Referring to Holman and Harmon, social setting can refer to general environment of the character for example religious, mental, moral,
social, emotional conditions, through which the people in the story move. It also might reveal the occupations and daily manner of the living of the
character 1986: 465. In this novel, it is also told about rural and urban community. Both
of them are setting of the story. Stephen Kumalo, as a main character, lived in rural area in Ndotsheni, Natal. He started his family life from this
rural community. Another setting of place was the city of Johannesburg, where some members of Kumalo’s family went to. They went and got
some problems there. So the social life and situation in city or urban community is definitely different from social life in rural community. In
Stearns’ Encyclopedia of Social History, it is stated that cities create distinctive societies 2006: 176.
In book of Human Society, it is said that In modern society one of the great distinctions is that between rural
and urban, between country and city. It is a distinction that has little to do with the primitive communities just discussed because
the village or hamlet in our society, no matter how small, is still subjected to countless urban influences. Whereas the strictly
primitive society is a completely rural society, free from any urban influence, the civilized society is always partially urbanized. The
rural-urban differential is therefore a gradient albeit an important one, with the rural end of the scale never even approaching
absolute rurality Davis, 1948: 315.
4. Theories of Society and Class
There are some definitions of society. Society, according to
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Fairchild in Dictionary of Sociology, is a group of human beings cooperating in the pursuit of several of their major interests, invariably
including self-maintenance and self-perpetuation. The concept of society includes continuity, complex associational relationships, and a
composition including representatives of fundamental human types, specifically men, women, and children 1970: 300.
It is also stated in the same book that society is a functioning group, so much so as to be frequently defined in terms of relationships or
processes. While a functional society is a group of people associated together, within and partly supported by, a more extensive society, for the
purpose of carrying on, facilitating or enjoying a particular social function. Examples of such functional groups: literary, fraternal, religious, research,
athletic, economic, or political societies 1970: 300. Society and culture always have relationship in many aspects of
life. Human life cannot be separated from both of them. In Encyclopedia of Race and Ethnic Studies, Ellis Cashmore states if society is taken to be
an organized set of individuals with a given way of life, culture is the way of life. Society is taken to be an aggregate of social relations, then culture
is the content of those relations. Society emphasizes the human component, the aggregate of people and the relations between them.
Culture emphasizes the component of accumulated resources, immaterial as well as material 2004: 98. Arlene and Jerome Skolnick, in Family in
Transition, state that culture is also a process or a strategy of behaviors
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involving communications, beliefs, and values 1992: 472. In Daniel Bell’s The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism, it is
stated that culture, for a society, a group, or a person, is a continual process of sustaining an identity through the coherence gained by a
consistent aesthetic point of view, a moral conception of self, and a style of life which exhibits those conceptions in the objects that adorn one’s
home and oneself and in the taste which expresses those points of view. Culture is thus the realm of sensibility, of emotion and moral temper, and
of the intelligence, which seeks to order these feelings 1976: 36. Davis, in Human Society, writes that if there is any single factor
explaining man’s uniqueness, it is this: He, and he alone, has culture. From this all other differences flow. His intelligence, for example, is
multiplied a thousandfold by the possession of culture. His speech, important as it may be, is merely a part of culture. His social life is
governed by culture. Culture is therefore a profound possession that ramifies throughout human life and accounts for all of man’s truly unique
qualities. It adds an extra dimension to existence, and makes human what would otherwise by merely animal 1948: 3.
Thomas Sowell, in his book of Race and Culture, wrote that: Racial, ethnic, and cultural differences among peoples play a major
role in the events of our times, in countries around the world, and have played a major role in the long history of the human race.
Both intergroup socioeconomic differences within a given country and larger differences on a world stage between nations or whole
civilizations reflect large cultural differences that have pervaded history. The history of cultural differences among peoples enables
us to understand not only how particular peoples differ but also
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how cultural patterns in general affect the economic and social advancement of the human race 1994: 1.
