UNIT3 SOCIAL PROCESSES

* Renu Sharma

Contents

3.0 Objectives
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Social Interaction
3.3 Forms of Social Interaction
3.4 Social Control
3.5 Let Us Sum Up
3.6 Key words
3.7 Suggested Readings
3.8 Answers to Check Your Progress

3.0 OBJECTIVES

This unit seeks to help you to understand the nature and

meaning of social processes, which are an integral part of our
social behaviour. After studying the unit, you will be able to:

 Understand the social processes: conflict, competition

and co-operation;

 Know the interrelationship between different types of

social processes; and

 Understand the meaning of social control and related

ideas.

3.1 INTRODUCTION
The term ‘social processes’ refers to repetitive forms of behaviour,
which are commonly found in social life. One of the most extensive
treatments of social processes is found in Park and Burgess,
Introduction to the Science of Sociology (1921). This highly
influential textbook of an earlier period is primarily devoted to the
classification and analysis of social processes. In recent decades
sociologists have become less interested in social processes
themselves and more interested in intensive analysis of behaviour in
specific institutional and cultural settings. Yet it remains important
for students to be aware of the major social processes found in all
groups and societies. The most frequent classification of major social
processes is in terms of Cooperation, Competition, Conflict,
Accommodation and Assimilation.
3.2 SOCIAL INTERACTION
Much of the thinking about society is in terms of social relationships.
One thinks of the relation between father and son, employer and
employee, leader and follower, merchant and customer; or, of the
relation between friends, between enemies, between children, etc.
Such relationships are among the most obvious features of society
and consequently it seems an elaboration of the obvious to inquire
into their nature. Social relationship represents fundamental ways of
organizing social data. In short, a society may be viewed, if one
wishes, as a system of relationships.

In analyzing social relationships, one soon finds them more

complicated than they first appear. They involve reciprocal
obligations, reciprocal statuses, and reciprocal ends and means
between two or more actors in mutual contact. They refer to form or
pattern of interaction between individuals.

Any society contains hundreds and perhaps thousands of socially

defined relationships. The immediate family alone may contain as
many as fifteen. How many relationships a society utilizes is simply
a matter of how many criteria it takes into account in defining
behaviour between individuals? The fifteen relationships of the
immediate family rest on three criteria — age, sex and generation.
Outside the family, an infinite number of criteria may be used, so
there is no limit to the number of possible relationships.

It follows that to catalogue all the meaningful relationships in which

human beings are involved would be a never-ending task. Instead,
they may be classified and dealt with as general types. Any
classification, however, must have some point to it. In social
sciences, as in all sciences, classification is worthless unless it seizes
upon traits that are significant, traits that facilitate causal analysis.
For this reason, social relationships have been classified and
discussed in terms of the kind of interaction they manifest. The most
important kinds of interaction singled out for consideration here are
conflict, competition and cooperation. Each of these has several sub-
types, but mention of the main ones alone is enough to demonstrate
that a proper understanding of the forms of interaction is essential to
the understanding of society.

Acc to Merrill, social interaction is the general process where by two

or more persons are in meaningful contact and communication as a
result of which their behavior is modified slightly. There are two
kinds of social interaction. They are contact and communication.

Social interaction by definition involves contact, and contact

necessarily requires a material or sensory medium. It need not of
course require the impingement of one body directly upon another,
but it does require the occurrence of direct or indirect sensory
stimulation between the interacting parties. The material medium,
however, is only a necessary, not a sufficient basis of contact.
Individuals can be in material contact without being in social contact.
For example, two tribes living on opposite sides of swamp and
having nothing to do with each other may nevertheless be bitten by
mosquitoes that continually carry malaria from one tribe to another.
It is not merely physical contact that counts, but meaningful or
symbolic contact. Good will may be expressed by either handshake
or a spoken phrase, a letter or a smile. Added to the sensory stimulus
is a meaningful stimulus. The social behaviour of human beings
consists of acquired responses to the meaningful responses of others.
Human interaction in other words, is communicative interaction. The
social behaviour of human beings consists of acquired responses to
the meaningful responses of others. Human interaction, in other
words, is communicative interaction.
The essential feature of communication is that one person infers from
the behaviour of another (whether speech, gesture or posture) what
idea or feeling the other person is trying to convey. He then reacts
not to the behaviour as such but to the inferred idea or feeling. The
other person then reacts to his response in terms of the idea or
feeling-the meaning behind it. When a girl receives flowers, she
looks at them and smells them, but her main interest is in the person
who sent them and why. Were they sent to end a quarrel, to mark an
anniversary, to cement a promise, to say farewell, to brighten an
illness? Unless she can answer such questions, she will feel a loss,
not knowing what to do. It is the meanings behind the behaviour that
are involved in the system of mutual expectations previously
described as being present in the interacting situation.

Check Your Progress I

Note: a) Use the space provided for your answer.

b) Check your answers with those provided at the end of

this unit.

