A Multidisciplinary Dialogue on Societies: Concluding Thoughts

To restate in a few words, the goal of the multidisciplinary work group was to develop a concept of broad utility to foster cross-disciplinary dialogue, “conforming to a commonplace perception of societies that gives primacy in humans to the passport-holding, national anthem-singing, territorial groups of our day over the varied institutions that compose or connect them,” as I put it in Moffett (2025a:2). My proposed criteria of membership, durability, and territoriality (Moffett 2025a,b) were intended to get our discussions going. The conversations proved invaluable even if no single view of a “society” satisfied everyone, as might have been anticipated from the subject’s breadth and our diverse backgrounds. Here I will recapitulate and briefly expand on the remarkably wide-ranging insights and concerns that the participants express in their essays.