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In sociology, traditional society refers to 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 ...
characterized by an orientation to the past, not the future, with a predominant role for custom and habit. Such societies are marked by a lack of distinction between family and business, with the
division of labor The division of labour is the separation of the tasks in any economic system or organisation so that participants may specialise (specialisation). Individuals, organizations, and nations are endowed with, or acquire specialised capabilities, and ...
influenced primarily by age, gender, and status.


Traditional and modern

Traditional society has often been contrasted with modern
industrial society In sociology, industrial society is a society driven by the use of technology and machinery to enable mass production, supporting a large population with a high capacity for division of labour. Such a structure developed in the Western world in ...
, with figures like Durkheim and
Pierre Bourdieu Pierre Bourdieu (; 1 August 1930 – 23 January 2002) was a French sociologist and public intellectual. Bourdieu's contributions to the sociology of education, the theory of sociology, and sociology of aesthetics have achieved wide influence ...
stressing such polarities as community vs. society or mechanical vs. organic solidarity; while
Claude Lévi-Strauss Claude Lévi-Strauss (, ; 28 November 1908 – 30 October 2009) was a French anthropologist and ethnologist whose work was key in the development of the theories of structuralism and structural anthropology. He held the chair of Social Anthr ...
saw traditional societies as 'cold' societies in that they refused to allow the historical process to define their social sense of legitimacy. Within modernisation theory, traditional society is also the first stage of economic development as established in W.W. Rostow's Economic Growth Model. Classified as "pre-newtonian," science and technology are not practiced. Life is agrarian, and family or clan relationships are the basis for social structures. However, theories positing the simple,
unilineal evolution Unilineal evolution, also referred to as classical social evolution, is a 19th-century social theory about the evolution of societies and cultures. It was composed of many competing theories by various anthropologists and sociologists, who belie ...
of societies from traditional to modern industrial are now seen as too simplistic, relying on an ideal typology revolving round such polarities as subsistence/growth; face-to-face/impersonal;
informal social control Informal social control, or the reactions of individuals and groups that bring about conformity to norms and laws, includes peer and community pressure, bystander intervention in a crime, and collective responses such as citizen patrol groups.Conk ...
or formal social control; collective ownership/private ownership. Recent work has emphasised instead the variety of traditional cultures, and the existence of intermediate forms as well as of 'alternative' modernisations.


Ritual

Traditional societies have been seen as characterised by powerful collective memories sanctioned by
ritual A ritual is a sequence of activities involving gestures, words, actions, or objects, performed according to a set sequence. Rituals may be prescribed by the traditions of a community, including a religious community. Rituals are characterized ...
, and with social guardians ensuring continuity of communal practices.
Practice theory Practice theory (or praxeology, theory of social practices) is a body of social theory within anthropology and sociology that explains society and culture as the result of structure and individual agency. Practice theory emerged in the late 20th c ...
however has recently emphasised the role of ritual in facilitating change, as well as continuity.


