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What is Sociology:
Sociology may be described as the science of society in so far as it studies human society and human social relations. Coined as a term by Auguste comte, and described by him as the queen of sciences, it is the youngest of scientific studies and at the same time comprehensive of all human activities in their interrelation Ito and interaction upon, society.
Man lives in society with other fellow human beings land it is amazing to note the myriads of ways in which he and his social relations can be studied. Students of sociology may be trained in the core aspects of the science, but I each area covered by the study may afford abundant opportunity for specialization. It is beyond the authors power of perception to present to the student a complete list of all such areas and avenues for specialized study and research, but the mention of only a few of them will significantly impress the beginner as to the incomprehensible ambit of this field of study.
Sociology is closely connected with human psychology and, from the study of the psychological constraints that bring human beings to live together to the analysis of the behaviour of groups such as crowds and masses; it may all be the concern of the sociologist. Marriage, family, the community and their respective patterns and problems may be another important study for him who, in this respect, would analyse various modes of behaviour in each of these spheres with a view to either merely appreciating the facts or suggesting measures as to the improvement of any of these institutions or organizations.
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Urbanization and industrialization in the modern world would be yet another field of study for sociologists, who concern themselves with life in cities, the problems arising from the relevant processes and their implications in social life in general. The student would notice that even this field of study alone can mean endless research for the sociologist, for he has in this context to study the problems associated with social personality and social culture, the questions affecting the immigrant and his powers of adjustment, housing, education, health, communications and the role of the maas media, and so on.
The sociologists may also turn his eyes specifically to the problems relating to delinquency, or what may be termed as ‘deviance’ and its correlation to law and its sanctions. Thus, today it may be necessary to consider whether or not prevention of a crime may be more useful than its punishment in order to keep society in proper shape.
Important spheres of study for the sociologist would also include all aspects of human population grouped under the science of ‘demography’, that is, the study of the growth and decay of population, with its birth rate, the death rate, the patterns of density, distribution and the adjustment or otherwise of the sex ratio.
In this connection, one may also specialize in the composition in a society, in the question as to whether or not there are minority groups in it. In the study of racial, religious, natural or other minorities, the concepts of acceptance and toleration, of prejudice and discrimination, and of authoritative control for the promotion of relatives between the groups become important.
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By now the student of sociology would be able to comprehend the enormity of the subject and the fact, that any matter relating to human society will be the concern of the sociologist. If two human beings travel by a train and do not converse with each other, the sociologist will not eavesdrop; but as soon as the travellers engage in a conversation, the task of the sociologist begins.
Auguste Comte introduced the word “sociology” in his cours de Philosophie Positive, which he published in 1839. Comte believed in the natural order of development in society and found that society has developed in three distinct stages. According to him, the first was the theological stage of intellectual development and in this stage, primitive men, according to the nature and variety of his experiences, humanized all natural subjects around him. In the second stage, which he called the metaphysical or the abstract stage, the unknown powers that influenced man’s world were looked upon as spirits and deities.
Although Comte maintained that even in the first stage of development there was something of science ingrained in human thought, it was in the second stage that the human mind reached the semi-critical stage. The third stage of social development is the scientific or the positive stage.
In this stage, the human mind has become truly critical and the principles of causation, that is, the reasoning that certain causes shall have certain effects, belong to this stage and are of very recent origin.
Comte has also tried to establish the theory that society has passed from the stage of militarism to that of juristic or legal change and finally to the industrial one. Militarism, whether in tribes or later developed societies, went hand in hand with the theological stage, each helping the other.
The juristic stage then came for helping the administration of the day to maintain order according to the sense of right and wrong. The industrial stage is the latest in development, and with it have arrived all the complexities of human thought.
After Comte, several writers have made their contributions upon the thoughts relating to the science of sociology. The German writer, Hegel, considered a unitary principle of development in society, which accommodates contradictions and oppositions blended together as a whole to represent a reality.
According to him, development came in three stages: thesis, antithesis and synthesis. Following the ‘historicist’ theory of development, he found growth in these three stages in the Oriental culture, the Graeco-Roman Civilization and then in new emergent Europe, with Germany having to play an important role.