Elizabeth Langland, in her book of Society in the Novel, wrote if society is a concept and construct in art, it is also a concept and construct
in life. Society in novels does not depend on points of absolute fidelity to an outside world in details of costume, setting, and locality because a
novel’s society does not aim at a faithful mirror of any concrete, existent thing 1984: 5.
Class and community are two words that have a relationship each other. There can be various kinds of class in a community or society in a
larger scale. In Reinhard Bendix and Seymour Lipset’s Class, Status, and Power, the term “class” refers to any group of people that is found in the
same class situation 1966: 21. Class is also related to the term “race”. Racial stratification can determine the class difference. Class difference
tends to be in an area in which there is a plurality of people. According to Encyclopedia of World Cultures by John Middleton
and Amal Rassam, The peoples of Africa may be classified according to several
criteria, probably the oldest of which is race. Africa is occupied by members of the Negroid race, the most numerous; then by
members of the Caucasoid race, mainly in northern and southern Africa; the Mongoloid race in Madagascar; and by the so-called
Bushmanoid and Pygmoid races or subraces. Previous work in this field has shown the difficulties and contradictions that result from
using the concept of “race,” and it is clear that this criterion does not contribute to an understanding of the cultures and identities of
African societies 1995: xxiii.
In International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences vol. 13, David
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L. Sills states that “Social races” are composed of socially defined and significant groups; the study of social race thus is a fundamental aspect of
the study of social structure, especially in stratified state societies 1968: 263. Haviland’s Cultural Anthropology states that stratification is the
division of society into two or more classes of people that do not share equally in basic resources, influence, or prestige 1993: 297.
There are a lot of theories which are related to the class. Some sociologists propose their theory about social class in the society. Social
theory of Karl Marx is one of theories for the class difference. In Andrew Edgar and Peter Sedgwick’s Cultural Theory the Key Concepts, it is stated
that according to Marxism theory, societies are understood as being structured according to the exploitation of subordinate classes by a
dominant class 2002: 221. Marxists traditionally view society in terms of the history of economic and institutional relationships the economic base-
structure and ideological superstructure which have exerted a determinant effect on class interests and differences, and would likewise oppose the
liberal conception Edgar and Sedgwick, 2002: 368. Based on the Encyclopedia of Race and Ethnic Studies by Ellis Cashmore, Marxist
discusses of the interrelationship of class relations and forms of social differentiation based on racial and ethnic categories 2004: 259.
Social mobility also happens in the story, especially in black people life and experiences. Social mobility refers to the movement of
individuals between hierarchical social groups, most typically between
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classes. Study of social mobility is an important complement to studies of social stratification, because a hierarchical society may not be considered
undesirable if there is free movement between the different levels of the hierarchy Edgar and Sedgwick, 2002: 365.
Another theory is Max Weber’s theory of class. In the book of Class, Status, and Power by Bendix and Lipset, there is a statement about
classes in a community or in a society. In our terminology, “classes” are not communities; they merely
represent possible, and frequent, bases for a communal action. We may speak of a “class” when 1 a number of people have in
common a specific causal component of their life chances, in so far as 2 this component is represented exclusively by economic
interests in the possession of goods and opportunities for income, and 3 is represented under the conditions of the commodity or
labor markets 1966:21.
All communities are arranged in a manner that goods, tangible and intangible, symbolic and material are distributed. Such a distribution is
always unequal and necessarily involves power. Classes, status groups and parties are phenomena of the distribution of power within a
community. Status groups makes up the social order, classes the economic order, and parties the legalpolitical order. Each order affects
and is affected by the other http:ssr1.uchicago.eduPRELIMSTheoryweber.html.
Stratification and inequality become an essential part in the novel of Cry, the Beloved Country. In many aspects of social life, there are some
kinds of stratification and inequality. Stearns, in Encyclopedia of Social History, states inequality consists of the uneven distribution of attributes
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among a set of social units: individuals, categories, groups, regions, or something else 2006: 943.
5. Relationship between Society, Culture, and History with a Family
