From Organization to Society: Virginia in the Seventeenth Century

Virginia in the early seventeenth century may be taken as an example of a social system established in accordance with the model of a commercial organization, in which the behavior of the members was expected to be entirely determinded by their positions within the organization. The concessions that were of fered to iduce them to accept positions within the organization so multiplied the number of statuses they held as to alter decisively their behavior and to transform Virginia from a formal organization into a society. The analysis of the early history of Virginia is an illustration of the way in which historical knowledge may ve used to suggest problems of interest to sociological theory.