Terms, Concepts and Their Use in Sociology

Written and reviewed by Subhra Gupta, Humanities faculty at UniDrill (M.A. Sociology, University of Delhi · 7 years teaching Humanities). Based on NCERT Sociology Class XI (Introducing Sociology), Chapter 2.

You live in a family, so you know everything about families. Do you?

Nuclear physics needs its own words because ordinary speech has none for it. Sociology is the opposite case, and that is why it needs its terms even more. We use words like "status", "role", "group" and "control" every day. We are so used to families, schools and neighbourhoods that we cannot see them clearly. A precise vocabulary is what lets us step back and look.

Treat each concept as a key that opens a lock. It is an entry point, not the final answer. If the key is bent or does not fit, you modify it. Sociology both uses and constantly questions its concepts. And many concepts were created by thinkers trying to understand the shift from small, face to face, traditional societies to large, formal, modern ones. That is why so many of them come in pairs: primary and secondary, community and association.

Two ways of looking at society

Before the terms, know the two big debates behind them.

A second divide is one of scale. Microsociology studies everyday face to face behaviour in individuals and small groups. Macrosociology studies large systems such as the political or economic order, or class, caste, market and state. Status and role begin with the individual. Social control and stratification begin with the larger context in which individuals are already placed. Karl Marx made class and conflict his key concepts, while Emile Durkheim made social solidarity and collective conscience his.

Social groups: when does a crowd become a "we"?

Not every gathering is a group. People waiting at a railway station, passengers at an airport or the audience in a cinema are an aggregate: they are in the same place at the same time but share no definite connection. Aggregates are also called quasi groups. A quasi group lacks structure, and its members may be unaware of being a group. Social classes, status groups, age and gender groups and crowds are examples.

The key idea is that a quasi group can become a social group. People of a caste or class may begin with no "we" feeling or organisation, yet over time caste and class have produced political parties. The anti colonial struggle turned people of many communities into a nation with a shared past and future. The women's movement created women's groups and organisations.

A social group has six features. It has persistent interaction, a stable pattern of that interaction, a sense of belonging, shared interest, acceptance of common norms and values, and a definable structure. Social structure here means patterns of regular, repetitive interaction.

Pause and predict: the crowd waiting at a bus stop becomes a group of agitators after the bus service is cut for a month. At what point does it count as a social group?

Check your answer: when it shows the features above: sustained interaction, a "we" feeling, shared interest and some organisation, such as a leader or a set of demands. Before that, it is an aggregate or quasi group.

Types of groups: five pairs to compare

Sociologists have classified groups in many ways, but the pattern is the same: close, intimate interaction in traditional societies versus impersonal, distant interaction in modern ones. A complete contrast is probably not an accurate description of reality.

You can map community onto primary groups and association onto secondary groups. But concepts are not fixed. A Residents Welfare Association has a formal memorandum with goals and rules, yet over time its members may become "just like family". A strict contrast between the two types is a starting point.

Who counts as "in"? The Rampura example. When the sociologist M.N. Srinivas did a census in the village of Rampura in 1948, he heard villagers describe recent arrivals contemptuously as people who "came yesterday or the day before", and older arrivals as "old lineages". So the line between in group and out group is not fixed: who belongs changes with time and context, and an out group can become an in group.

Beyond the textbook. For the exam: a reference group is a group we do not belong to but look up to. In reality: reference groups can also work against us. Advertisers target teenagers by presenting film stars and sportspersons as a reference group, so a lifestyle that costs money becomes something you feel you must have. Why it matters: colonial reference group behaviour was also gendered: men copied English dress and dining while expecting women to stay "Indian" in their ways.

Social stratification: society in layers

Social stratification is the existence of structured inequalities between groups in access to material or symbolic rewards. The picture is geological: society is made of strata, with the more favoured on top and the less privileged near the bottom. Opportunities for health, long life, safety, education, satisfying work and political influence are all unequally and systematically distributed.

Four systems have existed historically.

Caste. In a caste system a person's position depends almost entirely on the status attributes ascribed by birth, not on achievement. In traditional India, castes formed a hierarchy of precedence, each position defined by relative purity or pollution. The system is described in terms of four varnas (Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas and Shudras), but in reality there are innumerable occupation based groups called jatis. Endogamy (marrying within the group) and ritual avoidance of contact were seen as central to maintaining purity. Urbanisation challenged this: A.R. Desai noted that in modern cities, hotels, trains and buses brought people of all castes together, though he added that caste had not vanished. Discrimination also persists in private interaction, as one first person account from a mill worker shows. At the same time, democracy has made castes into interest groups, and discriminated castes have asserted their democratic rights.