According to Ferdinand Tonnies, another German writer, society has changed from small, unspecialized communities to large and complex urban ones. An American sociologist, Howard Becker, maintains that society has evolved from the sacred to the secular. These sociologists together subscribe to what may be described as the thoughts of the ‘Evolutionary school’ of sociology.
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In this group may be added the other important names of Spencer, Hobhouse and Emile Durkheim. Spencer followed Darwin’s ideas and, probably being inspired by Condorcet, believed in the theory of evolution of society. He found that at first, a small society came into existence in which men lived by hunting and fishing with crude weapons.
From this stage society grew into a complex structure and organization, just as in the Darwinian sense life has grown in the various diversifications of organismic forms. Spencer noticed that from the simple society which was ‘a single working whole un-subjected to any other, and of which the parts co-operate, with or without a regulating centre, for certain public ends, the development was into the compound, the doubly compound and the trebly compound societies.
A compound society, according to him, has a chief under a supreme chief. The doubly compound society has a system of Government and an ecclesiastical hierarchy. While the trebly compound civilization stands for the complex society of today with its government and multi-farious other institutions. Spencer also observed that, on the functional plane, society has developed from the militant type to the industrial one in which there is free association, religious freedom and privately owned and operated industry.
According to Hobhouse, social development is linked with ethics, and he finds that the most ample and consistent fulfilment of human purposes can be made by keeping the following criteria in mind:
(i) the scale of organisation in society; (ii) the degree of efficiency in control over natural resources and direction of activities; (iii) the degrees of co-operation of the people to their mutual advantages; and (iv) freedom of scope for personal development.
Emile Durkhiem is in some way a link between the Evolutionary school and the modern ‘Theoretical school’, which does not take the historicist attitude as the correct one. In the initial stages, Durkheim seemed to accept Comte’s analysis of social development, but later he believed in the study of ‘social facts’ at any given stage of social development.
The historicist method has been rejected by persons like Max Weber and Radcliffe- Brown. Weber has contributed to sociological thoughts the notion of causality. He advises the adoption of the scientific method requiring a correlation in the social science, a study of cause and effects so that understanding may well be related to prediction.
Radcliffe-Brown has rejected the conjectural method and has introduced the belief in the structures in societies as natural systems. He has given us the “comparative method” with which he tried to understand the similarities and diversities in various social practices.
The ‘Conflict school” in sociology is indeed headed by Karl Marx. In his Communist Manifesto, Marx has emphasized the development of society according to one single phenomenon only, that is, the conflict between the classes. According to him, there was only the materialistic or the economic consideration in the interpretation of social development.
Marx thought that a man’s belief, his ideas and his status in his class were all determined by his own place in the economic arrangement of the society. He held a combination of the historicist-evolutionary and the conflict theory of social development, in which he believed society to be a battleground between the classes, between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, between those who ‘have” power and capital and those who “have not”.
The lower middleclass, according to him, fight against the bourgeoisie simply to save themselves from extinction and, as such, they are not revolutionaries. The proletariats are the true revolutionaries, who would ultimately overthrow the old system and introduce a new one. It is well known that Marxian philosophy has adequately convulsed the twentieth century world, and race conflicts, class conflicts and economic warring interests dominate the international scene in current times.
The ‘Functional school” of sociological thought does not quite reject the evolutionary element in social development, but adds to the evolution of social structure the idea of social functions. Originated by persons like Talcott Parsons, and inspired by anthropology, this school does not view human society as a mere growth in structure, like the growth and development of the institutions of family, government, economy, religion etc.
The social structure is distinctly related to its functions, and each part of it contributes to the survival and effective functioning of the whole, just as in the human body, each part of the organism contributes to the survival and functioning of the whole. The functional school of sociology has since World War II found considerable acceptance in the United States.
Whatever school of thought the sociologist may belong to, his principal concern today will be with three distinct aspects of the study:
I. The social structure, covering societies, associations and communities and their interests, attitudes, customs, folkways, mores.
II. Social control, which would stand for the study of organizations and institutions that regulate and channelize human conduct to accepted social norms.