1) Comment “social relationships are best described in terms

of kinds of interaction” they manifest.
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3.3 FORMS OF SOCIAL INTERACTION

Conflict

The conflict process is little praised but widely practiced. It develops

whenever a person or group seeks to gain a reward not by surpassing
other competitors, but by preventing them from effectively
competing. It is formally defined as the process of seeking to obtain
rewards by eliminating or weakening the competitors.

Conflict is an ever-present process in human relations. It may be

solved at one level as when there is agreement on ends and break out
afresh over the question of means. You may raise a profound
question as to why conflict is such a constant feature of human
society. The answer lies in the basic nature of human society. Human
society is not a tightly compressed affair but instead has a loose
integration. The integration is not on a biological level rather its
mental level. It must be renewed and maintained constantly through
psychological processes such as indoctrination, inspiration and
repetition. It must somehow rest on the possession of common and
extra-personal ends on the part of its members. These ends cannot
come from man’s biological but only from communicative contact
with his fellows. Accordingly, therefore they differ greatly from one
society to another because they are associated with differences of
culture. This, then, gives first basis of conflict – ethnocentrism – the
dislike of people with different culture and different ultimate ends
from one’s own. Those with the same set of ultimate ends cling
together and identify themselves with one another, while those with a
different set of ends also do the same. A social group, furthermore,
has a corporate character a name, a common leadership, a
determinate structure, a sense of familiarity. Individuals identify
themselves with this corporate entity and conceive their ultimate duty
as loyalty to it, whether it be a clan, a tribe, a city-state, a religious
sect, or a nation.

Types of Conflict

Conflict expresses itself in numerous ways and in various degrees

and over every range of human contact. Its modes are always
changing with changing social and cultural conditions. “Social
Conflict” includes all activity in which men contend against one
another for any objective. Its two fundamental types are direct and
indirect conflict.
i) Direct Conflict: When individuals or groups thwart or impede
or restrain or injure or destroy one another in an effort to attain
some goal, direct conflict occurs. Milder thwarting or
frustration of goal attainment is involved in such forms as
litigation, polemic, propagandistic activity and much of the
struggle of the organized economic groups for larger stakes.
ii) Indirect Conflict: When individuals or groups do not
actually impede the efforts of one another but nevertheless seek to
attain their ends in ways which obstruct the attainment of the same
ends by others, indirect conflict occurs. Competition is impersonal
conflict between individuals for attainment of any objects of desire
that are limited in supply, whether income or academic honours or
beautiful women for social prestige. The competition does not as
such directly interfere with the efforts of another to attain such goals
but only indirectly with the other person’s success.
In distinguishing these two forms, the reader should note that not all
struggles in which man is engaged is social conflict of either type.
We are struggling to master difficulties, to overcome obstacles, to
achieve ends in ways other than through conflict with our fellow
human beings. Man’s “battle” with the physical environment is a
case in point. Social conflict, man against man or group against
group, reveals itself wherever there is society. But unless co-
operation penetrates deeper than conflict, society cannot endure.
Mechanisms to Deal with Conflict

There are of course social mechanisms that smoothen conflict. One

of these is humour, which removes the tension that might otherwise
expend itself in physical violence. Another is social distance or
avoidance. A third is sentiment formation, which overcomes the
conflict of interests of the antagonistic parties. A fourth is variety and
change, which for an existing situation is more tolerable if it is
known that it will not last long. A fifth is organized rivalry, which
provides an opportunity for simulated battle, for intense group
loyalty, for the manifestation of prowess in vanquishing others, and
yet because the interaction has a set form and definite conclusion, it
allows the energies to be expended either harmlessly or to the
advantage of the society.
It is clear however that such mechanisms are not universally
successful. Humor, social distance, noble sentiments, social change,
organized rivalry – these may on occasion provoke rather than
prevent conflict. The truth is that there are elements of conflict in all
situations, because the ends of different individuals are always to
some extent mutually exclusive. Conflict is a part of human society
because of the kind of entity that human society is.

Check Your Progress II

Note: a) Use the Space provided for your answer.

b) Check your answers with the model answers

provide at the end of this unit.

1) Explain meaning of the term ‘conflict’ in your own

words and discuss why it is ever present in human
society.
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Competition

