Social consciousness or social awareness, is
collective consciousness
Collective consciousness, collective conscience, or collective conscious (french: conscience collective) is the set of shared beliefs, ideas, and moral attitudes which operate as a unifying force within society.''Collins Dictionary of Sociolog ...
shared by individuals within a
society
A society is a group of individuals involved in persistent social interaction, or a large social group sharing the same spatial or social territory, typically subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations. Soc ...
.
[Social Consciousness]
, 2014. Retrieved 27 May 2014.
Social consciousness is linked to the collective self-awareness and experience of collectively shared social identity. From this viewpoint, social consciousness denotes conscious awareness of being part of an interrelated community of others. The “we feeling” or the “sense of us” may be experienced in members of various cultures and social groups. By the experience of collectively shared social identity, individuals may experience social unity. Social consciousness may also stimulate working towards a common goal.
According to
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...
, human beings enter into certain productive, or economic, relations and these relations lead to a form of social consciousness.
Marx said:
"In the social production of their life, men enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will; these relations of production correspond to a definite stage of development of their material forces of production. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society — the real foundation, on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life determines the social, political and intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness."
[Marx, Karl. (1859) "Preface" in '']A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy
''A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy'' (german: Zur Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie) is a book by Karl Marx, first published in 1859. The book is mainly a critique of political economy achieved by critiquing the writings of the ...
''.
See also
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Civic intelligence Civic intelligence is an "intelligence" that is devoted to addressing public or civic issues. The term has been applied to individuals and, more commonly, to collective bodies, like organizations, institutions, or societies.Schuler, Douglas (2007), ...
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Class consciousness
In Marxism, class consciousness is the set of beliefs that a person holds regarding their social class or economic rank in society, the structure of their class, and their class interests. According to Karl Marx, it is an awareness that is key to ...
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Collective consciousness
Collective consciousness, collective conscience, or collective conscious (french: conscience collective) is the set of shared beliefs, ideas, and moral attitudes which operate as a unifying force within society.''Collins Dictionary of Sociolog ...
*
Collective intelligence
Collective intelligence (CI) is shared or group intelligence (GI) that emerges from the collaboration, collective efforts, and competition of many individuals and appears in consensus decision making. The term appears in sociobiology, politi ...
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Consciousness raising
Consciousness raising (also called awareness raising) is a form of activism popularized by United States feminists in the late 1960s. It often takes the form of a group of people attempting to focus the attention of a wider group on some cause or ...
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Self awareness
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Social conscience
A social conscience is "a sense of responsibility or concern for the problems and injustices of society".
While our conscience is related to moral conduct in our day-to-day lives with respect to individuals, social conscience is concerned with th ...
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Social intelligence
Social intelligence is the capacity to know oneself and to know others. Social intelligence is learned and develops from experience with people and learning from success and failures in social settings. Social intelligence is the ability to underst ...
References
Further reading
''Awakening to Race: Individualism and Social Consciousness in America''''Children's Social Consciousness and the Development of Social Responsibility''''Class Structure in the Social Consciousness, Volume 102''''Language, ideology and social consciousness: developing a sociohistorical approach''''Literature, social consciousness, and polity''''Theology and the social consciousness: a study of the relations of the social consciousness to theology''
Sociological terminology
Marxist terminology
Marxism
Historical materialism
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