Why societies hold together at all is a surprisingly hard question
Millions of strangers mostly cooperate, queue, trade and follow rules without constant force. Explaining why is known as the problem of order, and it sits at the heart of sociology and political philosophy. Thomas Hobbes first posed it sharply, and his answer was the idea of a social contract.
Social order has two meanings. It can name a whole system of structures and institutions, such as feudal or capitalist society. It can also mean stability as opposed to chaos, a condition in which people accept and maintain the existing arrangements. The Hobbesian problem asks how and why such stability exists in the first place.
Major theorists have offered competing foundations. Karl Marx located order in economic relations, the way production is organised. Émile Durkheim pointed to shared norms. Talcott Parsons emphasised institutions that channel action, resting in turn on cultural values. Jürgen Habermas combined all of these and added communicative action, the way people reach understanding through talk. A related idea, sometimes called the principle of extensiveness, holds that the more norms a group shares, and the more they matter, the more tightly it holds together. Close-knit Amish communities, where a common faith shapes daily life, are often cited as an example.
Order is also built from below. People belong to families, businesses, congregations, teams and neighbourhoods, and the ties within and between these groups mirror the structure of society as a whole. Societies also rank status groups, communities marked by traits such as occupation, religion or education, each with its own lifestyle and customs; a university professor typically enjoys more prestige than a refuse collector. Belonging to one status group and a different economic class can pull a person in opposite directions.
Values act as internal yardsticks for judging what is worthwhile, while norms are enforced from outside and handed down across generations. Not everyone conforms all the time, which is one argument for authority. Critics counter that the demand for authority grows out of inequality, and tensions arise when rules reflect the values of one class more than another.
Source: Social order
