adventurous tourists through the desert for a currency new to them and unneeded until recently. In such traditional societies, men teach their sons everything they need to know, for all men do much the same jobs, depending on where they live: hunting, fishing, or farming and protecting the community from danger. Likewise, girls learn their jobs—such as childcare, fetching water, food preparation, farming, weaving, and perhaps house building—from their mothers. In contrast, in more complex societies, such as industrial or “modern” societies, thousands of interdependent job statuses are based on complex divisions of labor with designated tasks.
Émile Durkheim ([1893] 1947), an early French sociologist, pictured a continuum between simple and complex societies. He described simple premodern societies as held together by mechanical solidarity—social cohesion and integration based on the similarity of individuals in the group, including shared beliefs, values, and emotional ties between members of the group. Furthermore, the division of labor is based largely on male/female distinctions and age groupings; everyone fulfills his or her expected social positions. This provides the glue that holds the society together. The entire society may involve only a few hundred people, with no meso-level institutions, organizations, or subcultures. Prior to the emergence of nation-states, there was no macro level either—only tribal groupings.
According to Durkheim, as societies transformed, they became more complex through increasingly multifaceted divisions of labor and changes in the ways people carried out necessary tasks for survival ([1893] 1947). Organic solidarity refers to social cohesion (glue) based on division of labor, with each member playing a highly specialized role in the society and each person being dependent on others due to interdependent, interrelated tasks. The society has cohesion regardless of whether people have common values and shared outlooks. Prior to the factory system, for example, individual cobblers made shoes to order. With the Industrial Revolution, factories took over the process, with many individuals carrying out interdependent tasks. The division of labor is critical because it leads to new forms of social cohesion based on interdependence, and much less on familial and emotional ties. Gradual changes from mechanical (traditional) to organic (modern) society also involve harnessing new forms of energy and finding more efficient ways to use them (Nolan and Lenski 2014). For example, the use of steam engines and coal for fuel triggered the Industrial Revolution, leading to the development of industrial societies.
As societies changed toward organic solidarity, they added large organizations and institutions. The meso level—institutions and large bureaucratic organizations—became more influential for individuals and families. Still, as recently as 200 years ago, even large societies had little global interdependence, and life for the typical citizen was influenced mostly by events at the micro and meso levels. As communication and transportation around the world developed and expanded, the global level grew.
As you read about each of the following types of societies, from the simplest to the most complex, notice the presence of these variables: (a) division of labor, (b) interdependence of people’s positions, (c) increasingly advanced technologies, and (d) new forms and uses of energy. Although none of these variables alone is sufficient to trigger evolution to a new type of society, they may all be necessary for a transition to occur.
According to Durkheim, then, in traditional societies with mechanical solidarity, interpersonal interaction and community life at the micro level were the most important aspects of social life. Meso- and macro-level societies developed as a result of changes toward more organic solidarity. As societies become more complex, meso- and macro-level institutions evolve and become more important, and have increasingly profound impacts on the lives of individuals.
Hunter-Gatherer Societies.
In the Kalahari Desert of southwestern Africa live hunter-gatherers known as the !Kung. (The ! is pronounced with a click of the tongue.) The !Kung live a nomadic life, moving from one place to another as food supplies become available or are used up. As a result, they carry few personal possessions and live in temporary huts, settling around water holes for a few months at a time. Settlements are small, rarely more than 20 to 50 people, for food supplies are not plentiful enough to support large, permanent populations (Lee 1984). !Kung women gather edible plants and nuts, while !Kung men hunt. Beyond division of labor by gender and age, however, there are few differences in roles or status.
In hunter-gatherer societies, people rely on the vegetation and animals occurring naturally in their habitat to sustain life. Generally, life is organized around kinship ties and reciprocity—that is, mutual assistance—for the well-being of the whole community. When a large animal is killed, people gather from a wide area to share in the bounty, and great care is taken to ensure that the meat is distributed fairly. Resources are shared among the people, but sharing is regulated by a complex system of mutual obligations. A visitor who eats food at another’s hearth is expected to repay that hospitality in the future.
The !Kung are a typical hunter-gatherer society. People make their clothing, shelter, and tools from available materials or obtain goods through trade with other nearby groups. People migrate seasonally to new food sources. Population size remains small because the number of births and deaths in the society are balanced.
▲ Hunting and gathering societies, like these Botswana Bushmen, do still exist, but they are increasingly affected by modern societies and technologies. These hunters make notes of their most recent excursion on a GPS app on their smartphone.
© Getty/Eric VANDEVILLE/Contributor
From the beginning of human experience until recently, hunting and gathering (or foraging) were the sole means of sustaining life. These early humans developed cultures and skills necessary for survival. Although few hunting and gathering societies exist in today’s crowded and modernizing world, we can learn some interesting aspects about the relationship between culture and human skills from those that do exist. For example, studies of the hunting-gathering group the Semaq Beri of the Malay Peninsula indicate that they have developed superior smell and recognition of scents, in part because identifying odors is key to their culture and survival (Klein 2018).
Other types of societies emerged only recently. Today, only a handful of societies still rely on hunting and gathering (Nolan and Lenski 2014). The hunter-gatherer lifestyle is becoming extinct largely because no society is isolated in today’s world.
Herding and Horticultural Societies.
A seminomadic herding society, the Masai of Kenya and Tanzania move camp to find grazing land for their animals and set up semipermanent shelters for the few months they will remain in one area. Settlements consist of huts constructed in a circle with a perimeter fence surrounding the compound. At the more permanent settlements, the Masai grow short-term crops to supplement their diet.
Herding societies have food-producing strategies based on domestication of animals whose care is the central focus of their activities. Domesticating animals has replaced hunting them. In addition to providing food and other products, cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, horses, and camels represent forms of wealth that result in more social prestige for members of the group with large herds.
Horticultural societies are those in which the food-producing strategy is based on domestication of plants, using digging sticks and wooden hoes to cultivate small gardens. They may also keep domesticated animals, but they focus on simple agriculture or gardening. They cultivate tree crops, such as date palms or bananas, and plant garden plots, such as yams, beans, taro, squash, or corn. This is more efficient than gathering wild vegetables
