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Surrounding each social unit, whether a small family group or a large corporation, is an environment—the setting in which the social unit works, including everything that influences the social unit, such as its physical and organizational surroundings and technological innovations. Just as each individual has a unique environment with family, friends, and other social groups, each social unit has an environment to which it must adjust. For example, your local church, mosque, synagogue, or temple may seem autonomous and independent, but it depends on its environment, including its national organization, for guidelines and support; the local police force to protect the building from vandalism; and the local economy to provide jobs to members so that the members, in turn, can support the organization. If the religious education program is going to train children to understand the scriptures, local schools are needed to teach the children to read. A religious group may also be affected by other religious bodies, competing with one another for potential members from the community. These religious groups may work cooperatively—organizing a summer program for children or jointly sponsoring a holy day celebration—or they may define one another as evil, each trying to malign or stigmatize the other. Moreover, one local religious group may be composed primarily of professional and businesspeople and another group mostly of laboring people. The religious groups may experience conflict in part because each serves a different socioeconomic constituency in the environment. The point is that to understand a social unit or the human body, we must consider the structure and processes within the unit as well as the interaction with the surrounding environment.

Perfect relationships or complete harmony among the social units is unusual. Social units, be they small groups or large organizations, are often motivated by self-interest and the need for self-preservation, with the result that they compete with other units for resources (e.g., time, money, skills, and the energy of members). Therefore, social units within a society are often in conflict. Whether groups are in conflict or they cooperate does not change their interrelatedness; units are interdependent and can be studied using the scientific method.

Thinking Sociologically

Think of an example of a social unit to which you belong. Describe the environment of the social unit. How does the environment influence that social unit?