Written by: Julie Dodge on November 1, 2013

I am a social worker. We social workers are pragmatists; we recognize that part of what we do is read and study the theories of many other disciplines and strive to apply them in the social context. I am also, by personality, drawn first to concepts, and then identify the pieces which contribute to the whole. For me, the pieces have little meaning apart from the whole. I state these things to acknowledge my bias. I recognize that there has to be a balance for people who think as I do. Some people are better at thinking about and identifying the details, while others are better thinking about and identifying the broad strokes.

As I read Anthony Elliott’s “Contemporary Social Theory: An Introduction”[i], I was initially struck by the focus in early social theory on the details of society and social structure. I struggled a bit with what seemed to me to be a focus on bits and pieces without a broader understanding or context. About three-quarters of the way through the book, I went back to the beginning to read again the author’s definition of society and that’s when things began to gel for me. Elliott writes, “There is, to date, no single adequate definition of society in social theory.”[ii] He then goes on to list no fewer than thirteen possible definitions. The list, however, defined elements of society, not society itself. Interestingly, at least to me, only one of these definitions included a reference to people, and in that, only human bodies.

In my class today on Social Work Practice with Communities and Organizations, I taught about organizations, and non-profit organizational development. I always start with the premise that organizations are simply people.  The organization does not exist without people. Organizations have a purpose, and a structure, in which people come together. If we accept a rough, and albeit flawed, assumption that an organization is a microcosm of society – or better, a metaphor – then I assert that social theory that fails to recognize that society is first composed of people is starting on a weak foundation.

In both my practice and my teaching, one of my assertions is that healthy kids come from healthy families who are part of healthy communities. The influence from individual to societal levels is multi-directional. Individuals form societies and thus create healthy (or unhealthy) social structures, while social systems and structures in turn form and shape the individual, family and community health. Issues related to causality and correlation are complex. Does the individual shape society, or society shape the individual, or both?

Some of the early social theorists (and throughout Elliott’s text) identified details of the individual based heavily on Freudian theory of psychology as influencing society. Yet I found this to be an extremely limited view of both psychology as a field and the individual’s impact on society. Several times while reading I got up and went to my office and perused the too many books on my shelves about psychology, sociology, social work, leadership, political science, and theology. I saw and recounted dozens of perspectives on people and society. I think I was looking for connections. I kept being drawn to works on attachment, resilience, and bonding. These theories lay the foundation for research that demonstrates that when human beings feel connected to other people, social institutions, and communities, in a positive way, they have better individual outcomes[iii] which in turn lead to better community and societal outcomes.

Similarly, I kept looking for the connections between the pieces of social theory and broader society. It at times seemed like the theory was chasing itself; striving to find a way to describe something that was already past, yet searching for a defining structure. Elliott best described my thoughts in his introduction to postmodernism. “Why go on trying, the sceptics asked, to locate single drivers of social reproduction and political domination – capitalism, language, gender – when it is more and more obvious that we live today in a multidimensional world that continually escapes the powers of theory?… Dispense with the totalizing ambitions of social theory …. and grasp what most people today intuitively recognize: that human experience is multiple, dispersed, fragmented, complex and contradictory?”[iv]  I continued to find the theories of postmodernity, liquidity, and globalization incomplete, but these questions resonated with me.

Social theory needs a context. Social theory does not exist without people. I liken it to theology. There is no theology apart from God. Theology finds clarity when it has an ideological foundation, such as Christianity. I recognize that the point of social theory is to find those objective descriptors that define society, but perhaps it remains challenged because it lacks a foundation. I confess my over-simplistic approach, but I find the foundation for social theory in Genesis. In creation I see God creating society. He created man in His image, male and female, and gave them a purpose: to love Him, to take care of each other, and to take care of His creation. As we grew in numbers, we developed social structures for order and purpose. The health of these social structures seemed to be attached to the quality of the relationship to God.

I posit this idea: society needs a foundation. Society needs God. As we have moved away from God as society, we have lost our connection to one another. We have lost our purpose – the thing that draws us together. As a result, we are fragmented, isolated, flawed, and, as we read in Ford’s “Theology: A Very Short Introduction,”[v] we are overwhelmed. It is those overwhelmings that lead us down the path of context, purpose and meaning. Perhaps it will lead us to God.

About the Author

Julie Dodge

Julie loves coffee and warm summer days. She is an Assistant Professor of Social Work at Concordia University, Portland, a consultant for non-profit organizations, and a leader at The Trinity Project.