1800s: Martineau · Tocqueville · Marx · Spencer · Le Bon · Ward · Pareto · Tönnies · Veblen · Simmel · Durkheim · Addams · Mead · Weber · Du Bois · Mannheim · Elias In sociology, nomos (plural: nomoi) is a habit or custom of social and political behavior that is socially constructed and historically specific.
[3] Nomos was an Ancient Greek term that was used for a broad range of societal or socio-political norms or laws in the city-states (poleis) of that time.
[4] This was the basis for the literary claims that Hellenes were different or morally superior to the "warlike" and "bloodthirsty" tribes of the Thracians, who were accused of intemperate drunkenness, immorality and uninhibited sexuality.
Berger writes of the "socially established nomos" being understood "as a shield against terror;" in other words, "the most important function of society is nomization.
The structure of the world created by human and social activity is treated not as contingent, but as self-evident:[9]: 24–5 Whenever the socially established nomos attains the quality of being taken for granted, there occurs a merging of its meanings with what are considered to be the fundamental meanings inherent in the universe.Berger sees this happening in all societies; while in "archaic societies" the nomos is expressed in religious terms, "in contemporary society, this archaic cosmization of the social world is likely to take the form of 'scientific' propositions about the nature of men rather than the nature of the universe.
[10] He argues that this is due to the fact that our moral sense is composed of the narratives from which we draw conclusions, and by which we locate ourselves in relation to other people.
From this, he argues that societies that have great legal systems rest on more than formal and technical virtuosity, but in the richness of their understanding of the normative universe.