Sociology

Definition
Oxford: the Scientific study of the nature and development of society and social
behaviour

Cambridge: the study of the relationships between people living in groups,

especially in industrial societies

Britannica: Sociology, a social science that studies human societies, their

interactions, and the processes that preserve and change them. It does this by
examining the dynamics of constituent parts of societies such as institutions,
communities, populations, and gender, racial, or age groups. Sociology also
studies social status or stratification, social movements, and social change, as well
as societal disorder in the form of crime, deviance, and revolution.
Society
● humanly created organization or system of interrelationships that connects
individuals in a common culture.
● All the products of human interaction, the experience of living with others
around us. Humans create their interactions, and once created the products
of those interactions have the ability or power to act back upon humans to
determine or constrain action.
● Often, we experience society (humanly created organization) as something
apart from the individuals and interactions that create it.
Product of Human Interactions: Components of
Society
● Culture
● Social Organization
● Social Structure
● Agency
● Identity
● Inequality

Source:
https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/anthropology/21a-245j-power-interpersonal-organizational-and-global-dimensions-fall-2005/study-mat
erials/basic_conc.pdf
Culture
● sets of traditions, rules, symbols that shape and are enacted as feelings,
thoughts, and behaviors of groups of people.
● Referring primarily to learned behavior as distinct from that which is given by
nature, or biology, culture has been used to designate everything that is
humanly produced (habits, beliefs, arts, and artifacts) and passed from one
generation to another.
● In this formulation, culture is distinguished from nature, and distinguishes one
society from another.
Language, Values & Norms
● LANGUAGE: a system of verbal symbols through which humans
communicate ideas, feelings, experiences. Through language these can be
accumulated and transmitted across generations. Language is not only a tool,
or a means of expression, but it also structures and shapes our experiences
of the world and what we see around us.
● VALUES: preferences - ideas people share about what is good, bad,
desirable, undesirable. These are usually very general, abstract, cut across
variations in situations.
● NORMS: concepts and behaviors that constitute the normal. Behavioral rules
or standards for social interaction. These often derive from values but also
contradict values; sometimes derives from statistical norms but often not.
Serve as both guides and criticisms for individual behavior. Norms establish
expectations that shape interaction.
Social Organizations
the arrangement of the parts that constitute society, the organization of social positions and distribution of
people within those positions.

STATUS: socially defined niches, positions (student, professor, administrator).

ROLE: every status carries a cluster of expected behaviors, how a person in that status is expected to
think, feel, as well as expectations about how they should be treated by others. The cluster of expected
duties and behaviors that has become fixed in a consistent and reiterated pattern of conduct.

GROUP: two or more people regularly interacting on the basis of shared expectations of others’ behavior;
interrelated statuses and roles.

INSTITUTIONS: patterns of activity reproduced across time and space. Practices that are regularly and
continuously repeated. Institutions often concern basic living arrangements that human beings work out in
the interactions with one another and by means of which continuity is achieved across generations. The
basic building blocks of societies. Social institutions are like buildings that are at every moment constantly
being reconstructed by the very bricks that compose them.
Social Structure
Structure refers to the pattern within culture and organization through which social
action takes place; arrangements of roles, organizations, institutions, and cultural
symbols that are stable over time, often unnoticed, and a changing almost
invisibly.

Structure both enables and constrains what is possible in social life. If a building
were a society, the foundation, supporting columns, and beams would be the
structure which both constrains and enables the various kinds and arrangements
of spaces and rooms (roles, organizations, and institutions).

Schemata and resources (material and human) through which social action takes
place, becomes patterned, and institutionalized. Incorporates both culture and the
resources of social organization.
Agency
"the realized capacity of people to act upon their world and not only to know about
or give personal or intersubjective significance to it. .. the power of people to act
purposively and reflectively, in more or less complex relationships with one
another, to reiterate and remake the world in which they live, in circumstances
where they may consider different courses of action possible and desirable,
though not necessarily from the same point of view." Consider human beings as
producers, as instruments, and as products, to be the drivers, the vehicle and the
recipients of acts of others. (Inden, 1990:23)
Identity
combines the intimate or personal world with the collective space of cultural forms
and social relations. Imaginings, consciousness, reflections of self produced,
improvised from cultural materials and social transactions. caught between past,
present and future, constant negotiation. Rather than a unified, single, original or
genetic subjects, composite of many, often contradictory self-understandings and
performances, often not confined to the body but spread over the material and
social environment, few of which are durable.
Inequality
SOCIAL STRATIFICATION: the division of people socio-economically into layers or strata. When we talk
of social stratification, we draw attention into the unequal positions occupied by individuals in society. In
the larger traditional societies and in industrialized countries today there is stratification in terms of wealth,
property, and access to material goods and cultural products.

RACE: a human group that defines itself and/or is defined by other groups as different…by virtue of innate
and immutable physical characteristics. It is a group that is socially defined on the bases of physical
criteria.

