form in which we can know them objectively, namely, as behavior. Human motives become social forces only so far as they are communicable, only when they are communicated. Because att.i.tudes have for the purposes of sociology this elementary character, it is desirable to define the term "att.i.tude" before attempting to define its relation to the wishes and sentiments.

a) _The social element defined._--What is an att.i.tude? Att.i.tudes are not instincts, nor appet.i.tes, nor habits, for these refer to specific tendencies to act that condition att.i.tudes but do not define them.

Att.i.tudes are not the same as emotions or sentiments although att.i.tudes always are emotionally toned and frequently supported by sentiments.

Opinions are not att.i.tudes. An opinion is rather a statement made to justify and make intelligible an existing att.i.tude or bias. A wish is an inherited tendency or instinct which has been fixed by attention directed to objects, persons, or patterns of behavior, which objects then a.s.sume the character of values. An att.i.tude is the tendency of the person to react positively or negatively to the total situation.

Accordingly, att.i.tudes may be defined as the mobilization of the will of the person.

Att.i.tudes are as many and as varied as the situations to which they are a response. It is, of course, not to be gainsaid that instincts, appet.i.tes, habits, emotions, sentiments, opinions, and wishes are involved in and with the att.i.tudes. Att.i.tudes are mobilizations and organizations of the wishes with reference to definite situations. My wishes may be very positive and definite in a given situation, but my att.i.tude may be wavering and undetermined. On the other hand, my att.i.tude may be clearly defined in situations where my wishes are not greatly involved. It is characteristic of the so-called academic, as distinguished from the "practical" and emotional, att.i.tude that, under its influence, the individual seeks to emphasize all the factors in the situation and thus qualifies and often weakens the will to act. The wishes enter into att.i.tudes as components. How many, varied, ill-defined, and conflicting may be and have been the wishes that have determined at different times the att.i.tudes and the sentiments of individuals and nations toward the issues of war and peace? The fundamental wishes, we may a.s.sume, are the same in all situations. The att.i.tudes and sentiments, however, in which the wishes of the individual find expression are determined not merely by these wishes, but by other factors in the situation, the wishes of other individuals, for example.

The desire for recognition is a permanent and universal trait of human nature, but in the case of an egocentric personality, this wish may take the form of an excessive humility or a pretentious boasting. The wish is the same but the att.i.tudes in which it finds expression are different.

The att.i.tudes which are elementary for _sociological a.n.a.lysis_ may be resolved by _psychological a.n.a.lysis_ into smaller factors so that we may think, if we choose, of att.i.tudes as representing constellations of smaller components which we call wishes. In fact it has been one of the great contributions of psychoa.n.a.lysis to our knowledge of human behavior that it has been able to show that att.i.tudes may be a.n.a.lyzed into still more elementary components and that these components, like the att.i.tudes, are involved in a process of interaction among themselves. In other words there is organization, tension, and change in the const.i.tuent elements of the att.i.tudes. This accounts, in part, for their mutability.

b) _Att.i.tudes as behavior patterns._--If the att.i.tude may be said to play the role in sociological a.n.a.lysis that the elementary substances play in chemical a.n.a.lysis, then the role of the wishes may be compared to that of the electrons.

The clearest way to think of att.i.tudes is as behavior patterns or units of behavior. The two most elementary behavior patterns are the tendency to approach and the tendency to withdraw. Translated into terms of the individual organism these are tendencies to expand and to contract. As the self expands to include other selves, as in sympathy and in fellowship, there is an extension of self-feeling to the whole group.

Self-consciousness pa.s.ses over, in the rapport thus established, into group consciousness. In the expansive movements characteristic of individuals under the influence of crowd excitements the individual is submerged in the ma.s.s.

On the other hand, in movements of withdrawal or of recoil from other persons, characteristic of fear and embarra.s.sment, there is a heightening of self-consciousness. The tendency to identify one's self with other selves, to lose one's self in the ecstasy of psychic union with others, is essentially a movement toward contact; while the inclination to differentiate one's self, to lead a self-sufficient existence, apart from others, is as distinctly a movement resulting in isolation.

The simplest and most fundamental types of behavior of individuals and of groups are represented in these contrasting tendencies to approach an object or to withdraw from it. If instead of thinking of these two tendencies as unrelated, they are thought of as conflicting responses to the same situation, where the tendency to approach is modified and complicated by a tendency to withdraw, we get the phenomenon of _social distance_. There is the tendency to approach, but not too near. There is a feeling of interest and sympathy of A for B, but only when B remains at a certain distance. Thus the Negro in the southern states is "all right in his place." The northern philanthropist is interested in the advancement of the Negro but wants him to remain in the South. At least he does not want him for a neighbor. The southern white man likes the Negro as an individual, but he is not willing to treat him as an equal.

