We are a social species

Aristotle famously wrote that "humans are a social species". More exactly, he said that humans are a political species, meaning that humans have a tendency (a potentiality) to create complex social organisations with rules, laws and institutions that helps us to cooperate, negotiate and solve conflicts.

Summarise the key ideas of the video.

Who was Aristotle?
What did he mean with his sentence Man is a political animal?
Is it the same to say that man is political animal than saying that man is a social animal?

After watching the video, can you answer the following questions?

Which biological (innate) characteristics of the human species (look for at least three features) enable us (or even force us) to be a social species?
Compare social species (bees, wolfes, humans, etc.) with non-social species (spiders, turtles, etc.). Similarities and differences.

After watching the video, can you answer the following questions?

Which species appear in the video? Why those species?
Which social behaviours are presented? How are those behaviours adaptative?
Draw parallelisms between human social and political behaviours and the behaviours of some social animals.

Socialization

Socialization is the process by which new individuals become members of a society. To be a part of a society means many things: talking the same language, adopting their uses and customs, stablishing social relations with members of that society (frienships, romantic relations, in the workplace, etc.).

Socialization happens in one of these situations:

Newly born humans are integrated into their parents' society.
Young and adult humans abandon their native society and want to become members of another one.

Socialization is a life-long process, we keep learning new social conducts (roles) as we grow older or move in our society, although is specially intense in our childhood or during the first months or years of our integration into a new society.

Socialization may be defective or incomplete for several causes and as a result the individual is not fully integrated into society.

Socialization: a definition.
Socialization phases: primary and secondary.
What is learnt in socialization?
Socialization agents.
Your school is a socialization center:
- Who socialized you (socialization agents)?
- Are you a socialization agent too?
- How school helped your social integration?
Reasons (or causes) that result in a deficient socialization.

Social roles and statuses

Social status: a definition.
How many statuses do you have now? Which one is your master status? Which ones are ascribed and which ones achieved?
Which statuses will you loose in the future? Which other ones will you gain as you become an adult?
Which is your current master status? Which one will become your adult master status?
Social role: a definition connecting with social status.
How many roles can you identify in your school?
Which are the typical activities/interactions of the people playing each of those roles?
Why social roles are similar to character roles in a movie or a theatrical play?

Social institutions

Social institutions are the largest blocks of a society: each institution includes many roles and statuses, rules and laws, traditions and customs, tools and buildings, all of them interrelated in complex ways. Institutions are typically permament structures: they can remain unchanged for decades or centuries, surviving the people that embodies them temporarily. However, institutions can change, sometimes in a gradual way, other times drastically.

Social institution: a definition.
What elements comprise a social institution?
Which are the most important institutions? Are they present in most/all societies? Are there differences?
Choose an institution and detail the elements included in it: people, roles and statuses, rules, traditions, etc.
Exemplify social change choosing an institution and showing some changes it has undergone.

Social organization: four types

After watching the video, make a table comparing the four types of societies described in it. Include columns for:

Typical number of individuals that form the society.
Way of living, technologies employed.
Who has the authority? How is authority transmitted?
Do they defend a territory? A permanent army?
Is there division of labor? Food providers, soldiers, priests, rulers, etc.
One example or two.

Politics

Why politics?

In a broad sense, politics include several topics that every human society has to address:

Who is in charge? Who makes the final decision in matters of interest to all its members?
How to settle disagreements and disputes between its members?
Which are the rules / laws that govern society?
- How are they created / modified / replaced?
- How to punish those breaking the law? Who will do the punishment?

As we can infer from these questions, politics is concerned with two major issues: cooperation and conflict. Throughout history, different societies have come out with different solutions to promote cooperation among its members and to solve internal and external conflicts. The survival and prosperity of a society depends crucially on the adequacy of its solutions to these challenges.

Naturalism versus contractualism

We are a social species. There are several innate pro-social characteristics in all of us. Very few adult people choose to live completely alone, and even they have gone through a socialization process.

Because of the natural roots of our social behaviour, many thinkers have proposed that political institutions are also a natural development for us: humans tend by nature to create institutions that promote cooperation and sove conflict. It is true that the specifics of each society are different, but all human groups end up creating a form of government simply because it is in our nature to do so. That was the position of Aristotle and many others, and it is called political naturalism. Aristotle in particular thought that the Ancient Greek city (the polis) was the natural culmination of political development: all human groups ended up creating autonomous cities if the circumstances allowed in very much the same way that bees build beehives if the right conditions take place.

By the time Aristotle defended the natural origins of political institutions, another group of Ancient Greek thinkers (the so-called sophists) defended the opposite view: political institutions are the result of human tradition, agreement or power struggle between social groups. In summary, politics is not natural but conventional. One particular type of conventionalism is contractualism. Contractualist thinkers sustain that governments are created by agreement. If an agreement is not reached, individuals are perfectly happy living in families or small communities. Individuals are driven to create and maintain political institutions not because of a natural political impulse but by other motives such as avoiding dangers or obtaining better living conditions.

After watching this video and a second one by the same author, answer the following questions:

Which are the initial, intermediate and final steps in political organization?
What is the purpose (and the motivation) of living together?
Which are Aristotle's reasons in favour of political naturalism?
Since cities are built by people, they are artificial and not natural, right? But Aristotle defends that the polis is the natural end of human social nature. What is Aristotle response to that criticism?

After watching this video, answer the following questions:

Before contractualism, what was the usual justification of political power?
Make a table comparing the ideas of the three thinkers discussed in the following aspects:
- Motivation for accepting political authority.
- Benefits derived from that acceptance.
- Type of government favoured.
- Possibility of terminate / modify the political contract.
- A catch phrase that summarise the ideas of each one of them.

Power versus authority