Introduction to the Science of Sociology

by Robert Ezra Park; E. W. Burgess

1. The In-Group and the Out-Group[124]

The conception of "primitive society" which we ought to form is that of small groups scattered over a territory. The size of the groups is determined by the conditions of the struggle for existence. The internal organization of each group corresponds to its size. A group of groups may have some relation to each other (kin, neighborhood, alliance, connubium, and commercium) which draws them together and differentiates them from others. Thus a differentiation arises between ourselves, the we-group, or in-group, and everybody else, or the others-groups, out-groups. The insiders in a we-group are in a relation of peace, order, law, government, and industry, to each other. Their relation to all outsiders, or others-groups, is one of war and plunder, except so far as agreements have modified it. If a group is exogamic, the women in it were born abroad somewhere. Other foreigners who might be found in it are adopted persons, guest-friends, and slaves.

The relation of comradeship and peace in the we-group and that of hostility and war toward others-groups are correlative to each other. The exigencies of war with outsiders are what make peace inside, lest internal discord should weaken the we-group for war. These exigencies also make government and law in the in-group, in order to prevent quarrels and enforce discipline. Thus war and peace have reacted on each other and developed each other, one within the group, the other in the intergroup relation. The closer the neighbors, and the stronger they are, the intenser is the warfare, and then the intenser is the internal organization and discipline of each. Sentiments are produced to correspond. Loyalty to the group, sacrifice for it, hatred and contempt for outsiders, brotherhood within, warlikeness without—all grow together, common products of the same situation.

Ethnocentrism is the technical name for this view of things in which one's own group is the center of everything and all others are scaled and rated with reference to it. Folkways correspond to it to cover both the inner and the outer relation. Each group nourishes its own pride and vanity, boasts itself superior, exalts its own divinities, and looks with contempt on outsiders. Each group thinks its own folkways the only right ones, and if it observes that other groups have other folkways, these excite its scorn. Opprobrious epithets are derived from these differences. "Pig-eater," "cow-eater," "uncircumcised," "jabberers," are epithets of contempt and abomination.

2. Sympathetic Contacts versus Categoric Contacts[125]

Let us now consider what takes place when two men, mere strangers to one another, come together. The motive of classification, which I have considered in another chapter, leads each of them at once to recognize the approaching object first as living, then as human. The shape and dress carry the categorizing process yet farther, so that they are placed in groups, as of this or that tribe or social class, and as these determinations are made they arouse the appropriate sympathies or hatreds such as by experience have become associated with the several categories. Be it observed that these judgments are spontaneous, instinctive, and unnoticed. They are made so by immemorial education in the art of contact which man has inherited from the life of the ancestral beasts and men; they have most likely been in some measure affirmed by selection, for these determinations as to the nature of the neighbor were in the lower stages of existence in brute and man of critical importance, the creatures lived or died according as they determined well or ill, swiftly or slowly. If we observe what takes place in our own minds at such meetings we will see that the action in its immediateness is like that of the eyelids when the eye is threatened. As we say, it is done before we know it.

With this view as to the conditions of human contact, particularly of what occurs when men first meet one another, let us glance at what takes place in near intercourse. We have seen that at the beginning of any acquaintance the fellow-being is inevitably dealt with in the categoric way. He is taken as a member of a group, which group is denoted to us by a few convenient signs; as our acquaintance with a particular person advances, this category tends to become qualified. Its bounds are pushed this way and that until they break down. It is to be noted in this process that the category fights for itself, or we for it, so that the result of the battle between the immediate truth and the prejudice is always doubtful. It is here that knowledge, especially that gained by individual experience, is most helpful. The uninformed man, who begins to find, on the nearer view of an Israelite, that the fellow is like himself, holds by his category in the primitive way. The creature is a Jew, therefore the evidence of kinship must not count. He who is better informed is, or should be, accustomed to amend his categories. He may, indeed, remember that he is dealing with a neighbor of the race which gave us not only Christ, but all the accepted prophets who have shaped our own course, and his understanding helps to cast down the barriers of instinctive prejudice.

At the stage of advancing acquaintance where friendship is attained, the category begins to disappear from our minds. We may, indeed, measure the advance in this relation by the extent to which it has been broken down. Looking attentively at our mental situation as regards those whom we know pretty well, we see that most of them are still, though rather faintly, classified into groups. While a few of the nearer stand forth by themselves, all of the nearest to our hearts are absolutely individualized, so that our judgments of them are made on the basis of our own motives and what we of ourselves discern. We may use categoric terms concerning our lovers, spouses, or children, but they have no real meaning; these persons are to us purely individual, all trace of the inclusive category has disappeared; they are, in the full sense of the word, our neighbors, being so near that when we look upon them we see nothing else, not even ourselves.

Summing up these considerations concerning human contact, it may be said that the world works by a system of individualities rising in scale as we advance from the inorganic through the organic series until we find the summit in man. The condition of all these individuals is that of isolation; each is necessarily parted from all the others in the realm, each receiving influences, and, in turn, sending forth its peculiar tide of influences to those of its own and other kinds. This isolation in the case of man is singularly great for the reason that he is the only creature we know in the realm who is so far endowed with consciousness that he can appreciate his position and know the measure of his solitude. In the case of all individuals the discernible is only a small part of what exists. In man the measure of this presentation is, even to himself, very small, and that which he can readily make evident to his neighbor is an exceedingly limited part of the real whole. Yet it is on this slender basis that we must rest our relations with the fellow man if we are to found them upon knowledge. The imperfection of this method of ascertaining the fellow-man is well shown by the trifling contents of the category discriminations we apply to him. While, as has been suggested, much can be done by those who have gained in knowledge of our kind by importing understandings into our relations with men, the only effective way to the betterment of those relations is through the sympathies.

What can be done by knowledge in helping us to a comprehension of the fellow-man is at best merely explanatory of his place in the phenomenal world; of itself it has only scientific value. The advantage of the sympathetic way of approach is that in this method the neighbor is accounted for on the supposition that he is ourself in another form, so we feel for and with him on the instinctive hypothesis that he is essentially ourself. There can be no question that this method of looking upon other individualities is likely to lead to many errors. We see examples of these blunders in all the many grades of the personifying process, from the savage's worship of a tree or stone to the civilized man's conception of a human-like god. We see them also in the attribution to the lower animals of thoughts and feelings which are necessarily limited to our own kind, but in the case of man the conception of identity gives a minimum of error and a maximum of truth. It, indeed, gives a truer result than could possibly be attained by any scientific inquiries that we could make, or could conceive of being effectively made, and this for the following reasons.