III. Social change, emphasizing the fact that no study that takes society as a static factor can be regarded as effective. Society is a changing phenomenon and its evolution and cultural progress must be measured for completing the study of the sociologist.
Methods of Sociological Studies:
The analysis of the growth and development of the science of sociology must necessarily impress this fact upon us that the modern sociologist must discard the mere historicist attitude and adopt the more analytical approach to the subject.
This means that he shall choose for himself the scientific method of study, which can be stated to be a discipline in which the following steps shall of necessity be taken:
(1) He shall identify a topic of social importance upon which he wishes to make his study, for example, he may like to study the family as an institution, or population as a problem.
(2) He shall collect data upon such matters of social importance and organize his knowledge into an understanding so that, with the relevant social phenomena, his power of prediction as to future happenings and his suggestions as to the control of such phenomena can be regarded as effective and authentic.
(3) He shall classify the data collected by him, organize them and analyse them. Only a systematic classification of all that he has gathered as information will help him to an orderly knowledge.
(4) He shall formulate hypotheses. Every scientific study is based on the belief that certain phenomena occur in an orderly fashion and the task of the researcher is to find out by observation and verification whether or not one particular cause shall have a particular effect. In order to test a phenomenon, a study shall begin with, a hypothesis.
(5) He shall devise ways of testing his hypothesis. This stage will involve the collection of data and their submission to certain inquiries. If the data collected fall in line with certain observations on the point, the confidence in the hypothesis will increase, and predictions can be made more or less accurately. If the data collected by the researcher do not agree with his observations, his hypothesis will be proved wrong, and he will have to begin with another hypothesis.
(6) He shall formulate his findings and publish them. From the application of the data collected by him to his hypotheses and then, from his observations based on analytical study, he should be able to formulate his findings upon the subject of study. Scientists publish their findings for the benefit of the world and also for the edification of other scientists in the field.
(7) He shall verify his own findings with those of others. Since the end product of [analytical study is generalization, the researcher is conscious of the fact that error may set in, particularly if he has allowed his ‘value-judgment’ to enter his analysis. Modern sociologists have emphasized the importance of dissociating the researcher’s on values from objects of his study, particularly so because the person who is making research upon human society is also a human being.
Hence, the need and importance of verification becomes very clear. What one researcher has found from his study must be tested by comparing it with the findings of other scholars. The goal set for the sociologist is to eliminate errors by providing enough continuity to research efforts so that concrete evidence piles up, one upon another set.
Limitations of these Methods:
In discussing the scientific method, the obvious limitations for the researcher come to mind. These limitations are inherent in any study in this world of ours; and the utmost that can be done in this respect is an approximation of elimination of any of these or all of them.
They are as follows:
(1) The entire world cannot be made the subject of study. Hence, the sociologist has to make a judicious choice in the selection of his samples. The selection is made on the basis of the concept of probability, which states that for any given unit of population the sample that will be selected for study is well known.
(2) The study of sociology is based on the assumption that everything that is obtainable in human society can be measured, and sociological knowledge therefore limited by the extent of possible and practicable measurement.
(3) The study of variables necessarily leads to the formulation of statistics. ‘Variables’ can be taken to be objects or events which can differ qualitatively, or which can change over time whether in quality or in quantity. When the data obtained on variables are analyzed, the mathematical principle is applied to the analysis for determining the statistics, which may be descriptive or inferential in nature.
Descriptive statistics merely summarize the observations and information on data for ready reference. Inferential statistics make generalizations about a society on the basis of information that is gathered from the sample. Inferential statistics come closer to elimination of errors only when samples are truly representative, or they are so comprehensive of any particular object or type that they can readily be applied to the whole of such type or object.
Sociology and Other Sciences:
Sociology being the youngest of all social sciences, it is necessary to have an idea as to whether it has any bearing, direct or otherwise, on other sciences that concern human behaviour. Auguste Comte describes sociology as the queen of all social sciences and. according to him, if all sciences oriented their thought to the service of sociology, they would be humanized.
Though sociology concerns, in some way or the other, economics, politics, history and anthropology, it has its distinctions and differences from each of these.
