Social Spirit (also genius of society) is the spiritual unity of people who feel themselves to be one at the level of thought (ideal); the power center of society, creating unity around itself and acting as a kind of pole of social activity and transformation; [1] an organ of collective unity capable for performing a number of important functions in the life of society. [2]
The concept of Social Spirit did not play a significant role in philosophical and socio-political thought for a long time, and the phenomenon itself was little studied as something holistic and independent, if not to take into account the reasoning of Gustave Le Bon about the collective soul [3] and Max Weber about the influence of religious confessions on the economic life of society, [4] as well as team building practice in the mid-twentieth century. The concept of Social Spirit has some common characteristics with such a sociological concept introduced by Emile Durkheim as Collective effervescence —causing excitement of individual people, serving to unite the group on the basis of a common thought or idea and motivating everyone to participate in the same action. [5] However, historical and philosophical analysis showed that the implicit social dimension in the spirit was articulated by different authors, but scientific justification for the categorical status of the Social Spirit began mainly in the first decades of the 21st century in connection with the development of social education.
The concept of Social Spirit is constructed by analogy with the terms well known in the history of the development of humanitarian thought: Genius loci , Zeitgeist , Spirit of Law , [6] National spirit , World spirit , Genius of the nation [7] and categorizes such concepts as Aristocratic Spirit, Spirit of Chivalry, [8] Team Spirit and so on. It is noted that although some similarities can be seen between animistic ideas about spirits influencing people's lives and the metaphorical designation of complex abstract concepts in philosophical and sociological discourse, it must be borne in mind that these are different concepts related to different cultural and philosophical traditions, to different periods of development of human thinking. Sociological thought, using the animistic concept of spirit as a metaphor to describe collective identity, makes this concept more accessible to the language of human thought. The Social Spirit appears as the concentration and intensity of sociality, which make it obvious and display it as one of the tools of social development. The need to have a holistic understanding of the Social Spirit can be justified by the fact that processes taking place in the public sphere of society and having an ambivalent nature (destructive or constructive) are increasingly influencing public life.
The structure of the Social Spirit consists of social consciousness (knowledge, norms, etc.) and the collective unconscious (values, ideals, etc., encoded in norms as storage units). These two basic parts do not have a sharp boundary, due to the presence of a special intermediate layer that communicates between social consciousness and the unconscious. [9]
In addition to the internal structure of the Social Spirit, an external structure is also distinguished, namely, two aspects of the latter one: supranational and subnational: the first unites people at the international level, the second differentiates in the National Spirit its constituent fragments, corresponding to various social groups within one nation or state. In the second case, we can talk about the structure of Social Spirits, united by a common National Spirit, for example, the Social Spirit of the elites and the Social Spirit of the masses:
In addition to the above-described elite-mass dichotomy, the National Spirit unites, like puzzles, many subnational spirits, or the spirits of social groups and associations. More revealingly, the system of Social Spirits is manifested in trichotomy, in a universal three-part socio-ideological model dividing national societies into symbolical social strata: oratores, bellatores and laboratores. Against the background of this symbolic model, well known since the Middle Ages, one can determine the characteristics of the Genius of each of these societies, as well as the Social Spirit relevant to them:
One of the particularly significant discoveries in the description of the characteristics of the Social Spirit is the detection in its structure of not only creative and constructive principles, but also destructive ones that determine disintegrative tendencies in national and civil societies. [10]
An approximate list of the functions of the Social Spirit includes the following points: firstly, it gives subjective unity to a certain group, when each individual member identifies himself with the group and considers its common goals to be his own; secondly, it acts as a repository of diverse information, experience and values that are the collective property of the social groups that make up national societies; thirdly, it acts as a source of mental (including sensory and volitional components) energy, giving people the ability to endure a wide variety of difficulties; fourthly, it encourages people to feel and express common joy from joint actions, that is, it promotes unity based on common feelings; fifthly, it sets the direction for the development of social groups; sixth, it performs an evaluative function, seventh — the prognostic one, etc. [11]
Animism is the belief that objects, places, and creatures all possess a distinct spiritual essence. Animism perceives all things—animals, plants, rocks, rivers, weather systems, human handiwork, and in some cases words—as being animated, having agency and free will. Animism is used in anthropology of religion as a term for the belief system of many Indigenous peoples in contrast to the relatively more recent development of organized religions. Animism is a metaphysical belief which focuses on the supernatural universe : specifically, on the concept of the immaterial soul.
David Émile Durkheim was a French sociologist. Durkheim formally established the academic discipline of sociology and is commonly cited as one of the principal architects of modern social science, along with both Karl Marx and Max Weber.
The sociology of knowledge is the study of the relationship between human thought, the social context within which it arises, and the effects that prevailing ideas have on societies. It is not a specialized area of sociology. Instead, it deals with broad fundamental questions about the extent and limits of social influences on individuals' lives and the social-cultural basis of our knowledge about the world. The sociology of knowledge has a subclass and a complement. Its subclass is sociology of scientific knowledge. Its complement is the sociology of ignorance.
Anthropology of religion is the study of religion in relation to other social institutions, and the comparison of religious beliefs and practices across cultures. The anthropology of religion, as a field, overlaps with but is distinct from the field of Religious Studies. The history of anthropology of religion is a history of striving to understand how other people view and navigate the world. This history involves deciding what religion is, what it does, and how it functions. Today, one of the main concerns of anthropologists of religion is defining religion, which is a theoretical undertaking in and of itself. Scholars such as Edward Tylor, Emile Durkheim, E.E. Evans Pritchard, Mary Douglas, Victor Turner, Clifford Geertz, and Talal Asad have all grappled with defining and characterizing religion anthropologically.
