Unit II

RELATION BETWEEN CULTURE AND SOCIETY

The word " culture " originated from the Latin word " colere " , which means " to cultivate " (Doshi and Jain : 2001).In
social anthropology the word " culture " means " knowledge " , that is, knowledge about those aspects of humanity
which are not natural, but which are related to that " which is acquired " . The common theme in all the definitions
provided is that culture is acquired through learning within a society. The anthropologists dealt with so far see culture
as all-embracing including society.

culture and society are co-existence. Society is the combination of people with different cultures. In the other hand,
Culture deal with the behaviours,language,occupation,dressing,eating and festival of a particular people within a
geographical area.

society is " a relatively large and relatively autonomous collection of people who have a common heritage that is
transmitted from generation to generation and who interact with one another in socially structured relationships.
"attach similar meanings to things and events. And this shared vocabulary of meanings forms one of the major bases
for a society ' s cohesion.
There is a deep set relation between culture and society. Different people follow different culture but society provides
space for them all. Culture is like spices of the society that makes society more charming and intresting. When people
of different sect and culture congregate they make society. Their individual culture helps them living with amenity and
fellowship

The people in a society have a common heritage that is transmitted from generation to generation. This common
heritage is the culture and includes all the values, customs, beliefs and artifacts of a society as earlier pointed out in
Tylor ' s definition of culture. Because the people in a society share the same material and nonmaterial culture, they

It is important to clarify that a society is a group of people held together by common traditions, customs, and ways of
life, or a common culture, and in which there exists among the members constituting it an awareness of belonging to
it. here can be no society without individuals. The converse "no society without culture-holds for man: no cultureless
human society is known;

The uniqueness of the relationship between the concepts of culture and society could be summarized as follows: that
although the two concepts are seemingly inextricably tied up like a knot, the knot could be disentangled and lay bare
the concepts as two separate and distinct terms. Anthropologists and sociologists have managed to achieve this fact
with finesse. For anthropologists, culture is the ultimate reality and society is the vehicle of culture ? a necessary but
not sufficient condition of culture. Conversely, sociologists contend that society is the ultimate reality which renders
intelligible the nature of humans and of social institutions by which they are governed. Actually, sociologists consider
society as the creator of culture whereas anthropologists think that it is culture which keeps the organization of
society going..

Unit III

Social conflict

Conflict is an extreme form of behavior. In social conflict , there are no rules of the game which are found in
cooperation or competition; each party seeks to win at any cost. The old adage that everything is fair in love and war
connotes this. Robert Park has held that while competition may take place without social interaction between parties
(for example nation wide examination), conflicts entails social interaction between contending parties, and exist more
on personal level. Even where group conflict is there, the interaction between parties opposing groups is
personalized.

Social conflict may have positive functions. For example, when a nation is threatened by an enemy, its citizen stand
united to drive out the aggressor. Social conflict can be either zero sum game or non zero sum game. In the
former type , there are no limits which can be imposed on a party. In the latter type, there are certain limits which can
be imposed on party. For instances, when a trade union is in confrontation with the management, it may withdraw
some of its demand.

Social conflict often act as a spur to social change. According to the Marxist theory of social change, no fundamental
change can be brought about in society, without conflict or revolution. When there is an exploitation of one group by
another, a social conflict develops at some point of time and leads to class struggle. In a communist society in which
exploitation is absent, social conflict will also be absent. In such an eventual society, there will be neither class nor
state nor inequality

Social control

Social control refers to the arrangement by which the values and norms are communicated and instilled. The
agencies of social control are both informal and formal and include customs, folkways, mores, public opinion ,
education, law, religion, morals etc.

The objective of social control is to realize the social equilibrium which is vital for the continuation of social structure.
In preliterate societies the customs, taboos, etc. ,control the divergence. In larger societies social control seeks to
ensure conformity of individuals and groups with society by adapting explicit and objective methods.

Folkways and mores play an vital role in enforcing social control. In many preliterate societies. The supernatural
elements instil fear of reprisal in the minds of deviant individuals. In complex societies religion and morals, notion of
guilts or sins, have been powerful instrument of conformity. In the east , on the broad level, the notion of
conformity to the cosmic order etc. have all guided the behavior of individual and groups

UNIT IV

BUREACRACY

Bureaucracy is the highest form of rationality. Explain

A bureaucracy is an organization of non-elected officials of a governmental or organization who implement the rules,
laws, and functions of their institution, and are occasionally characterized by officialism and red tape .bureaucracy is
derived from two words bureau meaning office and cracy meaning rule of , hence bureaccracy means rule of the
office. Office is nothing but center of the rule because it is attached with some function and duty to
perform.bureaccracy I an organization with some-

1) fixed rule(official /rule)

2) procedure
3) tasks

characteristic of bureaucracy

1)hierarchy: official are given rank according to the duty assigned to them

2)fixed rules and regulation: fixed rules and regulation are there for officials and if they cant obey, then they are
corrupt

3)separation/personal: officials have separate public and private life

4)appointment: in bureaucracy appointments are always from above. One person in not assigned post because of his
ascribed status. Everyone is given equal opportunity. Opportunity is on the basis of rational position

5)fixed tenure: appointments are for fixed period of time

Duty or aim of bureaucracy is to establish culture and function of arbitration.

