Each society is vastly different

The argument

A Bedouin society, which consists of modern-day nomads, clearly places no importance of emphasis on a clearly defined territory. By contrast, Palestinian society, which has doggedly resisted the occupation of its lands, places an enormous importance on geographical territory. The pairing is chosen to eliminate the most obvious candidate for a common feature. If territory were essential to what a society is, no society could be indifferent to it, and here are two, in overlapping parts of the world, at opposite ends of how much it matters. In the industrial societies of the nineteenth century, some elements of society sought enormous wealth for themselves and their family, while others were left to live in abstract poverty and squalid conditions. These societies could hardly be described as working towards a common good. That disposes of the second obvious candidate. A definition making shared purpose essential would exclude societies that were plainly societies, organised and functioning, while large parts of their population lived in conditions the rest did not share. Following the rise of social media, post-industrial societies are structured around the dissemination of knowledge. They are far more likely to be divided by knowledge and in the political sense, what they know (suspect) to be true. This third case differs from both the others in what it organises itself around, which shows that the organising principle itself varies rather than being one constant expressed in different forms. Each of these societies is vastly different. There is no single thread connecting all of them which can be identified as the 'essence' of what a society is. The argument proceeds by elimination rather than assertion: each candidate for a defining feature is met with a society lacking it, which is why the conclusion is that the word means different things to different people rather than that its single meaning has yet to be found.

Context

A society in rural Tanzania looks very different to a society in a thriving North American metropolis. The societies in these places have different structures, different cultures, different values, and are different entities.

Premises

Counter-arguments

There are theories of society that can adequately encompass all of these types of societies into one definition. In both the Tanzanian wilderness and the busy North American city, all active participants in a society are coming together under a common goal: human survival. Just because survival in rural Africa looks different to survival in North America doesn’t mean the societies are fundamentally different. They are not. In the Maasai village and the New York penthouse, individuals are cooperating in order to survive. This is a society.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] They all have one shared attribute; they are formed on the basis of a shared goal.

Framing

Some societies form around a shared territory, some from a shared culture, others from a piece of shared knowledge. There is no universal unified around which all societies converge on.