(a) Sociology and Economics:
Economics is the study of human wants and their satisfaction, and such wants and the instruments for their satisfaction cannot be totally divorced from the social structure in which the human being lives and from his social considerations. Economic events in a society are not an isolated affair; writers like Oppenheimer and Max Weber hold that economic evolution is a mere aspect of social evolution itself. In this sense, economics is only a branch of sociological studies.
Karl Marx, Veblen and others, however, hold that society itself is based on mere economic considerations and, therefore, there is a total unity of the two branches of discipline. Yet, it would not be totally correct to maintain that there is such a complete unity of the two respective studies.
Each study has a distinct approach and while the economic relations between human begins is the field of study for economics, sociological studies are much wider in scope. Sociology is, therefore, more universal in approach than economics, which adopts only a particular point of view. Besides all this, while economics as a study can have its focus upon the individual, sociology concerns society as a whole.
(b) Sociology and Political Science:
While the sociologist is interested in all aspects of the social structure, the study of political science is directed to the growth and development of the State as an organization and the measures that may be taken for making the organization effective. In ancient times, as among the Greeks, no differentiation was made between the State as a polity and the State as a society.
The primitive societies also were a fusion of the society, as we understand it, and the organization for its control. Today, with the advent of social organizations that are independent of state control, and with the consciousness that the state has multifarious functions in its duty of governance of the populace, a clear distinction between political science and sociology is being noticed. Evidently, both political science and sociology as social sciences are of later development, the latter being of very recent origion.
While sociology concerns itself with all problems of social importance, political science studies the citizen’s rights and obligations to the State and the corresponding obligations and rights of the State in protecting the citizens and commanding allegiance from them.
Though one cannot disregard the fact that society itself must correlate itself with the form of Government it adopts, there is a basic difference of approach between the two subjects of study. Sociology is a positive science, it mainly tells the facts about human society, without necessarily sitting in judgment as to what may be beneficial or otherwise. Political science is a normative study. It seeks to improve the performance of the State as an existing organization.
However, different the two fields of study may be, political thinkers today accept the need of a sociological understanding of the nation in question which is to be governed by the state machinery, if such organization were to function effectively.
(c) Sociology and History:
Since both fields of study concern themselves with social reality as a whole, there must necessarily exist a very close relation between history and sociology. History records the events that are important in the progress of mankind, while sociology focuses its attention upon the modes in which humanity developed as a social animal and adopted for itself certain norms and institutions that transcend the limits of time and events.
The attitude of a historian is, in this sense, limited to a particular period; the sociologist, on the other hand, has an all pervasive view of human affairs. The latter is not concerned with one particular fact only even though it were a momentous event; facts, in general, are the objects of his interest.
The sociologist must of necessity collect materials for his study from the pages of history; he may be interested in the political, economic, religious or cultural events of particular times and try to build up hypotheses which, with observations made on current times, may complement his knowledge about humanity.
The historian traces events as they come and go; he is a fact-finder and has no power to change a dot at will. It is also not within the historian’s jurisdiction to apply his knowledge of given times to the conditions of another, not even to wonder why the events of an age did not influence another.
But the sociologist must collect the materials accumulated by the historian and place them in one human perspective, and that is of human relations. However different the ages may be, of whichever country or community the annals may be, the sociologist discovers the supreme truth of humanity, the oneness of human relations and behaviour in the midst of diversity.
Indeed, the relation between history and sociology at times is so well emphasized that a new school of historical sociology has come into being; it endeavours to have an understanding of historical events from sociological standpoints.
(d) Sociology and Anthropology:
Anthropology stands for the study of man and, in its different branches, it either studies the human kind in the purely physical sense, and then it is known as ‘physical anthropology’; or it studies the cultural advancement of man through the different ages, which may be termed as ‘cultural anthropology’.While physical anthropology may be somewhat distantly connected with the study of human society and social behaviour, there seems to be quite a close collaboration between the methods of the cultural anthropologist and the sociologist.
The cultural anthropologist studies the ways of life, the religion, the institutions and the social organization of primitive man. The sociologist’s materials for study are the same with the only difference that he does not merely busy himself with primitive society; he studies the human kind of all times.
Some sociologists may maintain that the study of sociology is concerned with modern man and his social behavioural patterns. True it is, but it will give only a partial view of his efforts.
