Community and Society

03/28/13 • 8 min

What is the difference between England 1200 and England 1900? Tonnies’ made the most basic distinction in sociology and anthropology; between community (Gemeinschaft) and society (Gesselschaft). Community is based around traditions, mores, kinship and locality, religion, personal bonds; and, reciprocal relations. It was found predominantly in the village and the rural town. Society is based around written laws; a national community; science; legalistic bonds between citizens mediated by a state; and, capitalism. It is found in the city.
Copyright 2013 Nicholas Herriman / La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Please contact for permissions.

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Social Construction

The idea of social construction is scary. It implies you don’t own your own experience—it is determined by society/the system. We can never be fully in charge of defining who we are. For instance, most people define themselves in relation to what it is to be a mother—they have one and they might be one. But you never really own our experience of motherhood; it is rather structured in terms of discourses such as “working mum”, “soccer mum”, “super-mum”, “doting mum” etc.. All accounts of reality are marred or embedded in discourse. This implies that it is impossible to stand outside society and study it objectively. The most we can do, according to this concept is to try to unearth or dig out the underlying discourse of structure, in a process called “deconstruction”.
Copyright 2013 Nicholas Herriman / La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Please contact for permissions.

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Life Cycle

Life cycle is the process of change and development of a person. These are often marked by rituals (such as “baby shower” and birthday parties) or rites-of-passage (such as a stags’/bucks’ night). The experience of life stages, even the conception of what constitutes a life stage, differ. Thus, studying life cycle show us that even birth and death (the most ‘inevitable’ ‘facts’ of life) can be differently understood.
Copyright 2013 Nicholas Herriman / La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Please contact for permissions.