The northern white man is willing to treat the Negro as an equal but he does not want him too near. The wishes are in both cases essentially the same but the att.i.tudes are different.

The accommodations between conflicting tendencies, so flagrantly displayed in the facts of race prejudice, are not confined to the relation of white men and black. The same mechanisms are involved in all the subordinations, exclusions, privacies, social distances, and reserves which we seek everywhere, by the subtle devices of taboo and social ritual, to maintain and defend. Where the situation calls forth rival or conflicting tendencies, the resulting att.i.tude is likely to be an accommodation, in which what has been described as distance is the determining factor. When an accommodation takes the form of the domination of A and the submission of B, the original tendencies of approach and withdrawal are transformed into att.i.tudes of superordination and subordination. If primary att.i.tudes of expansion and of contraction are thought of in terms of lateral distance, then att.i.tudes of superiority and inferiority may be charted in the vertical plane as ill.u.s.trated by the following diagram:

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 4.--A = tendency to approach; B = tendency to withdraw; 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 = distance defining levels of accommodation; X = superordination; Y = subordination.]

This polar conception of att.i.tudes, in which they are conceived in terms of movements of expansion and contraction, of approach and withdrawal, of attraction and repulsion, of domination and submission, may be applied in an a.n.a.lysis of the sentiments.

A sentiment, as defined by McDougall, is "an organized system of emotional dispositions centered about the idea of some object." The polarity of the sentiments is, however, one of its evident and striking characteristics. Love and hate, affection and dislike, attachment and aversion, self-esteem and humility have this character of polarity because each pair of sentiments and att.i.tudes represents a different constellation of the same component wishes.

A significant feature of sentiments and att.i.tudes is inner tension and consequent tendency to mutation. Love changes into hate, or dislike is transformed into affection, or humility is replaced by self-a.s.sertion.

This mutability is explained by the fact, just mentioned, that the sentiment-att.i.tude is a complex of wishes and desires organized around a person or object. In this complex one motive--love, for example--is for a moment the dominant component. In this case components which tend to excite repulsion, hostility, and disgust are for the moment suppressed.

With a change in the situation, as in the distance, these suppressed components are released and, gaining control, convert the system into the opposite sentiment, as hate.

c) _Att.i.tudes and wishes._--The wishes, as popularly conceived, are as numerous as the objects or values toward which they are directed. As there are positive and negative values, so there are positive and negative wishes. Fears are negative wishes. The speculations of the Freudian school of psychology have attempted to reduce all wishes to one, the _libido_. In that case, the wishes, as we know them and as they present themselves to us in consciousness, are to be regarded as offshoots or, perhaps better, specifications of the _one wish_. As the one wish is directed to this or that object, it makes of that object a value and the object gives its name to the wish. In this way the one wish becomes many wishes.

Science demands, however, not a theory of the origin of the wishes but a cla.s.sification based on fundamental natural differences; differences which it is necessary to take account of in explaining human behavior.

Thomas' fourfold cla.s.sification fulfils this purpose. The wish for security, the wish for new experience, the wish for response, and the wish for recognition are the permanent and fundamental unconscious motives of the person which find expression in the many and changing concrete and conscious wishes. As wishes find expression in characteristic forms of behavior they may also be thought of in spatial terms as tendencies to move toward or away from their specific objects.

The wish for security may be represented by position, mere immobility; the wish for new experience by the greatest possible freedom of movement and constant change of position; the wish for response, by the number and closeness of points of contact; the wish for recognition, by the level desired or reached in the vertical plane of superordination and subordination.

The fundamental value for social research of the cla.s.sification inheres in the fact that the wishes in one cla.s.s cannot be subst.i.tuted for wishes in another. The desire for response and affection cannot be satisfied by fame and recognition or only partially so. The wholesome individual is he who in some form or other realizes all the four fundamental wishes. The security and permanence of any society or a.s.sociation depends upon the extent to which it permits the individuals who compose it to realize their fundamental wishes. The restless individual is the individual whose wishes are not realized even in dreams.

This suggests the significance of the cla.s.sification for the purposes of social science. Human nature, and personality as we know it, requires for its healthy growth security, new experience, response, and recognition. In all races and in all times these fundamental longings of human nature have manifested themselves; the particular patterns in which the wish finds expression and becomes fixed depends upon some special experience of the person, is influenced by individual differences in original nature, and is circ.u.mscribed by the folkways, the mores, the conventions, and the culture of his group.

II. MATERIALS

A. TRENDS, TENDENCIES, AND PUBLIC OPINION