SOCIETY AS AN ORGANISM
SOCIETY AS AN ORGANISM
An organization is centrally directed by an external authority. An organism is a self-directed integral unit. An organization is of related parts to accomplish a work. An organism is live, automatically in touched with all other parts for the purpose of living.
Society consists of millions of families whose needs are met by production centers on the land and in factories supported by an organization of distribution through trade and services. The educational, entertainment needs are also fulfilled by various smaller units of organizations, such as schools, theatres, etc. On the surface, there are millions of organised activities that constitute the society. The life of the society is lived in its emotions of religion, caste, language, etc. These are institutionalized actions outside the scope of centrally organised direction. At that level, society is a living organism like the human body. When that life is threatened, society rises like one man, which we call Revolution.
Society as an Organism
In sociology, the social organism is an ideological concept in which a society or social structure is viewed as a “living organism”. From this perspective, typically, the relation of social features, e.g. law, family, crime, etc., are examined as they interact with other features of society to meet social needs. All elements of a society or social organism have a function that maintains the stability and cohesiveness of the organism.
Spencer gives striking structural analogies between society and organism. He says, society, too, has three systems corresponding to the (1) sustaining system, (2) the distributaries system, and (3) the regulating system in an organism.
- The sustaining system in an organism consists of mouth, gullet, stomach and intestines. It is by means of this system that food is digested and the whole organic machine is sustained. Society has its own sustaining system which refers to the productive system comprising the manufacturing districts and agricultural areas. The workers, i.e., the men who farm the soil, work the mines and factories and workshops are the alimentary organs of a society.
- The distributary system in an organism consists of the blood vessels, heart, arteries and veins and they carry blood to all parts of the body. Means of communication and transport and along with them the wholesalers, retailers, bankers, railway and steamship men and others may correspond to the distributary or vascular system of an organism.
- Society’s Cells are individuals only. And what the arteries and veins mean to the human body, roads, railways, post and telegraph services, institutions and associations, mean to society.
Finally, the regulating system is the nerve-motor mechanism which regulates the whole body. Government in society regulates and controls the activities of the individuals.
The professional men-doctors, lawyers, engineers, rulers, priests, the thinkers, in short, perform the functions of the brain and the nervous system. Further, as Spencer opined society also passes through the organic processes of birth, youth, maturity, old age and death.
Murray sums up the points of resemblance between a society and an individual organism as noted by Spencer in the following ways:-
(i) Society as well as individual organism grows in size.
(ii) They grow from comparatively a simple structure to that of an increasingly complex one.
(iii) Increasing differentiation leads to increasing mutual dependence of the component parts. The life and normal functioning of each becomes dependent on the life of the whole.
(iv) The life of the whole becomes independent and lasts longer than the life of the component parts.
Conclusion
The organic theory considers society as a unity similar to that which characterizes a biological organism. The union of individuals forming the society has been described as similar to the union between the several parts of an animal body, wherein all parts are functionally related. Just as the body has a natural unity, so has a social group.
The animal body is composed of cells, so is the society composed of individuals, and as is the “relation of the hand to the body or the leaf to the tree, so is the relation of man to society. He exists in it and it in him”.
Reference
MacLay, George R. (1990). The Social Organism: A Short History of the Idea That a Human Society May Be Regarded As a Gigantic Living Creature. North River Press. ISBN 0-88427-078-5.
Rawie, Henry (1990). The Social Organism and its Natural Laws. Williams & Wilkins Co. ASIN B000879AT2.
Pranav Dua (2000) Essay on the Organism Theory of Society
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