The term mass society refers to the form of social structuring observed in industrial societies that are already at a late stage in the modernization process.
Mass society concept
Being a term more frequently used in academia, we speak of “ mass society ” when referring to a specific and quite recent form of social organization. These are societies in which the vast majority of the population is inserted in a large-scale production and consumption process of consumer goods and services, in addition to being in accordance with a certain model of generalized behavior.
The mass society emerged at a late stage in the modernization process. The economic development resulting from the rapid industrialization process focused on the production of mass consumer goods, as well as the rapid growth of the service sector, was one of the motivating forces for this type of organization. The urbanization process and the concentration of the population in large cities, making them the center of the social universe, impacted the shape of the relationships between subject, social world and State institutions.
The bureaucratization of the social environment and the formalization of the relations between individual and institutional bodies, prevailing formal rationality as a tool for mediating this bond, weakened the forms of individual actions, since the subject is always subjected to the judgment of a larger and well-founded entity in the aggregate of forces of the social group.
Finally, the advent of the mass media made possible the homogenization of language, customs, interactions and contexts, neutralizing the difference that distance and the lack of generic and generalizing references made appear in the small communities that integrate the social body.
The large populations of the metropolises are constituted as mass societies
The subject of the mass society
In a more succinct way, the mass society is the culmination of a long path of changes covered by the forms of social structuring during the modernization of the western world, which presupposes a progressive increase in the political, social and cultural engagement of the great masses populations.
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In this context, the individual also has his predispositions of behavior and positioning in relation to his living in this reality, factors influenced by the dynamics that are established.
The Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset used the concept of the “ mass man ” to describe the subject in a mass society. For the philosopher, the mass man is the expression of conformity with external determinations. The individual and his individuality leave the scene and give way to the subject who seeks to fit into the generic determinations of the mass social world. The “mass man”, as Ortega says, feels comfortable when he looks like everyone else, in conformity with the mass.
Another author who was also interested in the subject in the mass society was the French social theorist Michel Foucault, who, in his work “ Vigiar e puniz ”, sought to shed light on the forms of control over the subject verified in the different disciplinary institutions of a society . Among schools, prisons, hospitals and barracks, Foucault developed the notion of punitive control as a way of ensuring compliance with the conventions stipulated by the social environment in which the subject lives.
The idea of the Panopticon is central to Foucault’s theory. In short, it refers to the notion of a process of building the internalization of the surveillance of one’s own behavior. This internalization happens through the disciplinary process through which each subject goes through different institutions and at different times in his life. The idea is that the subject becomes vigilant of his own actions, even if he is not under the watchful eye of a policeman or a teacher, for example. In this sense, the individual must conform and become useful to the social context, be submissive and passive in their relationship with the group in which they live.