Class. Three approaches are named.

Two views. For the exam: the functionalist view says stratification is universal and useful because it motivates qualified people to fill important positions. Another reading: conflict theorists and many empirical studies argue that unequal rewards often reflect inherited advantage, not merit. The claim is open to question, because mobility studies, even in Western societies, are far from the ideal of perfect mobility. For the exam: present both and say which perspective a question is using.

Status and role: positions and performances

A status is a position in society or a group, with defined rights and duties. "Mother" is a status, with norms of conduct, responsibilities and prerogatives. A role is the dynamic, behavioural side of status. The line to remember: status is occupied, but roles are played. A status is a role that has become regular, standardised and formal in society.

In a modern complex society everyone holds many statuses at once. You may be a student to your teacher, a customer to the grocer, a passenger to the bus driver, a sibling at home and a patient to the doctor. Sociologists call this a status set. A status sequence is a series of statuses attained one after another over a lifetime: a son becomes a father, then a grandfather.

Prestige is the value attached to a status or an office, not to the person who holds it. People can rank statuses by prestige. A doctor may carry higher prestige than a shopkeeper even if the doctor earns less, and what is prestigious differs across societies and eras.

Role conflict arises when contrary expectations come from two or more roles. A working mother who juggles home and profession is the familiar example. It is a mistake to think men do not face role conflict: in Khasi matriliny, men are torn between duty to their natal house (the house of their birth) and to their wife and children, and the strain is felt even more by Khasi women. Role stereotyping reinforces specific roles for particular people, as when men are cast as breadwinners and women as homemakers.

Pause and predict: a young woman is a daughter, a Class XII student and a part time tutor. Is this a status set or a status sequence?

Check your answer: a status set, because she holds these statuses at the same time. A status sequence would be something like student, then employee, then parent, in succession over her life.

Beyond the textbook. For the exam: roles are learnt through socialisation, and people internalise them. In reality: this view is too simple. People have agency: they create and negotiate roles, not just receive them. Roles change when people resist, for example discrimination based on caste, race or gender, while others oppose that change, which is where social control enters. Why it matters: it links this chapter back to the individual versus society question from Chapter 1.

Social control: how society keeps its members in line

Social control is the set of means a society uses to bring its recalcitrant or unruly members back into line. It refers both to the use of force to regulate behaviour and to the enforcing of values and patterns that maintain order.

Two perspectives on control. The functionalist reads control as necessary for stability, restraining deviance and easing conflict. The conflict theorist sees it as one section imposing its will on another. Peter Berger observed that physical violence is the oldest and ultimate means of control, yet in a working society it is used economically and as a last resort, and the mere threat is usually enough. In close knit primary groups, he adds, very potent and subtle controls operate.

When informal control is not enough, harsher means may follow. A newspaper report on a so called honour killing shows several agencies at work: the family, the community council and the police all appear, so informal and formal agencies can both be involved.

Sanctions and deviance. A sanction is a reward or punishment that reinforces expected behaviour. It can be positive (a prize for good conduct) or negative (punishment for breaking a rule). Deviance means action that does not conform to the norms or values held by most members of a group or society. What is deviant varies widely between cultures and changes over time: a woman choosing to become an astronaut may be seen as deviant at one time and applauded at another.

Why it matters. Notice how often one idea appears in several concepts. A "norm" is a rule backed by a sanction. A sanction produces conformity. Conformity makes role performance predictable. Deviance is what happens when this chain breaks. If you can run this chain in your head, many statement based questions answer themselves.

Key terms at a glance

Exam traps

60-second revision

Where this chapter connects

• Previous: Sociology and Society explains why sociology uses disciplined concepts instead of common sense.
• Next: Understanding Social Institutions applies these ideas to family, marriage, politics, economy, religion and education.
• Later in Class XI: Social Structure, Stratification and Social Processes in Society develops stratification, status and role in more depth.
• Class XII link: Patterns of Social Inequality and Exclusion takes caste and class stratification further.