Custom-made groups and their functions
In general, custom-made groups work by people pooling both their resources and their social relationships, and they manage this because the members gain from it (in either direct resources or from resources stemming from the pooled social relationships) or avoid group shaming and ostracism. Groups share their social relationship activities and their resources. These are broad statements but pretty useless without real contextual observations from life, since different contexts shape different behaviours–as we will see for social media!
Key social properties for group shaping include the diverse ways that groups are managed, from strong and bullying leaders to committee attempts at equality. Groups can split and re-form. Most groups are in a position to have more face-to-face interactions than do societies, although this often consists of the group leaders talking to the group and not equal participation of all members (hence the prevalence of speeches in groups but not in societies or face-to-face interactions). Groups shun members who also share their resources and social relationships with other groups. And famously, groups often put down other groups (via shared social relationship discourses) to strengthen their own group and resources.
The analyses of groups or communities by social anthropologists are very different to those of common forms of western groups or organizational groups (sociology and social psychology). Most social anthropology has done research in specific contexts of isolated groups of kin living in more or less self-sufficient economies, whereas sociology and social psychology have done research with strangers in groups within modern societies in a capitalist economy (obviously a very rough distinction). But in many ways, societies are just large groups, and isolated and self-sufficient communities are just small societies. The social properties of how they work to shape the behaviour of individuals, and the overlap sometimes, are important, not the distinction itself.
Fundamentally, societies do not like custom-made groups. A group can form to evade or change the rules and power of the larger society, which members could not do alone (Bentley, 1908). As examples, there are religious communities in western capitalist countries which manage to avoid paying societal taxes because they stick together as a group and have societal influence with their pooled resources and social relationships (network connections and political influence). Anarchical groups try to evade societal rules of all sorts. Lobby groups work for large corporations to change societal rules in their favour. The social properties of how groups shape their members’ behaviour work in similar ways but with a lot of diversity dependent up the many contexts of life. Only observation can help us here, not categorizations or theories.
However, most real groups end up only talking about (complaining) about society. They pool their resources and social relationships but end up only talking or discussing the way they think things change in society, rather than by acting. This is because their pool of resources is usually way less than that of society, so their real power is less.
Social media and the social properties of managing groups
More recently, social media groups have been formed to change or evade societal shaping and these have interesting properties because they form and run like a group but they can potentially be the size of a small society. You can make outrageous comments on social media, or show jokes or pictures not approved of in society. However, despite their size, social media groups mostly end up just arguing, discussing or joking about how to evade or change societal rules. The pool of social relationships means that comments and memes can be made and distributed easily, but nothing else happens.
What is interesting is that this seems to happen for a different reason than why most groups fail to act (because they have fewer resources combined than does society). Almost all social media groups, even when they have millions of members, only pool their social relationships and not their resources, so they do not have the power of resource exchanges to actually change anything more real.
If there is any pooling of resources on social media, it is only a one-way ‘reciprocity’ in which those controlling the social network get some resources from members (so-called influencers) but they only reciprocate with social relationship exchanges, not with anything more concrete in resources to their followers. They can change your behaviour with your real social relationships but not do anything more concrete that needs action or money.
This social property is also why we feel ‘safer’ talking and posting rebel things in social media groups, because there are no real threatening resources exchanges, and this includes punishments or removal of your own real resources at home which remain safe (except for hacking). The real power or force of using resource exchanges to get action are not apparent in social media groups, and nothing usually impinges on your day-to-day life events, except you have more to talk about in your day-to-day social interactions about the social media comments and jokes.
Social media is therefore an interesting development in human history. Pooling social relationships en masse but not resources (except sometimes to the ‘leader’), means that members can feel powerful because social relationship exchanges (comments, likes and joking) have a huge coverage, or seem to, but actually changing the world using social media is unlikely to ever develop into real action. But remember that real idiosyncratic life contexts need to be observed, and not assumed by theory or categories.
These points can be seen in the Capitol Riot of January 6th, 2021, when the talk on social media got people to turn up mostly independently and begin acting violently, but there was no resource support from those same social media sites nor later follow-up defence for those people involved. It was all just wild talk spinning around pooled social media relationships and no concurrent group provision of pooled resources. A good case of social media groups only pooling their social relationships and not their resources.
More importantly here, this this needs to be remembered by those social issue groups trying to change bad societal policies that hurt people, whether changing the ‘mental health’ system, doing environmental action, or trying for political change. That the use of social media alone is going to be very limited because social relationship activities are pooled but not resources.
Bentley, A. F. (1908). The process of government: A study of social pressures. Bloomington, Indiana: Principia Press.
Bentley, A. F. (1920/1969). Makers, users, and masters. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.
Guerin, B. (2024). The four forces that shape human behavior: A more exhaustive framework for the analysis and change of human behavior. Paper under review, draft available on ResearchGate.
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