Sociological aspects of secrecy

Simmel[2] defines the secret society as an interactional unit characterized in its total by the fact that reciprocal relations among its members are governed by the protective function of secrecy.

This central feature is established on a dual contingency: Georg Simmel came up with some unifying threads that he summed up and called the "Propositions".

Some scholars working in sociology have attempted to rehabilitate the secret: to question the moral distaste it has accumulated in the current era of transparency in order to think through its more creative, productive or politically resistant possibilities.

This idea was integrated by saying that Censorship of communication in the modern sense is associated with large, complex urban societies with a degree of centralized control and technical means of effectively reaching a mass audience.

[6] It involves a determination of what can, and can not (or in the case of non-governmental efforts should and should not) be expressed in light of given political, religious, cultural, and artistic standards.