The past societies are as much of a treasure for the researcher in sociology as the present ones are; and the patterns of future societies also to some extent keep him busy. The anthropologist no doubt concentrates his attention upon the dead past; but his views and observations on those times allow the sociologist to catch a glimpse of the pattern of continuity that is the story of man.
The sociologist, therefore, advances his study upon the work of the anthropologist. The latter discovers the facts which remain mere facts for him; but to the former these facts assume the shape of the basis on which he can make his observations.
From the small and limited world of the anthropologist, and from the relics and conjectural charts that he carefully collects and meticulously constructs, the sociologist gathers materials of immense value and, in the preparation of his questionnaires and statistics, he confesses his indebtedness to the former.
Terms Used in Sociology:
The terms used in sociology are the following:
(i) Society:
Human beings live in society, that is, in organizations that control their behaviour and relations in a number of ways. While Gisbert regards society as a network with which every human being is connected, McIver looks upon society as an ‘even changing complex system’, a ‘web of social relationships’ that is constantly changing. According to him, society is a ‘system of usages and procedures, of authority and mutual aid, of many groupings and divisions, of controls of human behaviour and of liberties’.
If relations between members be the basis of society, there is also a society among animals, at least among the higher ones. They too have certain standards of behaviour particularly in defining and organizing all the needs arising from their instinct of sustenance in life. Again, if a human being lives in some sort of relation or the other with an animal, some sort of a society comes into existence between the two.
If this be true, it is all the more obvious that social relationships can exist between only two individuals, whether it be between a mother and child, the master and the servant or between friends. The examples cited show that each party is at least conscious of the existence of the other and that there is an element of ‘reciprocal recognition’ of each other. Gisbert, therefore, maintains that society or sociality is a matter of psychology, and that it is a condition of mentality.
According to Ginsberg, even such relationships as we are not conscious of, and that are merely indirect in nature, shall also be important in society, whether these relationships arise out of co-operation or conflict. Ginsberg distinguishes between ‘society’ and ‘a society’. While ‘society’ is soverign and unrestricted in structure, ‘a society’ stands for a group of persons who have been related to each other through certain common practices; and these practices do not apply to persons if they do not come within the group.
According to McIver, society arises out of a feeling of likeness in the persons who constitute it. If a family be taken as the nucleus of a society, it rests on a bond that is created primarily by sex relationships. As the family grows, the ‘like’ feeling develops among all members who later come into the expanded group. Whatever is true of the family will also be true of a larger unit, the society. Persons in society recognize the ‘likeness’ in each other and, as F.H.Giddings expresses it, the ‘consciousness of kind’ dawns upon them.
But it may at the same time be remembered that this feeling of ‘likeness’ is not an isolated experience; it is also a contrast of feelings, that is, a likeness or a consciousness of kind must necessarily recognize the fact that it is different from another feeling of ‘unlikeness’ or ‘differences’.
Therefore, while the persons of any one society know that they are like each other, they also understand that correspondingly they are different from others, or that others are different from them.
McIver observes that an element of difference is inherent in the society itself. In other words, while it is true that any one society is different from other societies, in the very society itself there would be differences that are clearly recognizable. It all begins with the fact that society rests on the differences of the sexes that constitute the family; the difference is then extended to the respective members who, while being alike in certain respects, are different in prominent details like age, physical attributes, mental faculties etc.
The diversity in social unity is finally recognizable in functional differences in the constituents, which is known as division of labour. Division of labour is not essentially a matter of difference or conflict; it establishes co-operation among persons who seek to profitably distribute their activities so that their common wants are satisfied.
(ii) Community:
A community stands for a group of persons who live with certain ideals that can be regarded as basic conditions of a life in common. A community must be such a group in which a person may live his life in full and, therefore, a tribe may be a community while a church is not, since the latter gives a glimpse of life only sectionally. Primitive communities tried to live in a more or less self-contained fashion, while modern communities are all interdependent on each other.
A community as we understand it today is characterized by the following factors:
(a) Locality:
People of a community generally live together or, at least, they tend to live together. This condition of living together creates a type of a bond of solidarity that has the effect of settling the members in a locality. A band of gypsies or people living in an Eskimo village can be taken as examples of a community.
