Observing Society: Meaning, Communication, and Social Systems By ...

his colleagues, explaining to students beginning the study of sociology, say: “A society is a system of interrelationships that connects individuals together. No culture could exist without a society; and equally, no society could exist without culture” (2007:59). This definition ties society to a “system of interrelationships” between individuals, and also proposes that society and culture are interdependent. But what is the difference between society and culture? If we accept that individuals are born into the same culture, why do we need a concept of society? If society refers to a system of interrelationships between people, what specific difference does culture make? And exactly how do these different “interrelationships” become part of a single system?

Sociologists have acquired the habit of using terms such as society and culture without defining them in a disciplined and scientific manner. “Once it escapes the everyday world of ethnography and ethnomethodology,” Dorothy Smith argued, “sociology's characteristic lexical practices allow it to float free of any actuality capable of constituting a common ground of reference” (2001:165). Smith asserted that it is easy to make fun of the way sociology has developed an appetite for “non-observable” concepts that are assumed to exist without requiring a clear reference or any additional intellectual worries, supported only by what she calls a “blob-ontology.” Too often, with their most basic terms in such a muddled state, sociologists have been unable to account for the relationship between individuals and society. The problem of how people use society to manage one another's understanding of objects, actions, and events remains unsolved. We suggest it is time for a dramatic paradigm shift in sociology. Traditionally, sociologists have focused their attention on people, actors, agents, human subjects, and actions. This book departs from that well-worn path and instead turns to contemporary social system theory and an analysis of society comprised of units of communication. By “observing society,” we mean observing the conditions under which communication accomplishes an understanding that allows for further communication and the reproduction of society as a social system.