Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/605

 EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL STRUCTURES '

It is not my intention to attempt any general treatment of social structures. That subject would be altogether too large for a single paper. But, aside from that, there is no need of any such treatment. Probably nine-tenths of all the work done in sociology thus far is of that kind. It consists chiefly in the description of social structures or in discussions of different aspects which they present. But thus far I have met with no work dealing with the evolution of social structures. By this I mean that sociologists have been content to take up the social structures which they find actually in existence, and to consider and examine them, often going into the minutest details and exhaustively describing every- thing in any way relating to them as finished products; but no one has as yet attempted to explain what social structure is, or how these various products have been formed.

As a general proposition, social structures may be said to be human institutions, using both terms in the broadest sense. In all grades and kinds of society there are human institutions, and, indeed, society may be said to consist of them. If we examine any one of them, we find that it possesses a certain permanence and stability. It is not a vague, intangible thing that will vanish at a touch, but something fixed and durable. This is because it possesses a structure. A structure is something that has been constructed, and a study of social structure is the study of a process and not a product. Our task, therefore, is not to examine the various products of social construction, but to inquire into the methods of social construction.

Our language, like our ideas, is more or less anthropomorphic. Man constructs, and the products are called structures. He takes the materials that nature provides, and with them he builds what- ever he needs houses, vehicles, boats, cities. Each of these products is a structure, but it is an artificial structure. The

1 A paper read at the International Congress of Arts and Science, Department of Sociology, St. Louis, September, 1904.

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