Civic life in the 19th century was in a state of flux, as the old medieval order began to decay and former farmers flooded into the city. Under feudal arrangements, local lords were at least putatively responsible for the well-being of their subjects, but in the city, no such noblesse oblige existed: workers were alone to face exploitation, squalid living conditions and poverty – the profits and industry that drove the industrial revolution were directly dependent upon the exploitation of those working the machines. Perhaps more influentially, those with power could see directly the suffering of those around them.
This, then, raised the “social question:” what is to be done? Is there a sense of justice that the state must respond to, or is this a matter for churches and humanitarian organizations? Workers began to see themselves as a collective force, to whom some justice was owed. From here came a wide variety of responses: welfare, humanitarianism, socialism, etc., which had in common a notion that squalor and suffering were not a natural occurrence that extends from the soil, but something that society both caused and could remedy. It is a question with which we still contend today.
The start of sociology and other social sciences came around the same time as industrialization, urbanization, revolutions, the rise of the nation state, and rationality. I wonder how many players would see this civic as key to progressing through the game; does a society need to address this social question or can we just get on to other exciting features of modernity?
I may just have to report back on what happens when the civic Social Question is enabled and social science is possible. While I have logged many hours of playing Civilization II earlier in my life, I have little experience with more recent iterations of the game. As a sociologist, shouldn’t a robust social science sector lead to a civilizational victory?
Looking back, this is one of the key things I have learned in 20+ years of studying sociology. In this particular social setting and time, we are often determined to see ourselves as individuals slowed down by society and its constraints. We cannot do what we really want or be who we really want to be. Our mass society wants us to conform and we want to break free.
But many of the features of life today that we know and take for granted came about because of mass society. Large cities. The Internet and social media. Clean water, available health care, and long life expectancy. Airplanes hurtling through the sky. Educational opportunities. Libraries. Music festivals. And much more.
On the whole, we could argue that society empowers people. To be in relationships with people and institutions can be good. They provide access to things humans not that long ago might only have only dreamed of. These changes might come with downsides – rapid change, traditions that faded away, a changed physical landscape, and so on – but humans working with other humans can lead to increased humanness, not just restrictions and limits.
One last example of how we might see this better. Multiple times, I have asked my Introduction to Sociology students to finish the course by writing a sociological autobiography (a project borrowed from several other sociologists). How would they narrate their life through sociological categories? I ask them to step back from just an individualistic view. In doing so, they both demonstrate that they can apply sociological concepts we have discussed throughout the semester and they can reflect on a different angle to their life: how their individual actions and experiences fit within relationships and social systems around them.
To repeat the argument, over the long term society enables people more than it constrains them. To not be in a society or connected to other humans is not ultimately freeing. How society is best ordered or organized is another matter; humans have promoted and experienced different approaches in different times and places. With relationships with other people and institutions, we can be empowered.
Every human is affected by institutions. These durable social collectives outlive individuals, have particular social structures, and can do things that individuals cannot. They are good examples of how society enables people more than it constrains them.
Take for example a college or university. This past semester, I taught a class where we looked at American institutions of higher education over time. The oldest institutions are nearly 400 years old while many others have at least a century of history. These institutions have changed in important ways over time – think of the curriculum, their size, their purpose, their values – but they are recognizable in the past and present as places of learning.
No college or university is dependent on the actions of just one person or even a small set of people. We could tell the narrative this way; focus primarily on the president or founder or key leaders. At least some of them likely did consequential things. But there is a broader story to tell of the institution. What did the Board do? How did the college or university interact with legislators or the local community or other actors in higher education? What was the experience of faculty, staff, and students at different points?
As an institution, the college or university can enable people. It can offer classes, experiences, and opportunities that an individual or a small group could not do. There are things it cannot do but there is a reason these kinds of institutions have served societies for hundreds of years.
Institutions are durable and enabling. How might one change an institution or set of institutions? Social movements are mass movements of people working toward a common goal. They are relatively unusual; it takes a lot of effort to get large numbers of people to do something. To organize a local protest or march or campaign needs organizers, participants, resources, and a space. They get receive attention and can rally people to a cause.
And even then, social movements often need openings or certain conditions where what they ask for can be achieved. Hundreds of thousands of people might march within a country and nothing happens. Or it might take years and decades for a movement to see change happen. Successful movements are remembered for a long time because they harnessed the activity and actions of many people and changed societies.
In both of these examples, people are empowered. Institutions can constrain people and they are often associated with bureaucracy. However, bureaucracy exists because large complex institutions need ways to structure their activities. Social movements can fail to reach their goals or disappoint the people who participate. However, they can achieve things that only large numbers of people working together can do.
