ABSTRACT
Man, said Aristotle, is a political animal. He lives in society and is thereby able to survive, to talk, and to develop a culture. This is no doubt true, but the initial difficulty in theorizing about society is to be clear what we are talking about. If an ornithologist says that woodpeckers live in trees there is little to puzzle us. For trees and birds are easily picked out; they have definite contours; they move about; they have parts which mutually influence one another so as to make them both recognizable wholes. But when a social theorist tells us that men live in society, the matter is more puzzling. We are not inclined to dispute what he says, but it is not quite clear what he is saying. For though men are recognizable wholes like birds, societies are not wholes of the same order at all. The way in which a man lives in a society is quite different from the way in which a woodpecker lives in a tree. For membership of a society does not necessarily imply residence in some larger spatial whole. What then does it imply?
