As an anthropologist specializing in Australian hunter-gatherers and Melanesian horticulturalists, I need to underline that the hidden endeavour of my discipline rests precisely in the attempt to grasp the idea of “society.” However, most of my colleagues (including myself) would generally simply accept the existence of the black-box “society” without further discussion, coining it as a thing in which something fundamental happens: The socialization of individuals into persons believing and understanding that they are indeed a part of something superior to their individual characteristics and relationships. It is the fabric of providing these individuals with roles, statuses, tastes… ultimately shared and recognizable ways of doing and of thinking and a sense of belonging… that anthropologists label “society” often without defining it in sufficiently general terms. Moffett has done a welcome but difficult job in clarifying important aspects of the concept while bridging disciplinary divides. Ongoing semantic and conceptual discussions and clarifications are testimonies of intellectual and scientific progress, and Moffett's paper is a significant contribution in this endeavour.
Not sufficiently knowledgeable in other disciplines to hope for valid extrapolations, I would like to nevertheless underline a few anthropological points which I trust are significant for grasping “human society.” As often in the social sciences, the validity or usefulness of a definition is a function of the quantity and quality of variation or deviation one is willing to accept. While human existence as collectives is incredibly diverse, such a variation does not constrain to stretch Moffett's definition into unrecognizable confines. Despite the few points mentioned below, I therefore believe Moffett's framework to remain applicable and useful, in particular as a heuristic device.
1) Moffett suggests that societies are determined by shared perceptions of belonging rather than as social groups held together by positive interactions. This perspective needs to be somewhat nuanced. Indeed, humans are not born with perceptions of belonging to a “society,” but acquire such faculty during socialization processes (active and passive education, mimesis, social control, etc.) which are tributary to positive interactions. Therefore, while not all interactions produce an enduring sense of belonging, such a sense only emerges if interactions have indeed taken place and are more or less continually reproduced. In large-scale societies, such as modern nation states (whether they are indeed societies needs to be further discussed), the perception of belonging is reproduced (sometimes with constraints and difficulties) through an interaction with the society's materialized representations (administration, schools, police, language, etc.). Further, while one therefore also happily agrees with Moffett that society is the product of its members' minds – whether we follow the old French and British sociological schools for which society is “more than the sum of its individuals,” or the new pragmatic school for which society is the smallest common denominator (Dousset, Reference Dousset2022) – we also need to recognize that shared institutions, which are independent of individual minds and imagination, are the locus producing and reproducing the necessary sense of belonging.
2) This leads me to the second point, one that I missed in Moffett's discussion but which I believe needs to be somehow integrated in his definition of society. Whether we are concerned with egalitarian hunter-gatherers of the Australian Western Desert or with Melanesian horticulturalists that highly value forms of socio-political hierarchies, belonging is inseparable, and sometimes even indistinguishable from legitimate social control. The latter may be represented by institutions with expectations, forms of domination, expressions of authority and power, socio-political hierarchies, legitimate violence, and so on. Being a member of a society is also accepting (or having learned or being forced to accept, or understanding the benefits of accepting) specific legitimate forms of domination. A society is, among others, an envelope controlling territory, but this always also means controlling its members. Consequently, the existence of systems of social control that are reproduced over time and space is one non-negligible aspect of all societies.
3) While control of space is indeed an important aspect of society, my experience among Australian Western Desert communities, but also among Pacific societies, has led me to reconsider the notion of “territory,” in particular if one understands it as a more or less continuous surface and its resources delimited by more or less recognized even though dynamic markers. Western Desert communities, even though having a strong sense of belonging, do not identify a delimited surface as territory, but perceive space as chains of isolated sites that crisscross each other and in which the in-between is simply unnamed time of travel. Moreover, communities do not express exclusive relationships with these chains of sites. Among Pacific societies, on the other hand, which are territorial but that for some experienced significant diasporic movements, their “land” goes beyond classic societal occupation to integrate places in host islands or countries without “official” colonization. No need nor place to recall here that such diasporic movements and partial migrations are not limited to the modern context, but have been an integral aspect of the social dynamics for centuries in the Pacific and elsewhere. It could thus be useful to consider Appadurai's (Reference Appadurai and Fardon1995, p. 209) suggestion to distinguish “neighbourhood,” which he defines as a “context, or set of contexts within which meaningful social action can be both generated and interpreted,” from what he calls “ethnoscape,” a neologism for collective identities (aka society) that transcend place.
4) Last but not least, it is likely that the forms of collective belonging, and thus the nature of society, not only know their contemporary diversity, but have also changed and evolved during human history. For example, it appears that the perception of kin or space must have been significantly different for those human groups that initially populated formerly unexplored areas (Dousset, Reference Dousset, Dousset, Park and Guille-Escuret2019). If you are the only person on an island, the notion of ownership itself is irrelevant, since ownership does not describe relationships with things, but relationships with others about the thing. It is the coexistence of, and the relationship between multiple human groups that provided “society” as Moffett defines it a reason to be.
