1 Watch the video and put the words into the gaps in the text.
To understand how (1)____
groups shape human beings let’s look at some pre-modern images of group life
that (2)____ primary groups in their sort of natural (3)____ of traditional
society. The images that follow come from Russian peasant paintings of the
nineteenth (4)____ and then there are remarkable series of paintings created
by Pieter Bruegel of the elder and Pieter Bruegel the younger in the
sixteenth-century in Brussels.
So primary groups have again
(5)____ size, most of the people or all of the people in a primary group know
each other personally and intimately and have known each other for a long
time. There’s also an expectation in primary groups that the (6)____ will not
change very rapidly, you have an expectation to be around the (7)____ in a
primary group forever or at least for the rest of your life. There it is again a much tighter connection
between self and society in primary groups, tighter that the one which you
would find in secondary groups, the self is merged with society in primary
groups. One (8)____ identifies oneself with the group rather than with one’s
own biological heart. In class we talked about Emile Durkheim’s distinction
between egoism and altruism. Egoism literally means ‘selfism’ or ‘I-ism’. It
is a psychological emphasis upon the sort of reality status of the individual
self: an egoist views him or herself as reality and views all other human
beings as essentially unreal. An altruist, on the other hand, views society
as more real than the self. Altruism is a psychological focus upon the (9)___ of
others and welfare of the group, welfare of the society. An altruistic person
will engage in (10)____ actions to help the group survive. Primary groups
have this kind of altruistic quality. So primary groups often depend upon
this kind of tight identification between self, society, and the willingness
on the part of individuals to give up oneself for the group in order to
function. Contemporary (11)____ and bureaucracies lack that kind of high
level of emotional and psychological identification and they require
inducements like (12)___, pay, tightly controlled regulations in order to get
people to work. Primary groups aren’t like that, you work because you
identify with the group, you (13)___ because the group is you and your life.
When we look at these images from 19th century Russia this way we see people
who are working together (14)____ pretty effectively without rules and
regulations that are specified by (15)____, without contract because of a
shared identification as part of the primary group.
Let’s look now at Pieter Bruegel’s image of the harvesters. This
picture demonstrates the (16)___ between individuals in primary groups. One
of the qualities of primary groups is that you actually are (17)____ of
essentially one and only one group, the primary group is the world, the
social world. (18)____ the people that you work with are also the people you
tend to live with, the people you are (19)___ to, the people you (20)____
with, the people you celebrate with, the people you grieve with, again
multi-sided relationships. So in Pieter Bruegel’s paintings of (21)___ life
in pre-modern Europe you see people who work together, relax together, love
together, celebrate weddings, go to church together, fear God together, all
of these things. So again this image shows that kind of multi-sided quality
of primary group life: simple, local living, relatively small groups, but
multi-sided and complex relationships between the members of the group. So
traditional societies’ work and life are not (22)___, family and workgroup
and worship group aren’t segregated either.
Primary groups have a tendency again to touch on all sides. The same
idea is contained in this image of harvesting in Russia in the nineteenth
century and again a kind of multi-sided intimacy: eating, sleeping,
reproducing with the people you work with in a tight community that has been
in existence for many (23)____ and that has an expectation to continue for
more generations as well. Again multi-sidedness, high levels of emotional
variability, experience of others in (24)___ occasions: not just at work but
at home, not just at home but in church, not just in church but in parties
that one really sees others in all sides of life and they see oneself as
well. So in these kind of intimate communities where one’s life is lived
almost entirely (25)____ by a cocoon of others, the self doesn’t quite
develop as an individual, rather the self remains tied to the group. I and
the group are one, the group has more (26)___ and more durability than any of
its members, and so I identify closer with of the group than with myself.
Again the image from dancing peasants again showing them giving themselves up
to group life. So again even though this Russian image from the nineteenth century
shows a lone young woman with something like a sense of self, again the small
size, the local quality of interaction, the primary group as the originary of
all social life prevents that kind of emergence of individuality. The famous
line from Hillary Clinton that it takes a village to (27)___ a child is
reflected here in this image.
The high levels of work
required from pre-modern people working many many hours in order to meet the
basic needs of life meant that (28)___ were often raised by elderly people or
by those who weren’t able to fully
(29)___ in social life and work in any other ways. Imagine yourself growing
up in this village, you would have known all of the other children from your
earliest memories, you would have know other people in the community from
your earliest memory. You wouldn’t view yourself primarily as a child of two
parents but would instead view yourself as a (30)___ member. But in a
traditional society your parents are only ones of a number of people who do
care, and you identify then with the broader group as a (31)___. So against this traditional village life,
relatively (32)____, relatively intimate, all sides of life being
co-experienced together and identification of the self with the group and the
group with the self.
In Durkheim’s writings, as we’ll talk about later, textbook talks
about altruistic (33)____, killing oneself for the good of the group is
possible in traditional society. They will be one of the most common forms of
suicide in (34)____ societies when you closely identify yourself with the
primary group, the perpetuation of the primary group matters more than the
perpetuation of your own biological husk.
You don’t (35)____ if you die as long as the group continues to exist.
This attachment to group is linked to the willingness of (36)___ in tribal
society to go to war and to embrace the death of the self for the (37)____ of
the group as a good bargain.
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reveal
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settings
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century
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primary
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membership
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self-sacrificing
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workplaces
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rewards
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coordinating
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contribute
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small
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psychologically
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law
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people
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welfare
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Hence
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relationship
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related
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peasant
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members
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segregated
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worship
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surrounded
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raise
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multiple
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permanence
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generations
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community
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whole
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children
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small-scale
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participate
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traditional
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survival
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warriors
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suicide
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care
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2 Vocabulary focus. Sudy the words and word combinations, practise
their translation, spelling. Check your knowledge
in the test. Play vocabulary game and set your own vocabulary game record.
3 Mark the following statements as True or False.
1.
In primary
groups people know each other well.
2.
The structure of primary group changes very often, you
cannot expect to see the same people for all your life.
3.
In primary group a person identifies himself or
herself with the group, group is real and more important than the life of one
individual.
4.
Egoist believes that he or she is real while all other
people are unreal.
5.
Altruism focuses on the welfare of the society.
6.
Concepts of egoism and altruism were defined by Hegel.
7.
Modern workplaces function like primary groups.
8.
In primary groups people didn’t need money or other
forms of inducement to work, they did their work because it was necessary for
the group.
9.
In primary groups order was not based on laws and
regulations.
10. In primary groups children grew up and didn’t
know their parents.
11. In primary groups children knew all other
members of community.
12. Family and workgroup were separated in
traditional societies.
13. In traditional societies warriors were ready
to die for their group.
14. Altruistic suicide
was not common in primary groups.
4 Answer the Questions.
1. What is the connection between people in primary groups? How long do they
know each other or hope to be part of the same group?
2. How can a person identify himself or herself in primary group? Is it
the same in secondary groups?
3. What do terms ‘egoism’ and ‘altruism’ mean?
4. Why do contemporary workplaces
need rewards and inducements? Was it the same in primary groups?
5. What does emotional variability mean in primary groups?
6. Who raised children in primary groups? How did it influence children
and the group as a whole?