Humans are social beings. They need connections, interactions, and care. They require this early on as babies as newborns can do nothing for themselves. However, the need does not go away as people age; human sociability is essential to being corporately and individually human. Societies provide spaces and resources to be social.
Surrounded in today’s ethos of individualism, we often like the idea that we can pick and choose relationships. We can go low contact or no contact with people who might have some claim to interact with us. We choose our friends. We pick our level of engagement in-person and online. We join the groups or organizations we want to join as long as they serve us.
All this choice might represent hard-fought wins of making our own choices free of what we perceive as constraints. But it can also provide the illusion that we do not need other people.
“When the study began, nobody cared about empathy or attachment. But the key to healthy aging is relationships, relationships, relationships,” Vaillant says. Close relationships, the data indicates, are what keep people happy throughout their lives. The study found strong relationships to be far and away the strongest predictor of life satisfaction, and better predictors of long and happy lives than social class, wealth, fame, IQ, or even genes. That finding proved true across the board among both the Harvard men and the inner-city participants.
And strong relationships are not only correlated with happiness, but with physical health, longevity, and financial success, too.
“The really surprising finding is that our relationships and how happy we are in our relationships has a powerful influence on our health,” says Robert Waldinger, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School who is the current director of the study. “The people who were the most satisfied in their relationships at age 50 were the healthiest at age 80. Strong relationships help to delay mental and physical decline. Taking care of your body is important, but tending to your relationships is a form of self-care too. That, I think, is the revelation.”
This revelation can be seen in both positive and negative terms. Meaning that while strong community seems to protect us from the literal coughs and colds of everyday life, a lack of community is also deadly. “Loneliness kills,” Waldinger says. “It’s as powerful as smoking or alcoholism.”
Humans do better when they are not alone. They benefit from strong relationships and connections with others. This does not mean there will not be conflict or hurt in these relationships. Yet the long-term effects can be positive as sociability helps individuals and groups.
Human beings are not the only species that are social. At the same time, the social component of human life helps boost what humans can do. Societies are built on these relationships and interactions, also providing resources and norms regarding how this sociability happens. To interact with, relate with, and care for others is critical to the human experience and what humans can accomplish together.
Humans contribute to and benefit from being part of social networks. Social networks are made up of the relationships between people. These relationships can range from weak to strong, can be based on all kinds of social ties, and can connect large numbers of people (think playing “six degrees of Kevin Bacon”).
The 2009 book Connected by James Christakis and Nicholas Fowler details features of social networks. They pass information. They connect people. They can heal themselves.
And they are superorganisms, enabling humans to do things in networks that individuals alone cannot. Yes, social networks can lead to negative outcomes such as passing diseases along. This is how epidemics happen. But networks give people access to information, to relationships, to resources. In one famous study, the friends of friends – “weak ties” – provide more access to jobs. A community can do things through its social networks that an individual or a small group would not be able to.
Take any group of which you are a participant. The social network approach examines not the group or institution as an actor but the sets of relationships between people. In a family, there are different kinds of ties and different kinds of resources passed through the network. A network diagram of a workplace would look different, dependent on the size of the network, the density of the relationships, and the shape of those connections. A national society might be much too big to map out but the ways that people are connected can be surprisingly small if we consider nodes and bridging ties.
People and actors can have both bonding and bridging ties. Bonding ties are ones that tend to be close relationships that bring individuals together. Imagine close friends. All enduring groups need some level of this. Think of a religious congregations. There are often close connections at the center of this group that help anchor the organization. Religious congregations also have the capacity to create bridging ties. They can reach out in their communities, working neighbors or other congregations or other organizations. These ties can link together groups that might not otherwise interact. Some congregations might be really good at one of these two kinds of relationships: forming tight bonds that endure or linking together parts of society that can benefit from collaboration. Social networks overall give humans opportunities to thrive. It is in the building and maintaining of relationships that individuals can access what they need and larger groups can operate. To be human is to be part of networks that can empower people.
Have you been part of a sports team or in a music group? That collective had a goal, a purpose. Sports teams often want to win. Music groups have a musical work to put together. Both requiring working together, striving together to meet an objective.
Of course, there are solo sports and music experiences. Numerous sports offer the opportunity to play be oneself, perhaps facing off against a single opponent or even just against some standard. Musicians can and do perform on their own. They can make music with their voice or instrument as a solo artist.
But there is something about the sports and music experiences as collectives that helps illustrate that society enables people more than it constrains them. What one person can do in either field can be very impressive but what a group can do together is amazing. And if you have been part of such an experience, it is a unique one.
