What are the Social Relations that Make a Set of Human Groups and Individuals a Society?

Before beginning, I would like to thank Dr. Minna Ruckenstein and Professor Jukka Siikala as well as the Finnish Anthropological Society for having done me the honor of inviting me to give this lecture. The question I am going to try to answer today concerns all of the social sciences at once....

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Main Author: Maurice Godelier
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Suomen Antropologinen Seura (Finnish Anthropological Society) 2009-01-01
Series:Suomen Antropologi
Online Access:https://journal.fi/suomenantropologi/article/view/116491
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author Maurice Godelier
author_facet Maurice Godelier
author_sort Maurice Godelier
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description Before beginning, I would like to thank Dr. Minna Ruckenstein and Professor Jukka Siikala as well as the Finnish Anthropological Society for having done me the honor of inviting me to give this lecture. The question I am going to try to answer today concerns all of the social sciences at once. It is: What are the social relations, of whatever kind they may be—political, religious, economic, kinship, etc.—that have the capacity to bring together and to weld into an all-encompassing whole and to endow with an additional, global and shared identity a number of human groups and individuals who thereby form a ‘society’ with borders that are known if not recognized by their neighbor societies? The human groups to which individuals belong can be of a great variety of natures: lineages, ‘houses’, clans, orders, castes, classes, local or religious communities, etc.; and an individual usually belongs to several of these groups, each of which provides him or her with one or several particular, specific identities. It is to these identities that is added the global shared identity attaching to all individuals, whatever their particular identity, by the fact of belonging to the same ‘society’, to the same Whole.
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spelling doaj.art-02f3c5d5c0e044caa23f9b34a5fd41b12022-12-22T02:35:04ZengSuomen Antropologinen Seura (Finnish Anthropological Society)Suomen Antropologi1799-89722009-01-0134110.30676/jfas.v34i1.116491What are the Social Relations that Make a Set of Human Groups and Individuals a Society?Maurice Godelier0L'EHESS Before beginning, I would like to thank Dr. Minna Ruckenstein and Professor Jukka Siikala as well as the Finnish Anthropological Society for having done me the honor of inviting me to give this lecture. The question I am going to try to answer today concerns all of the social sciences at once. It is: What are the social relations, of whatever kind they may be—political, religious, economic, kinship, etc.—that have the capacity to bring together and to weld into an all-encompassing whole and to endow with an additional, global and shared identity a number of human groups and individuals who thereby form a ‘society’ with borders that are known if not recognized by their neighbor societies? The human groups to which individuals belong can be of a great variety of natures: lineages, ‘houses’, clans, orders, castes, classes, local or religious communities, etc.; and an individual usually belongs to several of these groups, each of which provides him or her with one or several particular, specific identities. It is to these identities that is added the global shared identity attaching to all individuals, whatever their particular identity, by the fact of belonging to the same ‘society’, to the same Whole. https://journal.fi/suomenantropologi/article/view/116491
spellingShingle Maurice Godelier
What are the Social Relations that Make a Set of Human Groups and Individuals a Society?
Suomen Antropologi
title What are the Social Relations that Make a Set of Human Groups and Individuals a Society?
title_full What are the Social Relations that Make a Set of Human Groups and Individuals a Society?
title_fullStr What are the Social Relations that Make a Set of Human Groups and Individuals a Society?
title_full_unstemmed What are the Social Relations that Make a Set of Human Groups and Individuals a Society?
title_short What are the Social Relations that Make a Set of Human Groups and Individuals a Society?
title_sort what are the social relations that make a set of human groups and individuals a society
url https://journal.fi/suomenantropologi/article/view/116491
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