Public Opinion and Social Control

At the end of the last chapter the objectivity of the various aspects of social structure with which we have been concerned was emphasised, but this objectivity is not the same as the objectivity of the physical world. It is true that the phenomenal world in which we live derives its meaningfulness from something more than the mere impression the physical world makes upon our senses, as was soon discovered by the advertiser who prepared a poster depicting a native on a bicycle oeing chased by a leopard, intending to show that the bicycle would help him to get away; the natives interpreted the poster to mean that if you rode a bicycle you were bound to be chased by a leopard. This is no place to discuss the philosophical problem of the relative status of physical phenomena, and such constructs as a ‘nation’, ‘marriage’, or ‘the market’; but it is quite clear that the latter depend for their existence on a complicated system of beliefs, acceptances, expectations and habits. Society, therefore, means not only the bare skeletal structure, aspects of which we have attempted to describe, but something else which we may call a ‘climate of opinion’.