However, this element of a fixed locality might have originated the community; but in the world of today it has somewhat lost its significance. There may, of course, be a nation-community within the frontiers of a State, yet economic and technological developments including the improvement of the means of communication and transportation now-a-days have a tendency to breakdown the self-containedness of communities. People of a particular community may project themselves out of the locality concerned and live scattered all over the world.
(b) Community Sentiment:
McIver says that members of a community must have a sense of belonging together, a community sentiment. These persons must have in them a consciousness that they share a common way of life. Even though certain persons like in a neighbourhood, they may not have this sentiment, while persons scattered over different parts of the world may feel that they belong to common ideals and common sentiments.
According to McIver, this sentiment is the ‘we- feeling’ the feeling among persons that they form together a cluster or a group. The same sentiment can arise out of a ‘role-feeling’ or a ‘dependency-feeling’, that is, within the community in as much as an individual has certain duties to perform in it he has at the same time to depend upon others in the community for fulfilling his mental and physical needs.
These feelings arise spontaneously in the members of the community, as in the case of the hunting community or in the pastoral community. The very basic need of sustenance in life keeps them together. Occasionally, such feelings are actively created by involuntarily following a certain procedure, as in the case of raising a community inspired by religious, linguistic or nationalistic ideals.
A community may be large or small, with the difference that while persons in a small community are bound together by direct and intimate contact, human relationship in large communities is indirect and external. The smaller community can bring friendship or rivalry more directly to its members, while the larger one affords opportunity, peace and protection to its constituents’.
But a community grows in an unplanned manner. Forces of competition, attraction and struggle for dominance interact automatically and the community sentiment grows naturally. Common traditions and cultural values bring in the ‘in-feeling’ in the member of the community and this feeling increases with the process of socialization itself. The sentiment, therefore, finds a spontaneous expression in community norms and rules as also in the manner of expression by oneself like idioms, gossips and the like.
In the modem world, the community sentiment is best expressed in the sentiment of nationality. As Ramsay Muir has observed in his Nationalism and Internationalism, a nation is one because ‘its members believe it to be so’. They express their likeness in national stereotypes, as in art, symbols, folkways, etc.
A deep sense of patriotism coupled with nationalistic sensibilities grew in eighteenth century Europe and then spread to the East in subsequent times. This sentiment has no doubt its positive and beneficial aspects, but it can also be of dangerous consequences. In order to combat the divisions that nationalism brings about, men are thinking today of the establishment of a world community.
As we talk of the community, we have to take into account cases that constitute small groups without being each a distinct community. Persons living in a monastery or a prison may have something in common as people in a community have, but it is doubtful whether they have the community sentiment in the same way in which members of a regular community experience it.
Similarly, immigrants in a foreign country or a down trodden caste among its own people are excluded to such an extent from the privileges enjoyed by the dominant community that they stand on an undefined territory.
(iii) Association:
McIver defines an association ‘as a group organized for the pursuit of an interest or group of interests in common. Man, in order to attain his ends, may act independently without having any regard for the wishes of others, may act in conflict with another fellow human being, or he may act collectively with others on the basis of co-operation. When this element of co-operation is introduced as a deliberate attempt for the purpose of pursuing certain common interests, an association comes into existence.
Every group of persons cannot be described as an association. If groups of persons together watch any public event no association is created between them, since they have not been brought together by a common interest which creates a relation between them; but as soon as these persons co-operate with each other to remove from a scene of accident the injured and the hurt, they can create an association for themselves.
An association, therefore, is based on a definite function, whether it is political, economic, scientific, educational, literary or religious. Membership of an association is, therefore, related to a specific ‘interest’. An individual may, at the same time, have various ‘interests’ and as such he may be a member of several associations at the same time. He may be a member of several clubs, he can have his membership in a business group and he may belong to a particular church or a particular religious association.
Gisbert states that an association is a group of persons who unite on a definite, common and limited purpose.