Conflict theories are perspectives in political philosophy and sociology which argue that individuals and groups within society interact on the basis of conflict rather than agreement, while also emphasizing social psychology, historical materialism, power dynamics, and their roles in creating power structures, social movements, and social arrangements within a society. Conflict theories often draw attention to power differentials, such as class conflict, or a conflict continuum. Power generally contrasts historically dominant ideologies, economies, currencies or technologies. Accordingly, conflict theories represent attempts at the macro-level analysis of society.
Structural functionalism, or simply functionalism, is "a framework for building theory that sees society as a complex system whose parts work together to promote solidarity and stability".
A totem is a spirit being, sacred object, or symbol that serves as an emblem of a group of people, such as a family, clan, lineage, or tribe, such as in the Anishinaabe clan system.
In 18th- and 19th-century German philosophy, a zeitgeist is an invisible agent, force, or daemon dominating the characteristics of a given epoch in world history. The term is usually associated with Georg W. F. Hegel, contrasting with Hegel's use of Volksgeist "national spirit" and Weltgeist "world-spirit". Its coinage and popularization precede Hegel, and are mostly due to Herder and Goethe. Other philosophers who were associated with such concepts include Spencer and Voltaire. Contemporary use of the term sometimes, more colloquially, refers to a schema of fashions or fads that prescribes what is considered to be acceptable or tasteful for an era: e.g., in the field of architecture.
Ritualization refers to the process by which a sequence of non-communicating actions or an event is invested with cultural, social or religious significance. This definition emphasizes the transformation of everyday actions into rituals that carry deeper meaning within a cultural or religious context. Rituals are symbolic, repetitive, and often prescribed activities that hold religious or cultural significance for a certain group of people. They serve various purposes: promoting social solidarity by expressing shared values, facilitating the transmission of cultural knowledge and regulating emotions.
In the social sciences, social structure is the aggregate of patterned social arrangements in society that are both emergent from and determinant of the actions of individuals. Likewise, society is believed to be grouped into structurally related groups or sets of roles, with different functions, meanings, or purposes. Examples of social structure include family, religion, law, economy, and class. It contrasts with "social system", which refers to the parent structure in which these various structures are embedded. Thus, social structures significantly influence larger systems, such as economic systems, legal systems, political systems, cultural systems, etc. Social structure can also be said to be the framework upon which a society is established. It determines the norms and patterns of relations between the various institutions of the society.
A household deity is a deity or spirit that protects the home, looking after the entire household or certain key members. It has been a common belief in paganism as well as in folklore across many parts of the world.
Collective consciousness, collective conscience, or collective conscious is the set of shared beliefs, ideas, and moral attitudes which operate as a unifying force within society. In general, it does not refer to the specifically moral conscience, but to a shared understanding of social norms.
Sociology as a scholarly discipline emerged, primarily out of Enlightenment thought, as a positivist science of society shortly after the French Revolution. Its genesis owed to various key movements in the philosophy of science and the philosophy of knowledge, arising in reaction to such issues as modernity, capitalism, urbanization, rationalization, secularization, colonization and imperialism.
Humanistic sociology is a domain of sociology which originated mainly from the work of the University of Chicago Polish philosopher-turned-sociologist, Florian Znaniecki. It is a methodology which treats its objects of study and its students, that is, humans, as composites of values and systems of values. In certain contexts, the term is related to other sociological domains such as antipositivism. Humanistic sociology seeks to shed light on questions such as, "What is the relationship between a man of principle and a man of opportunism?"
Communitas is a Latin noun commonly referring either to an unstructured community in which people are equal, or to the very spirit of community. It also has special significance as a loanword in cultural anthropology and the social sciences. Victor Turner, who defined the anthropological usage of communitas, was interested in the interplay between what he called social 'structure' and 'antistructure'; Liminality and Communitas are both components of antistructure.
Social movement theory is an interdisciplinary study within the social sciences that generally seeks to explain why social mobilization occurs, the forms under which it manifests, as well as potential social, cultural, political, and economic consequences, such as the creation and functioning of social movements.
Collective effervescence (CE) is a sociological concept coined by Émile Durkheim. According to Durkheim, a community or society may at times come together and simultaneously communicate the same thought and participate in the same action. Such an event then causes collective effervescence which excites individuals and serves to unify the group.
Chinese ancestor veneration, also called Chinese ancestor worship, is an aspect of the Chinese traditional religion which revolves around the ritual celebration of the deified ancestors and tutelary deities of people with the same surname organised into lineage societies in ancestral shrines. Ancestors, their ghosts, or spirits, and gods are considered part of "this world". They are neither supernatural nor transcendent in the sense of being beyond nature. The ancestors are humans who have become godly beings, beings who keep their individual identities. For this reason, Chinese religion is founded on veneration of ancestors. Ancestors are believed to be a means of connection to the supreme power of Tian as they are considered embodiments or reproducers of the creative order of Heaven. It is a major aspect of Han Chinese religion, but the custom has also spread to ethnic minority groups.
A commoner, also known as the common man, commoners, the common people or the masses, was in earlier use an ordinary person in a community or nation who did not have any significant social status, especially a member of neither royalty, nobility, nor any part of the aristocracy. Depending on culture and period, other elevated persons may have had higher social status in their own right, or were regarded as commoners if lacking an aristocratic background.
This bibliography of sociology is a list of works, organized by subdiscipline, on the subject of sociology. Some of the works are selected from general anthologies of sociology, while other works are selected because they are notable enough to be mentioned in a general history of sociology or one of its subdisciplines.