Rationality means anything based on reason, cause and not on emotions, fairplay, just. And bureaucracy is the
system based upon rules and regulation. Duties arenot imposed on the basis of personal choice or wil but are on the
basis of rules

Weber said that all new large-scale organizations were similar. Each was a bureaucracy. Today many of us regard
bureaucracy as a dirty word, suggesting red tape, inefficiency, and officiousness As we shall see, bureaucracies can
develop these features, especially if authority is highly centralized. Weber's purpose, however, was to define the
essential features of new organizations and to indicate why these organizations worked so much better than
traditional ones.

What makes burecracy rational:

(1) functional specialization

(2) clear lines of hierarchical authority,
(3) expert training of managers, and
(4) decision making based on rules and tactics developed to guarantee consistent and effective pursuit of
organizational goals.

To ensure expert management, appointment and promotion are based on merit rather than favoritism, and
those appointed treat their positions as full-time, primary careers.To ensure order in decision making,
business is conducted primarily through written rules records, and communications

In bureaucracy there is clear "levels of graded authority." hierarchical authority is required in bureaucracies
so that highly trained experts can he properly used as managers. Rational bureaucracies can be operated,
only by deploying managers at all levels who have been selected and trained for their specific jobs. , Weber
stressed that rational bureaucracies must be managed in accordance with carefully developed rules and
principles that can be learned and applied and that transactions and decisions must be recorded so that
rules can he reviewed. Only with such rules and principles can the activities of hundreds of managers at
different levels in the organization be predicted and coordinated. If we cannot predict what others will do,
then we cannot count on them.

Unit V

Social stratification

in sociology the social stratification is a concept of class, involving the "classification of persons into groups based on
shared socio-economic conditions ... a relational set of inequalities with economic, social, political and ideological
dimensions."

In modern Western Socities, stratification is broadly organized into three main layers: upper class, middle class, and
lower class. Each class may be further subdivided into smaller classes (e.g. occupational). These categories are
particular to state-based societies as distinguished from, for instance, feudal societies composed of nobility-to-
peasant relations. Stratification may also be defined by kinship ties or castes. For Maxweber, social class pertaining
broadly to material wealth is distinguished from status class which is based on such variables as honor, prestige and
religious affiliation. Talcott Parsons argued that the forces of societal differentiation and the following pattern of
institutionalized individualization would strongly diminish the role of class (as a major stratification factor) as social
evolution went along. It is debatable whether the earliest hunter-gatherer groups may be defined as 'stratified', or if
such differentials began with agriculture and broad acts of exchange between groups. One of the ongoing issues in
determining social stratification arises from the point that status inequalities between individuals are common, so it
becomes a quantitative issue to determine how much inequality qualifies as stratification

characteristics of stratified systems

1. The rankings apply to social categories of people who share a common characteristic without necessarily
interacting or identifying with each other. The process of being ranked can be changed by the person being ranked.[14]

Example: The way we rank people differently by race, gender, and social class

2. People's life experiences and opportunities depend on their social category. This characteristic can be changed by
the amount of work a person can put into their interests.[14]

Example: The greater advantage had by the son or daughter of a king to have a successful life than the son
or daughter of a minimum-wage factory worker, because the king has a greater amount of resources than
the factory worker The use of resources can influence others.

3. The ranks of different social categories change slowly over time. This has occurred frequently in the United States
ever since the American revolution. The U.S constitution has been altered several times to specify rights for everyone

Marxist view

In Marxist theory, the capitalist mode of production consists of two main economic parts: the substructure and the
Superstructure. The base comprehends the relations of production employer-employee work conditions, the
technical division of labor, and property relations into which people enter to produce the necessities and amenities
of life. In the capitalist system, the ruling classes own the means of production, which essentially includes the working
class itself as they only have their own labour power(wage labour) to offer in order to survive. These relations
fundamentally determine the ideas and philosophies of a society, constituting the superstructure. A temporary status
quo is achieved by various methods of social control employed, consciously or unconsciously, by the bourgeoisie in
the course of various aspects of social life. Through the ideology of the ruling class, false consciousness is promoted
both through ostensibly political and non-political institutions, but also through the arts and other elements of culture.
Marx believed the capitalist mode would eventually give way, through its own internal conflict, to revolutionary
consciousness and the development of egalitarian communist society.

According to Marvin Harris and Tim Ingold, Lewis Henry Morgans accounts of egalitarian hunter-gatherers formed
part of Karl Marx and Engels inspiration for communism. Morgan spoke of a situation in which people living in the
same community pooled their efforts and shared the rewards of those efforts fairly equally. He called this
"communism in living." But when Marx expanded on these ideas, he still emphasized an economically oriented
culture, with property defining the fundamental relationships between people. Yet, issues of owenership and property
are arguably less emphasized in hunter-gatherer societies. This, combined with the very different social and
economic situations of hunter-gatherers may account for many of the difficulties encountered when implementing
communism in industrialized states. As Ingold points out: "The notion of communism, removed from the context of
domesticity and harnessed to support a project of social engineering for large-scale, industrialized states with
populations of millions, eventually came to mean something quite different from what Morgan had intended: namely, a
principle of redistribution that would override all ties of a personal or familial nature, and cancel out their effects."