Diversity

Fredric Jameson Fredric Jameson (born April 14, 1934) is an American literary critic, philosopher and Marxist political theorist. He is best known for his analysis of contemporary cultural trends, particularly his analysis of postmodernity and capitalism. Jam ...
saw 20th century modernisation as encountering two main kinds of traditional society, tribal, as in Africa, and bureaucratic imperial, as in China and India, but a much wider diversity of traditional societies has existed over time. For most of human existence, small tribes of hunter-gatherers leading an almost static existence formed the only social organisation: where they survived into the 20th century, as in Australia, paintings, songs, myths and rituals were all used to cement links to a deep-reaching sense of continuity with ancestors and ancestral ways. The invention of farming some 10,000 years ago led to the development of
agrarian societies An agrarian society, or agricultural society, is any community whose economy is based on producing and maintaining crops and farmland. Another way to define an agrarian society is by seeing how much of a nation's total production is in agriculture ...
, whether nomadic or peasant, the latter in particular almost always dominated by a strong sense of traditionalism. Within agrarian society, however, a wide diversity still existed.
Homeric Homer (; grc, Ὅμηρος , ''Hómēros'') (born ) was a Greek poet who is credited as the author of the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey'', two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Homer is considered one of the ...
Greece was a society marked by powerful kinship bonds, fixed status and rigidly defined social expectations; with the classical
polis ''Polis'' (, ; grc-gre, πόλις, ), plural ''poleis'' (, , ), literally means "city" in Greek. In Ancient Greece, it originally referred to an administrative and religious city center, as distinct from the rest of the city. Later, it also ...
, however, though festivals, in M. I. Finley's words, still "recreated for their audiences the unbroken web of all life, stretching back over generations of men to the gods", new and more complex voluntary forms of social and public life balanced traditional society in a new equilibrium. Medieval Europe was an intensely local society of self-perpetuating peasant households, living within a slow moving culture dominated by customary law and by respect for ancient authority and pervaded with an ahistorical political
mentality Mindset is an "established set of attitudes, esp. regarded as typical of a particular group's social or cultural values; the outlook, philosophy, or values of a person; (now also more generally) frame of mind, attitude, ecte: anddisposition." ...
focused upon the concepts of experience, usage, and law-as-custom.


Enlightenment and post-traditionalism

Much of the focus of Enlightenment thinking was directed at undoing the mindset of traditional society, and replacing a focus upon such concepts as rural, hierarchical, customary or status with one centred on the ideas of urban, egalitarian, progressive or contractual.
Modernism Modernism is both a philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new forms of art, philosophy, an ...
and
modernity Modernity, a topic in the humanities and social sciences, is both a historical period (the modern era) and the ensemble of particular socio-cultural norms, attitudes and practices that arose in the wake of the Renaissancein the "Age of Reas ...
continued the process of challenging and overcoming traditional society. Jameson, however, has seen as a defining feature of
postmodernism Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or mode of discourseNuyen, A.T., 1992. The Role of Rhetorical Devices in Postmodernist Discourse. Philosophy & Rhetoric, pp.183–194. characterized by skepticism toward the " grand narratives" of modern ...
the global elimination of residual, 'traditional' enclaves, giving it its one-dimensional, temporal nature that is no longer offset by living examples of the past alongside the new.


Internet

Global media such as the
Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, p ...
have been seen as effective means of recreating traditional cultures. However, a key contrast now with traditional societies as they were is that participation has become voluntary instead of being ascriptive: fixed in space, social stratification and role expectations.Peter Worsley ed., ''The New Modern Sociology Readings'' (1991) p. 317


See also

* Aition *
Folklore Folklore is shared by a particular group of people; it encompasses the traditions common to that culture, subculture or group. This includes oral traditions such as tales, legends, proverbs and jokes. They include material culture, rangin ...
* Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft *
Modernization theory Modernization theory is used to explain the process of modernization within societies. The "classical" theories of modernization of the 1950s and 1960s drew on sociological analyses of Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim and a partial reading of Max Weber, ...
*
Pre-industrial society Pre-industrial society refers to social attributes and forums of political and cultural organization that were prevalent before the advent of the Industrial Revolution, which occurred from 1750 to 1850. ''Pre-industrial'' refers to a time before ...


References


Bibliography

*Lai Chen and Edmund Ryden, ''Tradition and Modernity'', 2009. *
Jared Diamond Jared Mason Diamond (born September 10, 1937) is an American geographer, historian, ornithologist, and author best known for his popular science books '' The Third Chimpanzee'' (1991); ''Guns, Germs, and Steel'' (1997, awarded a Pulitzer Priz ...
, '' The World until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies?'', Penguin Books, 2012 ({{ISBN, 978-0-141-02448-6). *Edward Shils, ''Tradition'', 2006. *O. Lewis, ''Tepoztlán - Village in Mexico'', 1960. *Julius SSENGENDO Ntege, "My Journal", 2018


External links


Traditional society
Sociological theories Stages of history Tradition