Sensing the Social

Social is not an abstract term. It is one that is experienced through sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. People talk about the social as if it is something that they can experience. How can we make sense of this character of the social? In what sense could the social be real in such a way that it can be experienced? This chapter discusses many examples of how the social is accessed through these senses and how they repeatedly occur in caste experiences. The chapter goes on to discuss the experience of the social through vision, smell, sound and touch: especially bringing in how we socialize our perceptions of ‘social touch’.

Maitri: Ethical Rationality between Different Socials

In this chapter, we argue that two socials have a relation of belongingness to each other analogous to the individual having a relation of belongingness to a social. Just as individuals come together through the experience of being-with, two socials comprising of individuals who are independently part of them, can also be in a similar relation of being-with each other. Any meaningful model of society which has many socials has to accommodate this possibility of different socials being in a relation of belongingness and being-with each other. We borrow a term from Babasaheb Ambedkar—maitri—and will propose that maitri is the term which stands for the ethical relation between the different socials that constitute the everyday social.

Social Self and Identity

In this chapter, it is argued that the idea of a social self is at the origin of much of the everyday understanding of the actions of the social, including that of identity within groups. We begin with the idea of social action and argue for the essential sociality of every individual. How is it, that individuals invoke concepts like ‘We’ to describe certain kinds of processes and experiences? Is the use of ‘We’ similar to the use of ‘I’ when describing experiences? Is the idea of the social to be discovered in the ways by which the we-consciousness arises and is sustained? In this sense, the ‘individual’ itself is a social construction. Experiences are unified through the notion of the individual self. Similarly, we can see how the idea of a social self is formed in talk about collective experiences and the formation of we-consciousness. We conclude this chapter with a discussion on the social self of caste.

Belonging and Becoming

How do different people come together in a society? We focus on two types of experiences in this chapter: becoming (such as in becoming a citizen) and belonging (as in belonging to a religion). We look at many ordinary examples of belongingness and the relation of this to the idea of the social. The term ‘Indian society’, for instance, is commonly understood as something more than the collection of some individuals in it. This might be based on a belief that there is something in common with all these members and there are some properties that they share which defines membership to Indian society. The membership of a society can be defined in various ways: ascriptive identities such as caste, religion, race and ethnic or acquired membership of different clubs such as in sports. Social performances are one way in which belongingness plays an important part. We conclude with a discussion of the family and the nature of belongingness to family, since our argument is that the social in the Indian context depends crucially on this relation within the family.

Metaphysical and Lived Time of the Social

In this chapter we add another layer to the various qualities of the social, a quality which, in our view, is the most important element of the social—the ethical. Or more aptly, the experience of the ethical. A social is cognized through an affectual, ethical relationship along with its other perceptual modes. The special character of this experience is what marks out the uniqueness of the human social. Thus, our fundamental experience of the social is ethical. Belongingness that characterizes the everyday social is primarily an ethical experience. We then go on to discuss Narayana Guru and the idea of equality, and the idea of inter-generational equality which is presupposed in caste dynamics. These everyday experiences create a sense of social time and we explore the implications of this for an ethics of the social.

Conceptualizing the Social

The concept of the social has been discussed extensively in sociology and other related disciplines. This chapter traces a particular problem related to the ambiguity of this term over time. One perspective is that the social can be seen as a unity, a given whole which cannot really be broken into parts made up of individuals. Or it could be seen as a field which is spread out, located in space and time, and having properties that are ‘experienceable’. Depending on which theories of space and time we hold, we could have different ideas of the social. This has led many to the claim that the social is not a useful term as an object of study. We discuss the various strengths and weakness of these claims and end with a brief summary of some current positions in social ontology.

Authority of the Social

In many of the uses of the idea of the social in everyday life, social is used as a term of authority. Authority may need individual agents to enforce it but the notion of authority itself is independent of enforcement. The chapter discusses the inherent problem within the idea of this notion of authority. To exhibit how the idea of authority becomes so important, we discuss how nature gets authority within the natural sciences. We show that there is a strong parallel between the authority of the natural and the authority of the social. These are forms of what we call as non-agential authority and show how tradition also functions in this manner. We conclude with a discussion on the relation between the natural and social.

Introduction

There is no one universal ‘social’ but a multitude of socials that characterise our societal experiences. These multiple experiences of the ‘social’ influence the ideas we form of the social, as well as give cognitive access to the different socials. The introduction sets out the motivation for the study of the social and discusses the basic approaches to the idea of social ontology. How do we define the everyday social? Why is the study of the everyday so important to formulate the idea of the social? Are there different socials? It then goes on to discuss the major themes in the other chapters of the book.