The Social Order
The Reith Lectures
BBC
4.2 • 770 Ratings
🗓️ 15 February 1978
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Sociologist A H Halsey is Professor of Social and Administrative studies at the University of Oxford. In his final lecture from his series 'Change in British Society', Halsey investigates the problem of fraternity in society. He argues that there are native traditions in social and political values which join people together. Yet, can social order in the shape of class, status and party affect these feelings of belonging?
In this lecture entitled 'The Social Order', Professor Halsey explains how societies are made through cohesion in group interests, but Societies are also broken by arguments and competition. He analyses how the authoritative power of the state presides over its society.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is a podcast from the archives of the BBC Reith Lectures. |
| 0:04.2 | This lecture in the series Change in British Society, given by A.H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. was originally broadcast in 1978. |
| 0:13.0 | It is perfectly possible that the United Kingdom of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will shortly disintegrate. |
| 0:21.9 | Even to say this in 1978 may be thought sacrilegious, and to have said it ten years ago |
| 0:28.0 | would have been to have been dismissed as absurd. |
| 0:31.3 | But I must immediately point out that if for a moment we look beyond our native pieties |
| 0:36.7 | and take instead the wider perspective of contemporary world history, |
| 0:41.5 | the prospect of our approaching insular disestablishment is rather commonplace. |
| 0:47.0 | Integration between nations and ethnic disintegration within them |
| 0:50.9 | is the common pattern of current economic and political development all over the world. |
| 0:56.9 | We find ourselves drawn simultaneously into the European economic community |
| 1:01.5 | and into Scottish and Welsh separatism. |
| 1:05.1 | The very different political and economic circumstances of the Russian Empire, of China and of Africa, reveal on a larger scale |
| 1:13.4 | in each case the same story. Enlarging economic organization, with modernity as its aim, |
| 1:20.3 | combines with sharp internal conflicts between Russian and non-Russian within the USSR, |
| 1:26.2 | Han and non-Han minorities in China, and tribal groups in |
| 1:29.8 | Africa. Our own experience is not unique, nor is conflict, despite our cultural bias against |
| 1:36.6 | recognising it in any way odd. As I pointed out in my first lecture, the coexistence of interest |
| 1:43.7 | and scarcity make it more difficult |
| 1:46.0 | to explain why societies hang together rather than why they break up. |
| 1:51.8 | All the more, then, is it a puzzle that at least since Colludden in 1746, and despite historical |
| 1:59.0 | rumours about 1688, 1848 and 1926, and notwithstanding the Southern Irish |
... |
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