ETHNICITY: cultural practices and outlooks of a given community of people that set them apart from
others. Members of ethnic groups see themselves as culturally distinct from other groups in a society, and
are seen by those others to be so in return. Many different characteristics may distinguish ethnic groups
from one another but the most usual are language, history or ancestry - real or imagined, religion, and
styles of dress of adornment. Ethnic differences are wholly learned.
Family Structure
● Family structure includes the people who are considered part of the family—present
members, as well as important figures from the past—and the quality of the relationships
among them. This information can help identify who should be included in an assessment,
who might be sources of support for older adults, and what relationships are flashpoints for
potential conflict. One way to document family structure is by constructing a genogram. A
genogram is a visual representation of a family's composition, structure, and relationships,
constructed with a set of standard symbols to depict the family (McGoldrick, Gerson, & Petry,
2008 is an excellent instructional resource). Although there is no ideal or suboptimal family
structure, a genogram can provide preliminary but valuable information about the important
personalities in the family and their relationships.
Family Structure
● Family structure can play a role in child development partly by affecting
family dynamics, such as how family members behave and interact. Family
structures can facilitate families in providing basic economic and resource
support and love, feelings of value and competence, companionship,
and shared values. Families can connect their children to the community and
teach children how to get along in the world and to cope with adversity.
Additionally, successful families communicate with each other, spend time
together, embrace a common spiritual/religious belief system, and deal with
crises adeptly.
Rural Life
● A Village is a small community with Agriculture as a fundamental profession.
Population density is lower hence less chaos.
● Rural citizens live far from technology and close to the nature for they believe
in its entirety.
● They acquire traditional knowledge from their ancestors and pour out their
trust in Herbal Healers. Social Solidarity or Unity is stronger than the
Urbanites.
● Here the population is more religious, superstitious and are easily influenced
in the matters of deities. Technological advancement is slower or poor.
Urban Life
● Rapid growth of technology and exchange of ideas mostly happen in Urban
areas.
● They have higher literacy rates, well-built schools and colleges with good
infrastructure. Urban life is competitive and challenging.
● To attain stabilized living, one has to prefer an urban area as there are wide
range of opportunities.
● Urban areas are where more people rise out of poverty when compared to
rural areas. Technical and technological advancement happens more rapidly
in the urban areas.
Differences
1. A settlement where the population is very high and has the features of a built
environment (an environment that provides basic facilities for human activity), is
known as urban. Rural is the geographical region located in the outer parts of the cities
or towns.
2. The life in urban areas is fast and complicated, whereas rural life is simple and relaxed.
3. The Urban settlement includes cities and towns. On the other hand, the rural settlement
includes villages and hamlets.
4. There is greater isolation from nature in urban areas, due to the existence of the built
environment. Conversely, rural areas are in direct contact with nature, as natural
elements influence them.
5. Urban people are engaged in non-agricultural work, i.e. trade, commerce or service
industry. In contrast, the primary occupation of rural people is agriculture and
animal husbandry.
Differences
6. Population wise, urban areas are densely populated, which is based on the urbanisation,
i.e. the higher the urbanisation, the higher is the population. On the contrary, the rural
population is sparse, which has an inverse relationship with agriculture.
7. Urban areas are developed in a planned and systematic way, according to the process of
urbanisation and industrialisation. Development in rural areas is seldom, based on the
availability of natural vegetation and fauna in the region.
8. When it comes to social mobilisation, urban people are highly intensive as they change
their occupation or residence frequently in search of better opportunities. However, in
rural areas occupational or territorial mobility of the people is relatively less intensive.
9. Division of labour and specialisation is always present in the urban settlement at the
time of job allotment. As opposed to rural areas, there is no division of labour.
TIME TO REVISIT
Social Communication
● You invited your friend over for dinner. Your child sees your friend reach
for some cookies and says, "Better not take those, or you'll get even
bigger." You can't believe your child could be so rude.

● You talk with a neighbor about his new car. He has trouble staying on
topic and starts talking about his favorite TV show. He doesn't look at you
when you talk and doesn't laugh at your jokes. He keeps talking, even
when you look at your watch and say, "Wow. It's getting late." You finally
leave, thinking about how hard it is to talk with him.
Social Communication
● When we have a conversation there is a lot more to it than just saying
words. We look each other in the eye, we take turns, we read facial
expressions and body language, we pay attention to what our
communication partner is paying attention to, and we stay on topic. We
can read a lot from a person’s tone of voice as well.

● Most children intuitively grasp the nuances of conversation. Kids with

SCD, however, may find it difficult to learn the basic rules of
conversation: how to start one, listen, phrase a question, stay on topic
and know when the chat is over.
Social Communication
● Both your child and your neighbor speak well. What they may have trouble with is social
communication, also called pragmatics. These are the rules that we follow when we
talk. There are rules about when and how you should talk to people. We use facial
expressions or gestures to share how we feel. We learn how to let someone know when
we change the topic. Knowing and using these rules makes it easier to communicate.

Communication is inherently social: It requires the ability to share — in an appropriate

manner — what you feel or want to say, and also to understand and respond to what others
are feeling or saying.
Social Communication
Social communication skills refer to all of the skills we need when using language
to communicate and engage in conversations with other. Social communication
encompasses the following skills:
● Using language for a range of functions, e.g. to provide information; to
question; to negotiate; to suggest; to clarify.
● Conversational skills, e.g. starting and finishing conversations; maintaining
a topic of conversation; taking turns in a conversation.
● Understanding shared and assumed knowledge, i.e. how much information
the listener needs to understand.
● Understanding and using non-verbal communication skills, e.g. eye
contact, facial expression, gesture, proximity and distance.
● Understanding implied meaning
Social Communication
Social communication skills refer to all of the skills we need when using language
to communicate and engage in conversations with other. Social communication
encompasses the following skills:
● Using language for a range of functions, e.g. to provide information; to
question; to negotiate; to suggest; to clarify.
● Conversational skills, e.g. starting and finishing conversations; maintaining
a topic of conversation; taking turns in a conversation.
● Understanding shared and assumed knowledge, i.e. how much information
the listener needs to understand.
● Understanding and using non-verbal communication skills, e.g. eye
contact, facial expression, gesture, proximity and distance.
● Understanding implied meaning