The Folk Society

Abstract

Understanding of society may be gained through construction of an ideal type of primitive or folk society as contrasted with modern urbanized society. Such a society is small, isolated, nonliterate, and homogeneous, with a strong sense of group solidarity. The ways of living are conventionalized into that coherent system which we call "a culture." Behavior is traditional, spontaneous, uncritical, and personal; there is no legislation or habit of experiment and reflection for intellectual ends. Kinship, its relationships and institutions, are the type categories of experience and the familial group is the unit of action. The sacred prevails over the secular; the economy is one of status rather than of the market. These and related characterizations may be restated in terms of "folk mentality." In studying societies comparatively, or one society in the course of change, with the aid of these conceptions, problems arise and are, in part, solved as to the necessary or probable interrelations of some of the elements of the ideal folk society with others. One such relationship is that between disorganization of culture and secularization.