The 11 Prequisites - Thinking Like A Village

Pillars of Existence and Persistence

The 11 prerequisites of a functioning society form a simple anthropological framework for describing what any human community needs in order to survive, stay coherent, and adapt over time. At its heart, it asks how a society sustains its environment. population, coordinate shared meaning and decision-making, and manage conflict and inequality without collapse. Each prerequisite names one core function, from basic ecological survival to roles, and rules that we share, reproduce, and regulate in order to exist in a society.

“The life history of the individual is first and foremost an accommodation to the patterns and standards traditionally handed down in his community. From the moment of his birth the customs into which he is born shape his experience and behavior.” — Ruth Benedict

Where did it emerge

The 11 prerequisites framework TLAV employs comes from along lineage of functional and systems thinking in sociology and anthropology. Scholars have tried to describe the basic conditions societies must meet in order to survive and remain coherent. The exact list of these foundational prerequisites may vary but they all reflect a similar building block of social order and survival.

Classic functionalist foundations

Émile Durkheim is a foundational figure, arguing that societies require social solidarity, shared norms, and effective social regulation to avoid anomie and breakdown, which anticipates later “functional prerequisite” language.
Bronisław Malinowski developed anthropological functionalism, proposing that cultural institutions exist to meet biological, psychological, and social needs, so that any analysis of kinship, religion, or law asks what function it performs for group survival.
Radcliffe-Brown extended this to “structural functionalism,” emphasizing how persistent social structures (like kinship systems or legal norms) contribute to the maintenance of the social whole.

Explicit “functional prerequisites” theorists

Talcott Parsons formulated the AGIL schema (Adaptation, Goal attainment, Integration, Latency/Pattern maintenance) as four core functional needs any social system must satisfy to persist.
Parsons and collaborators elaborated these ideas in The Social System and later work, explicitly using the language of “functional prerequisites.”
Subsequent sociologists in the Parsonian tradition and textbook writers broadened this into longer lists, adding items such as social control, socialization, division of labour, procreation, coordination, cooperation, and meaningful goals as key prerequisites of any viable society.
Mid‑20th‑century comparative social scientists (for example, those writing on “The Functional Prerequisites of a Society” in American sociology journals) developed general action-system frameworks that specify categories like shared communication, cognitive orientation, socialization, affective integration, and control of disruptive behavior.
Later systems thinkers and social theorists have continued to refine these ideas, combining functional prerequisites with concepts such as the social determinants of health, resource distribution, and governance, reinforcing the idea that societies must simultaneously meet ecological, economic, cultural, and regulatory conditions to function.

How TLAV’s framework fits in

TLAV’s “11 prerequisites of a functioning society” can be seen as a contemporary, anthropologically informed synthesis of this lineage, translating functionalist and systems insights into accessible language for educating about and evaluating the current day socio-cultural landscape.

11 Prerequisites

Sustainable environment
A functioning society maintains a stable, reciprocal relationship with its ecological surroundings so that energy, food, water, and materials can meet human needs without destroying the natural systems that support them.
Recruitment for reproduction
A functioning society has social and familial arrangements that support biological reproduction and the raising of new generations, ensuring both physical survival and the transmission of cultural life.
Social roles: assignment and differentiation
A functioning society divides responsibilities, and assigns and differentiates roles so that people know who does what. Various statuses and occupations knit together into a workable social structure.
Shared system of communication
A functioning society sustains common ways of communicating—through language, symbols, and other media—that allow meanings, instructions, stories, and emotions to be reliably shared and understood.
Shared affective expression
A functioning society provides shared ways of expressing and managing emotions so that feelings can be communicated, coordinated, and integrated into relationships rather than fragmenting the group.
Shared cognitive orientation
A functioning society cultivates common mental frameworks—shared assumptions, categories, and models of the world—that help members interpret events, solve problems together, and act in coordinated ways.
Defined goals
A functioning society articulates culturally defined goals—its ideas of success, value, and the “good life”—that give direction to collective projects and individual efforts.
Regulation of means to goals
A functioning society regulates how goals may be pursued, using norms, institutions, power structures, and sanctions to channel action toward accepted paths and prevent destructive methods.
System of socialization
A functioning society maintains ongoing processes through which people learn and internalize its norms, values, skills, and identities, enabling them to participate competently in social life.
Redistribution of resources
A functioning society has mechanisms for pooling and reallocating resources—through households, leaders, institutions, or states—to maintain social cohesion, manage risk, and moderate extremes of inequality.
Control of disruptive elements
A functioning society develops both formal and informal ways of responding to harmful or destabilizing behavior, balancing order and autonomy while continually renegotiating what counts as justice.

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