The Elements of Social Action

Social distress has always been a feature of man's existence. War, pestilence, poverty, and oppression have been so characteristic of human history that one is tempted to a functionalist explanation that they somehow serve the needs of the human or the natural order. Yet this possibility can never quite be accepted, and one always finds some fraction of mankind engaged in organized collective efforts to banish--or at least mitigate-the amount of social distress.