Start with being on a sports team. You and your teammates are trying to play hard and win. In team sports, the outcome rarely depends on the actions of just one person; the team is working in sync to accomplish its goals. When all of the team members are contributing, the team feels great. The collective team can do what one player by themselves cannot.
Or imagine being part of a chorus or a rock band. Each person has assigned tasks. Music is often written in such a way to bring together multiple efforts for the same song. When everyone is doing their part, the resulting sound can be profound. The feeling of participating can also be notable; the work of the group can transcend the actions of the all the individuals.
This is not to discount the efforts of individuals. Solo performances require skill and can be moving. But they are different compared to groups playing and making music together. Whether working as a jazz trio or a symphony orchestra or a drumline, the group can do things that the individuals alone cannot. They can make music that is by the group.
Throughout life, we participate in groups and collectives. Society is just one massive-sized collective. We could see the larger goals of societies as analogous to the “win” a sports team seeks or the piece we are playing. We do not always succeed but what we can accomplish as a team or group or society can be empowering.
As I regularly teach sociology courses, I continually come up against the idea that society constrains people. It tells them what to do. It limits them. It imposes behaviors and beliefs and belonging that they do not necessarily want. Society is an anchor many want to cut loose.
This may reflect my setting: teaching sociology within the United States, a country where students have heard they are to be free to follow their own paths, to pursue their own goals, to become successful on their own merit. Individualism is alive and well in the United States and perceived conformity and constraint are negative.
But I will argue in this post and four to follow that society enables people more than it constrains them. To be human is to participate in social relationships. To live the good life as an individual involves being part of society. To participate in and contribute to social life is empowering in the long run.
Another way to put this: there is no solo human being. To be cut off from others from a long period of time is not healthy. Yes, relationships and society can bring pain and destruction; this is true now and throughout human history. But to now be part of a collective, something bigger than each of us as individuals, is to miss out on something fundamental to humanity.
One brief example from the classroom illustrates these points. What might we gain if we take a college class together as opposed to learning on our own (books, online, etc.)? Many people might feel frustrated by the classroom setting where the instruction, pace, conversation, or setting may not be exactly what they want. But what if we, in the long run, learn from and through experiences with other people? One can have a conversation with oneself but this looks very different than the talk possible when people bring their knowledge, experiences, and struggles to a focused conversation together.
In the next post, I will use the analogies of (1) groups of musicians and (2) sports teams to further the argument that society enables people.
These figures were part of a story about AI farming technologies:
In general, technology is further along for row crops because hundreds of acres of corn and soybeans are relatively simple to tend to en masse. Ag-tech conglomerates such as John Deere and CNH Industrial have also historically catered to the needs of row crop operations since they’re such a large share of the nation’s agricultural sector, accounting for $21 billion of agricultural production in Illinois alone. Specialty crops haven’t received as much attention from corporate America.
When you drive out of the Chicago area, you can see what appear to be endless fields of these two crops. Illinois may lead the country in pumpkin production but the amount of corn and soybeans grown is much higher. These may not be “exciting” crops but they are used in many ways.
Put it another way: what would Chicago area residents think if “Land of Lincoln” was changed “Land of Corn and Soybeans”? Would they associate those crops with other places (like corn with Iowa)?
And would being a state that leads in corn and soybean AI be an advantage? If so, how much so and where would the benefits go?
Wilson’s legacy includes dozens of hit singles with the Beach Boys, including three Number One singles (“I Get Around,” “Help Me, Rhonda,” and “Good Vibrations”). In the 1960s, the Beach Boys were not only the most successful American band, but they also jockeyed for global preeminence with the Beatles. And on albums such as Pet Sounds, Wilson’s lavish, orchestral production techniques dramatically expanded the sonic palette of rock & roll and showed how the recording studio could be an instrument by itself.
Born June 20, 1942, Brian Wilson grew up in Hawthorne, California, a modest town next to the Los Angeles Airport. Brian was the eldest of three brothers; his younger brothers were Dennis and Carl. Their father, Murry, was an aspiring songwriter and a tyrant. “Although he saw himself as a loving father who guided his brood with a firm hand, he abused us psychologically and physically, creating wounds that never healed,” Wilson wrote in his 1991 autobiography, Wouldn’t It Be Nice: My Own Story.
Wilson grew up playing sports and obsessing over music, teaching his brothers to harmonize with him. Music was his sustenance and his solace, he said: “Early on, I learned that when I tuned the world out, I was able to tune in a mysterious, God-given music. It was my gift, and it allowed me to interpret and understand emotions I couldn’t articulate.”