Characteristics:
An association has the following characteristics:
(1) Members of an association come together for fulfilling a common purpose. In this characterestic lies the difference between a community and an association. While an association depends upon the existence of a distinct interest, a community does not rest upon the desire to fulfil a purpose; it rests on a mere sentiment of being together.
(2) An association rests on an organization which is operated by responsible agents, and it acquires a legal entity or recognization.
(3) The association may own property, regulate its own procedure and it may enjoy rights and have liabilities that are distinct from the right and liabilities of its members.
(4) The association is capable of continuity or perpetual succession as a legal being and, in this respect, a group of travellers cannot become an association.
McIver observes that though the family began in the olden times as a community, in the modern world it is gaining the characteristics of an association in the sense that it has certain limited and defined function to perform in a community.
Even the State can be regarded as an association in some sense or the other with its governmental apparatus. Whether or not such apparatus is totalitarian in nature, the State operates today as an association that controls the community.
Though an association has been described as a group of persons, it is distinct from a group because while anybody of persons can become a group by being reciprocally involved in it, an association is a group that must be expressly organized for the fulfilment of a common purpose. Therefore, even a crowd or a class of person may be described as a group but since it is without any organization, it cannot become an association.
(iv) Institutions:
Institutions can be defined as established forms or conditions of procedure characteristic of group activity. McIver propounds this view of institutions with the help of H.E. Barnes’ idea of the connotations of the term. Every institution has a definite interest and as such it may well be confused with an association. In fact, an institution is a concept that is not totally divorced from an association, but it is not the association itself.
Whatever is the common idea of the ‘institution’ as an organization, the sociological interpretation of the term lies in its equation with forms of procedure. By the word institution, Barnes understands certain mechanisms with the help of which society functions. McIver explains the connection between an association and an institution by correlating the two by a dominant interest.
According to the interest of the association, the institution will find its growth. Thus, with the interests of sex, home and parentage the family comes into existence as an association, and with it is related the institution of marriage or inheritance. Similarly, interests of learning bring into being the college as an association and institutions of examinations and graduation.
The church as an association is linked with institutions of forms of worship through interests of religious faith. There are, therefore, other institutions as political, cultural, industrial and governmental institutions which serve distinct interests.
The study of institutions impresses upon us the fact that each institution, by keeping its forms of procedure alive and dynamic, modifies and moulds individual behaviour and thereby helps the individual to regulate his behaviour under different social conditions. At the same time these institutions may also define and limit the role of the individual in society, at times to such an extent that it may curtail the development of his qualities.
In fact, institutions may at times be quite inimical to the development of personal and individual qualities and attributes, particularly when these qualities and attributes come in direct conflict with accepted norms.
Ways of Studying Institutions as Procedures of Society:
According to McIver, institutions as established procedures of society may be studied in the following ways:
(1) The historical approach of the student of sociology seeks to establish an institution as a process of development. Thus, the institution of marriage has been studied in its historical origin, growth, modification and culmination as a complex concept in the modern times.
(2) The comparative study of institutions takes a single institution and observes its working in different societies in different parts of the world. The variations in form and procedure are carefully noted.
(3) Institutions may also be considered from the point of view of their interrelationships, particularly along the functional plane. Thus, one may study the interrelationship of marriage as an institution with legal institutions and those relating to inheritance. In fact, if this study of inter-relationship is emphasized, the study of institutions, as many of them as possible, will become the study of social reality as a whole.
(v) Customs:
Modes of behaviour that lie at the back of the growth of institutions and associations may be called usages or customs. A practice that reasonably establishes itself for a certain amount of time among a group of people will be known as a usage.
When the usage is extended to the community in general, and it finds acceptance over a considerable period of time, it converts itself into a custom.
Characteristics:
According to Gisbert, a custom has the following characteristics:
(1) It is a constant way of acting. It is not an individual behaviour, but a community behaviour. In other words, there is a distinction between what may be regarded as a habit and what is known as custom. Habit is more personal, while custom is social in character.
(2) Therefore, custom can also be regarded as a way of acting for the society, not of the individual or of some individuals only. One may shave once in a week, but shaving may be a custom in a society; and it may not be so in another.
