The Material Forces of Society

Material Forces

The material forces within the sociocultural system include “environment, population, production, technology and labor” and they intersect and intertwine with non-material forces with the system, such as ideas and ideologies (Elwell, 2013, p. 38). Indeed, the two impact and are impacted by one another. Material forces are important to the entire sociocultural system in that they play a fundamental role in how governments are shaped, how religion is communicated and spread, how the economy is expressed, how education transpires, and how the institution of the family is affected.

The material infrastructure shapes the evolution of sociocultural systems. For instance, the Industrial Revolution brought about material changes in labor, which impacted the economy, which impacted governmental formations both domestically and abroad (as industrialization led to globalization and to new imperialism). As Elwell (2013) points out, there are “interrelationships among the material infrastructure, the social structure, and the cultural superstructure of societies” (p. 93). Culture and society interact with material forces as part of patterns of everyday life, and all of the material forces are responsible for shaping the sociocultural system at some level.

Their importance cannot be understated, especially in a society that defines itself (its successes and failures) in materialistic terms. For example, in the U.S., the American Dream is intimately bound up with the idea of material possessions—a home, a career, a car, a family. At other points in history in other societies, materialism and the material forces played a substantially different role in the sense that they were undoubtedly less pronounced. With the elevation of the primacy of material forces and focus on elements like economic factors, the suppression of ideas and ideology has been seen—or at least the simplification of ideas and ideologies is more apparent. Complexly formed and articulated ideas, like what existed in the Age of Reason or even in the Age of Scholasticism, are largely missing in the sociocultural system of today’s materialistic societies.

As such, the most relevant material forces of the sociocultural system include the environment (which consists of economic elements such as trade, commerce, debt, coinage, and so on, as well as interactions among states, war politics, etc.) and technology (which sets the stage for the environment to a large degree). The populace is impacted by the environment and by technology—but also plays a role in how technology will be utilized as a material force. The government will also play a part in that utilization as it typically issues regulatory measures regarding how technology will be used as a material force to shape the sociocultural system. Regulation of various tech industries, from communications to biotech to oil and gas industries and so on, all shape societies and contribute or take away from economic prosperity (which reinforces or undermines the materialistically-oriented culture). Various philosophers, such as Lenski, have noted that the material base is essential in understanding the sociocultural structure of a society—as Elwell (2013) notes: “the materialist first looks to the material base upon which social structure and cultural superstructures are erected” (p. 100). For a materialistic sociocultural system, therefore, the material forces are enormously important and impactful, and the environment and technological forces are some of the most relevant because of the parameter-shifting, course-setting nature of their power. For societies to evolve, there is always an environmental and technological shift that defines their movement.

Postmodernist, social constructionist and social movement theories do contribute to our understanding of “social conflicts for individual rights” in our society in the twenty-first century. Each expresses or communicates a particular perspective based on a theoretical approach to the sociocultural system. The postmodernist theory is situated in the reaction against the overemphasis on reason as a motivating factor in human behavior. It examines systems in light of the power dynamic, as expressed through artificial or superficial communications. Of the three postmodernism can be the most useful because it reminds the sociological observer to be careful about placing too much weight on any one theoretical conceit; at the same time it can be the most frustrating because it serves as a kind of skeptical assessment of sociology itself by focusing on “the specific and seemingly unrepeatable particulars of human experience” (Module 1, n.d., p. 12). In other words, its underlying and implicit message is that sociologists should be hesitant to identify patterns of human behavior in systems because where one thinks there is correlation can often really be a projection of the sociologist’s own theoretical inclinations: “Postmodernism’s particular challenge to sociology is that it undercuts the theoretical ability to make meaningful statements about the lasting features of social and, ultimately, intellectual organization” (Module 1, n.d., p. 12).

Social constructionist theory posits that society is a subjective reality (Module 3, n.d., p. 2). Social change occurs through the internalization and mediation of what has come before. The individual engages with cultural representations in a subjective way and synthesizes a new meaning upon which the individual then bases future action. While social movement theory incorporates various theories, such as collective behavior theory, resource mobilization theory, and deprivation theory to explain how groups converge to promote the individual rights of people.

Of these three, social constructionist and social movements theory help to give some framework for understanding how social conflict can lead to a fight for rights. But postmodernist theory seemingly sits back from it all and ironically points out that social conflict does not lead to the gaining of individual rights but rather that self-deluded notions of possessing rights are what lead to social conflicts.