ABSTRACT
‘Society’ in the Roman Empire is a complex topic. It is complex because studying societies is difficult. Sociologists of contemporary societies often disagree about fundamental aspects of the society they are studying but even if there is agreement about the facts of a particular social system, there is often disagreement about the methodologies that one should use to understand that society. The organisation of society relates closely to issues of economic structure (the material aspects of society) and issues of ideology (the intellectual or cultural aspects of society). There has long been debate as to the relationship between material and intellectual aspects of social systems and, in particular, whether the economic is determined by the intellectual or the intellectual determined by the economic. Further, the very concept of ‘society’ faces challenges. Our modern societies, with all that binds us together (economic structures, powerful and interventionist states, educational systems, mass media), show considerable diversity and perhaps over the last two decades most Western societies have changed so as to be more diverse and more inclusive, worrying less about difference, cultural, religious, sexual, racial, ethnic, or intellectual. But whereas three decades ago, it was easy to talk about societies identical with nation states (British society; French society; American society), it now seems less easy to define the national character of societies and one may wonder in a world in which people move so much and in which the speed and scale of global communication is so overwhelming, whether our societies bear little relationship to the spatial boundaries of nations. The globalisation of our culture makes defining society much more difficult.