Gabriel Ramos-Fernandez
[Opens in a new window]Gabriel Ramos-Fernandez
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As an anthropologist specializing in Australian hunter-gatherers and Melanesian horticulturalists, I need to underline that the hidden endeavour of my discipline rests precisely in the attempt to grasp the idea of “society.” However, most of my colleagues (including myself) would generally simply accept the existence of the black-box “society” without further discussion, coining it as a thing in which something fundamental happens: The socialization of individuals into persons believing and understanding that they are indeed a part of something superior to their individual characteristics and relationships. It is the fabric of providing these individuals with roles, statuses, tastes… ultimately shared and recognizable ways of doing and of thinking and a sense of belonging… that anthropologists label “society” often without defining it in sufficiently general terms. Moffett has done a welcome but difficult job in clarifying important aspects of the concept while bridging disciplinary divides. Ongoing semantic and conceptual discussions and clarifications are testimonies of intellectual and scientific progress, and Moffett's paper is a significant contribution in this endeavour.
Not sufficiently knowledgeable in other disciplines to hope for valid extrapolations, I would like to nevertheless underline a few anthropological points which I trust are significant for grasping “human society.” As often in the social sciences, the validity or usefulness of a definition is a function of the quantity and quality of variation or deviation one is willing to accept. While human existence as collectives is incredibly diverse, such a variation does not constrain to stretch Moffett's definition into unrecognizable confines. Despite the few points mentioned below, I therefore believe Moffett's framework to remain applicable and useful, in particular as a heuristic device.
1) Moffett suggests that societies are determined by shared perceptions of belonging rather than as social groups held together by positive interactions. This perspective needs to be somewhat nuanced. Indeed, humans are not born with perceptions of belonging to a “society,” but acquire such faculty during socialization processes (active and passive education, mimesis, social control, etc.) which are tributary to positive interactions. Therefore, while not all interactions produce an enduring sense of belonging, such a sense only emerges if interactions have indeed taken place and are more or less continually reproduced. In large-scale societies, such as modern nation states (whether they are indeed societies needs to be further discussed), the perception of belonging is reproduced (sometimes with constraints and difficulties) through an interaction with the society's materialized representations (administration, schools, police, language, etc.). Further, while one therefore also happily agrees with Moffett that society is the product of its members' minds – whether we follow the old French and British sociological schools for which society is “more than the sum of its individuals,” or the new pragmatic school for which society is the smallest common denominator (Dousset, Reference Dousset2022) – we also need to recognize that shared institutions, which are independent of individual minds and imagination, are the locus producing and reproducing the necessary sense of belonging.
2) This leads me to the second point, one that I missed in Moffett's discussion but which I believe needs to be somehow integrated in his definition of society. Whether we are concerned with egalitarian hunter-gatherers of the Australian Western Desert or with Melanesian horticulturalists that highly value forms of socio-political hierarchies, belonging is inseparable, and sometimes even indistinguishable from legitimate social control. The latter may be represented by institutions with expectations, forms of domination, expressions of authority and power, socio-political hierarchies, legitimate violence, and so on. Being a member of a society is also accepting (or having learned or being forced to accept, or understanding the benefits of accepting) specific legitimate forms of domination. A society is, among others, an envelope controlling territory, but this always also means controlling its members. Consequently, the existence of systems of social control that are reproduced over time and space is one non-negligible aspect of all societies.
3) While control of space is indeed an important aspect of society, my experience among Australian Western Desert communities, but also among Pacific societies, has led me to reconsider the notion of “territory,” in particular if one understands it as a more or less continuous surface and its resources delimited by more or less recognized even though dynamic markers. Western Desert communities, even though having a strong sense of belonging, do not identify a delimited surface as territory, but perceive space as chains of isolated sites that crisscross each other and in which the in-between is simply unnamed time of travel. Moreover, communities do not express exclusive relationships with these chains of sites. Among Pacific societies, on the other hand, which are territorial but that for some experienced significant diasporic movements, their “land” goes beyond classic societal occupation to integrate places in host islands or countries without “official” colonization. No need nor place to recall here that such diasporic movements and partial migrations are not limited to the modern context, but have been an integral aspect of the social dynamics for centuries in the Pacific and elsewhere. It could thus be useful to consider Appadurai's (Reference Appadurai and Fardon1995, p. 209) suggestion to distinguish “neighbourhood,” which he defines as a “context, or set of contexts within which meaningful social action can be both generated and interpreted,” from what he calls “ethnoscape,” a neologism for collective identities (aka society) that transcend place.
4) Last but not least, it is likely that the forms of collective belonging, and thus the nature of society, not only know their contemporary diversity, but have also changed and evolved during human history. For example, it appears that the perception of kin or space must have been significantly different for those human groups that initially populated formerly unexplored areas (Dousset, Reference Dousset, Dousset, Park and Guille-Escuret2019). If you are the only person on an island, the notion of ownership itself is irrelevant, since ownership does not describe relationships with things, but relationships with others about the thing. It is the coexistence of, and the relationship between multiple human groups that provided “society” as Moffett defines it a reason to be.
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