(3) Custom must have a normative value, that is, it must be sanctioned by society. A personal habit like rising early, or taking bed tea, does not require any social sanction. Whether society sanctions it or not, it helps the individual and makes his way of life easier. But custom must have the approval of the society and, in that sense it may be described as an approved habit of the society.
There is a relation between custom and an institution in the sense that the two may differ merely in degree. An institution is a more formally accepted custom and, in this respect, it becomes more social and more impersonal. Customs suggest that some people are working together in a close, personal contact; but institutions regulate behaviour even beyond personal relationships.
Thus, when two persons wed each other, their feelings may be personal; but the ceremony observed by them, that is, marriage is an institution, and it is an impersonal affair. The custom of going on a ‘honeymoon’ is purely personal, and it is not an institution.
(vi) Folkways:
Usages, customs and institutions regulate human behaviour to such an extent that any violation of norms set up by these is looked down upon. W.G. Sumner has described in his Folkways the processes according to which certain norms have come to be accepted by human beings. Summer calls these norms of behaviour as ‘folkways’ and all human social behaviour is required to conform to standards set by these norms.
Folkways may, therefore, be associated with attempts at making adjustments with physical surroundings, the quest for food, food habits, marriage and family life, attire and etiquette and many other things.
Folkways are, therefore, modes of behaviour as are accepted and approved by society. They may constitute the tradition of a country and in a hereditary manner they may be handed down to posterity to be regarded by it as ideals of life. It is not necessary that this should be done in a determined manner, rationally and with a wise analysis of their necessity, efficiency or otherwise.
It may not always be possible to trace the beginnings of these norms or practices, but by the time the modern communities take them as accepted, their origins are not investigated into, nor is it ascertained whether or not these folkways changed their identities in course of time. However, if folkways have been accepted by a society, the mere fact of their acceptance makes a member of such society spontaneously act according to such, without questioning their origin.
The violation of folkways is generally looked down upon, but sanctions applied against the violator are not severe. Expression of contempt and ridicule by members of the society are the usual punishment for him. Therefore, if in India a man does not greet another by folding his palms, he would be regarded as unrefined, but a non- observance of this accepted mode of behaviour would not call for his obstracism from society.
(vii) Folkmores:
When an accepted norm of behaviour is not merely regarded as such but looked upon as a definite controlling agent or a regulator of social conduct, it will be regarded as a ‘more’. The difference between folkways and folkmores lies in the fact that while any society cans with mild annoyance brush aside the violation of the former, no society considers it secure to overlook violations of the latter. Folkways are not different from folkmores except in this respect.
Sumner states that when folkways acquire the conceptions of group welfare and when they add to much concepts the standards of right and wrong, they become mores. The mores, therefore, have a greater controlling influence upon members of a society than the folkways.
Folkmores can relate to various activities in life, but they are characterized by a note of distinct hostility of the group towards their violators. Mores may be related to practices of endogamy and exogamy and corresponding sanctions may be very severe. In India, inter-caste or intercommunity marriage in most cases is strictly prohibited by well-established mores, and the violations of these may have dreadful consequences, at least, in villages.
Characteristics:
Folkmores may be regarded as accepted norms of behaviour which have the following characteristics:
(1) There is no standard for determining which type of behaviour is prohibited but, once a more is accepted, it introduces an element of strict conservatism into social behaviour. At times, taboos against accepted patterns of behaviour are so predatory in nature that one may shudder to think of any violation of a more.
(2) Much of individual behaviour is determined by the mores and hence the behaviour of the individual can easily help to identify him with the group or society to which he belongs, particularly when he is discovered in a setting that is not his own. Thus, an Indian very easily gives out his social codes when in a western country he refuses to take meat or fish or to drink alcohol.
(3) From certain points of view, it may be maintained that mores preserve a society and ensure its social unity. The mores with their strict control and harsh penalties act as guardians of solidarity for the group to which they apply. This becomes evident when two individuals, guided by two distinct sets of mores, come into contact with each other.
When an individual is introduced to a foreign setup, he may be required to choose between the different mores. If his society has a very strict control over him, he will not waver in his choice. Yet situations like these may help us to understand that, instead of being totally beneficial to society, mores can at times be harmful, particularly when they tend to obstruct progress and enlightenment.