Social group

A community bound together by more or less strong bonds of profession, interests, work, religion, etc. Within the s.g. a system of roles and rules forms spontaneously, leaders emerge, and group discipline and ideology take shape. In the criminal community the group is united by joint participation in criminal acts and functions as an armed band, a group linked by mutual commitments and needs but also by common psychological factors such as fear, hatred, the desire for revenge, etc. In the religious world, groups in the form of ecclesiastical congregations and monastic orders can be distinguished. Throughout the world today there is manifest action by youth groups, women’s groups, neighborhood associations, etc. This demonstrates that the s.g. can be considered as a more stable and simpler form of self-organization, of manifesting the sentiment of solidarity, and of mutual support. The group is the primary and basic level of socialization of the personality in today’s atomized and dehumanized society. Sociologists distinguish different types of social groups: 1) large (tribe, class, nation); 2) small (family, neighborhood, community, groups of friends and other primary groups); 3) nominal (classroom, theater audience); 4) institutionalized (workers’ brigade, religious order, parliamentary faction, bankers association, army unit); and 5) referential (referred to the determination of the individual’s character and place in society and their system of values, using, for example, a survey of a particular group of workers. A poll reveals the characteristics of a profession or of a factory, without the need to consult all the workers of the trade or factory. All totalitarian and corporative systems turn the force of group psychology and discipline into absolutes, crushing individual intellect and intention. Thus, Italian and German fascism began their activities with the creation of small paramilitary groups of youths. The s.g. can play a positive as well as negative role. It can mobilize people, lift their spirits, humanize their consciousness, and give them energy (for example, democratic grassroots organizations, youth and feminist movements, humanist associations and clubs, etc.). In other cases, the group stifles the personality (crime syndicates, fascist, racist and fundamentalist movements). The problem consists of channeling these groups energy in a direction that favors the interests of the human being as a free and reasoning person, appealing to the highest human sentiments, instead of exploiting irrational and destructive behaviors.