The name is absent

25

3.13 Characteristics of group identity

Sorokin (1947:155) stresses the importance for the social
construction of the group, and the maintenance of its identity
of ’causal - meaningful bonds’. It is these bonds, and the
exercise of autonomy, which differentiate a group from a congerie
or agglomeration. Sorokin analyses the concept of causal-meaningful
bonds in the following way:

(i)   Causal-meaningful bonds

Having no causal ties between them, the members of
incidental congeries have no inner force controlling
their functions and giving them a margin of freedom
from all external forces.

The causal-meaningful system has its own self-directing
force that keeps its unified integrity in different
conditions, that controls its functions, that determines
(from within) the direction and the character of its
change, and gives to it a margin of autonomy from all
external forces that try to disrupt its unity, influence
its functions and condition its change .

A causal-meaningful system presupposes the exercise of
autonomy. It is only in those circumstances that a group can
maintain identity and integrity in the face of external forces.
Sorokin analyses autonomy in the following way.:

(ii) Autonomy

•An organism as a biological system from the moment of
its emergence ... controls its own destiny in the most
decisive way. It has a considerable margin of autonomy
from all forces external to it.

This is also true of an organised socio-cultural group.
From the moment of its emergence in accordance with its
main functions whether they be political, scientific,
economic, religious, criminal ... it always has a margin
of autonomy from external forces. In widely different
milieus, conditions and situations, it keeps its own
identity and integrity. In all these aspects it is an
immanent self-regulating and self-determining system ... inner
cohesion, preservation of its integrity, self-determination
of its function and change, margin of autonomy is due to
the fact that the organized group is a causal-functional
and meaningful unity, in contrast to a mere spatial
conglomeration of things dumped together.

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