In 1961, Brian, Dennis, and Carl formed a band with their cousin Mike Love and their friend Al Jardine, managed by Murry Wilson; Brian played bass, took many of the lead vocals, and wrote the songs. Signed to Capitol Records and named the Beach Boys, they started to roll out hits like convertible Thunderbirds coming off an assembly line: “Surfin’ U.S.A.” (with music borrowed from Chuck Berry’s “Sweet Little Sixteen”), “Surfer Girl,” “Be True to Your School,” “Fun, Fun, Fun.” Those Brian Wilson compositions all sounded like insanely catchy jingles for the California teenage lifestyle — surfboards, hamburger stands, pep rallies — but on the flip side of the good times was a real sense of melancholy. Sometimes that was apparent in the lyrics — the lonesome “In My Room,” for example — and sometimes it was expressed nonverbally, with the Beach Boys’ heartbreaking multipart harmonies.
Two connections to the suburbs to note:
Hawthorne, California was a small community in the early 1940s – over 8,000 residents – southwest of downtown Los Angeles and a few miles from the beach. Today, the community houses nearly 90,000 people. The suburb was home to a number of aerospace companies over the years and Mattel was started there in 1945. It grew as the sprawling Los Angeles area grew in the postwar era.
Many of the songs of the The Beach Boys reflect features of suburban life, particularly for teenagers. Numerous early songs discuss driving. Los Angeles became a driving capital in the postwar era and Hawthorne is bordered by multiple interstates. A teenager driving in the early 1960s could easily access the beach, fast roads, fast food, shopping malls, and new subdivisions and communities. Do this all in the sunshine and you might be regularly going in “American Dream mode.” There is also the theme of family. The group includes Wilson’s two brothers and his cousin. Wilson writes and sings about relationships. In the suburbia of the 1950s and 1960s, nuclear families were emphasized. The Brady Bunch, set not that far from Hawthorne, purported to show wholesome family life. That the group and songs involved family life, even amid clear themes of teenager individualism, is not surprising given the suburban context.
Thomas and Wilson met four years ago in Nashville when the producer was recording Stars and Stripes, a country tribute to the Beach Boys. They are an unlikely pair — Wilson the fragile artist and Thomas the beefy Midwesterner who wears cowboy boots and a mullet haircut. But in 1996, their wives bought sprawling homes next to each other in the rolling countryside of St. Charles, Illinois, and a studio was installed in Wilson’s basement to record Imagination.
The Wilsons chose St. Charles almost by chance. “Joe and Brian were in the studio in Chicago one day, so Chris [Thomas’ wife] and I went shopping, because they were looking for a house,” explains Melinda, 51, sitting with Brian in a small, comfortable room off the studio in St. Charles. “We saw this place with a basement that was unfinished, and we thought, ‘Why not?’
“It’s good to get out somewhere, away from everything, where you can work,” she says. “It doesn’t matter about the weather, doesn’t matter about traffic. If Brian doesn’t want to work, he just goes upstairs, and when he feels like it, he comes down. Most artists are not people who can do a nine-to-five trip.”…
Later, over dinner, Wilson feels differently, and he admits that he misses L.A.: “It’s home, where I’ve always recorded, and there’s just something about the vibe there. I like the L.A. vibe.”
After living in St. Charles, Wilson moved back to Los Angeles.
Trahan told the Journal in 2023 that the house was “the worst investment ever,” but has since clarified those comments, telling People that she views the home as a piece of art.
“When I was buying it, I wasn’t thinking, ‘Oh, it was a great investment,'” Trahan told People in 2023. “When I buy art, it’s because I love the art. It’s not because, ‘Oh, I’m going to make money on this.’ If you’re going to make money in art, you have to sell it. I buy art, and then I don’t sell it.”
The first Brady Experience sweepstakes was such a success that Trahan is opening it up for another round. Trahan could not be reached for comment.
Can a home be art? Can a real suburban home that became part of a well-known TV show be art? This might require public and/or critical consensus.
The idea that a postwar suburban house could be a piece of art is not that farfetched. Imagine homeowners of such homes across the American landscape that lovingly take care of their homes, maintaining and improving them. Or preservationist efforts that protect particular homes for future generations. (Which postwar suburban homes might qualify for this is another discussion – which are more art and which are more pedestrian?)
Add to this the iconic nature of this home. For many, The Brady Bunch house represents suburban family life. The show only ran 5 seasons but the family and its home became a part of the postwar culture during its run, through syndication, and ongoing lore. I doubt many critics would say the show was art – it was a normal sitcom – but the iconic status of the show may elevate it in the eyes of viewers.
Perhaps the Brady home is pop art: a slice of a particular time that was revered by many.
Legally Sociable 