Pluralism and Social Organization

1
Pluralism and Social Organization

• Pluralism is the belief that groups which are
  distinctly unique should have that
  distinctiveness recognized and protected
• Many social organizations have been established
  within Canadian society to deal with the
  universal problems of ordered social life. In
  broad terms, Canadian society has several major
  cultural roots European, Indigenous, and Asian.
  All of these cultures have different fundamental
  assumptions about relationships between people
  and with nature.

2

• Some areas within society where there are
  strongly held disagreements are
• Every society has determined a set of mores or
  traditional rules, ways, or manners which define
  the rights, responsibilities, and the
  interrelationships of each gender.
• Organizations establish a system of persons or
  things ranked one above the other.
• Usually disagreements tend to be on the issues of
  gender equity, cultural equity, and/or physical
  equity

3
Social Contract

• A social contract is an agreement between the
  rulers and the ruled which defines the rights and
  duties of each explicitly and implicitly
• In the reality of daily living, a tension exists
  between the needs and wants of individuals or
  groups of individuals, and the needs and wants of
  the larger society

4

• All social organizations must resolve this
  tension in some way
• They do this by establishing either a written or
  unwritten social contract which allocates the
  rights and duties of all members of the
  organization
• This is done both explicitly and implicitly
• Society is a social organization and it too has
  to make decisions about how best to reconcile the
  conflicting interests within itself

5

• All social organizations must establish some
  mechanism by which the power to make decisions is
  allocated in some ways to the members of the
  organization
• Power is the ability to make and carry out
  decisions
• Power also is the control of resources, numbers
  organization, information, capital, etc.
• Power maybe expressed through the use of force
  reliance of authority and through the use of
  influence.