In contrast to conflict, which aims to destroy or do away with the

opponent, competition simply aims to out-do the competitor in
achieving some mutually desired goal. It is thus a modified form of
struggle. It implies that there are rules of the game to which the
competitors must conform and that behind these rules, justifying and
maintaining them, is a common set of values superior to the
competitive interest. It also implies an absence of coercion. The rules
are so arranged that the ends must be obtained by other methods than
fraud or physical force. Consider an example: if a chain stores take
business away from the local merchants by offering goods at cheaper
prices that is competition. If on the other hand, the small merchants
induce the government to tax the chain stores out of existence, that is
not competition because state is then exercising its power of
coercion. The rules of competition limit the means that may be used
to gain the competitive end; they tend especially to eliminate force
and fraud. When competition breaks through the rules it transforms
itself into conflict.
Competition is the struggle for possession of rewards, which are in
limited supply: money, goods, status, power, and love- anything. It
may be formally defined as the process of seeking to obtain a reward
by surpassing other rivals. While competition is present to some
degree in all the societies, it differs greatly in degree from society to
society. The fiercely competitive Kwakiutl and the relatively non-
competitive Zuni offer a striking contrast. The Kwakiutl work very
hard to accumulate wealth, which is used primarily to establish status
rather than to provide material comfort. The competition for status
reaches its height at the famous “potlatch,” in which the chiefs and
leading families come with each other to see how much they can give
away or destroy. A family may spend lifetime accumulating wealth,
then bankrupt themselves in a single potlatch, thereby establishing
the social status of their children. Members of a family who persisted
in keeping their wealth would be criticized for their unwillingness to
do “anything” for their children. The Zuni on the other hand, disdain
any emphasis on the accumulation of wealth or the demonstration of
individual skill. Most wealth is owned by the entire community and it
is bad to demonstrate individual superiority of any kind. Thus, the
Zuni child does not grow up believing that he should make the most
money, get the highest grades or run the fastest race.

Even such strong encouragement of competition as is found among

the Kwakiutl does not mean that cooperation is completely absent.
As the anthropologist Margaret Mead points out—

Nevertheless, no society is exclusively competitive or exclusively

cooperative. The very existence of highly competitive groups implies
cooperation within the groups. Both competitive and cooperative
habits must exist within the society.

Check Your Progress III

Note: a) Use the space provided for your answer.

b) Check your answers with those provided at the end

of this unit.

1) What do you understand by term the competition and how

it is different from conflict?

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2) Discuss the nature of competition in contemporary society.

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Co-operation

Cooperation is derived from Latin words, co meaning together and

operari meaning to work. It may be formally defined as joint activity
in pursuit of common goals or shared rewards. Cooperation may be
found in groups as small as a dyad (group of two persons) and as
large as United Nations. Cooperation implies a regard for the wishes
of other people and is often regarded as unselfish, but humans may
also find that their selfish goals are best served when working
together with their fellow human beings.

Men cannot associate without co-operating, or without working

together in the pursuit of like or common interests. The modes of
cooperation in social life may be divided into two principal types:

i) Direct Co-operation: Under this category we include all those

activities in which people do like doing things together—play
together, worship together, till the fields together, or even
labour together in myriad ways. In such activities, there may be
minor diversities of task—you wash, l will dry—but their
essential character is that people do work in each other’s
company the things which they can also do separately or in
isolation. They do them together, either because the face-to-face
situation is itself a stimulus to the performance of the task or
because it brings some other social satisfaction. Direct
cooperation is exemplified also when people perform together
 tasks that would be difficult for one of them to perform alone as
when they pull together on a line or together storm a barricade.
ii) Indirect Co-operation: Under this category we include all those
activities in which people do unlike tasks but are directed
towards a single end. Here the principle of the division of
labour comes into play, a principle that is embedded in the very
nature of social life. The division of labour is revealed in the
procreation of life and in the upbringing of a family. It is
revealed whenever people pool their differences for common
ends. In industry, in government, in scientific research, even in
recreational activities, functions tend to become more and more
specialized. This process is more manifest in urban than in rural
life, but the disappearance of the “husking bees” and “thrashing
rings” signal the fact the people have to satisfy in other ways
the need for social stimulation formerly satisfied through direct
co-operation.

The replacement of direct by indirect cooperation has accompanied

our great technological advances, which clearly require specialization
of skills and functions. But in terms of human needs, this is not all
gain. It is often claimed that the individual of modern industrialized
and urbanized society, increasingly separated from face-to-face co-
operative modes of activity and more and more, a “specialist”
detached from close ties of intimate community life, tends to take on
the highly individualized, neurotic characteristics as depicted by a
growing number of writers.

There is also Primary co-operation, which is found in primary group

such as family, peer group, clubs, etc. Here there is the identities
given importance and also each member work for the betterment of
all and rewards will be shared among them. Secondary co-operation
is characteristic feature of modern society because in the relationship
will be highly formalized and specialized. e.g.; in different political
parties different NGO’s, trade unions.

Co-operation is commonly believed to be the opposite of

competition. This is not true if it means that in a given situation one
necessarily excludes the other. A cooperating group is one that is
working together to accomplish a goal that all desire. In many case it
is realized that competition will aid the attainment of this goal and so
a system of competition is allowed or deliberately instituted. The
Soviet government learnt early in its history that competition for high
pay has a stimulating effect on productivity. Since Russia’s great
need was to increase production by leaps and bounds, it developed an
ingenious system of “socialist competition”.

Unless competition enhances the overall goal of the society it will

find critics aplenty. So long as it is controlled and institutionalized, it
is presumably a means by which the cooperation of all is
accomplished. In reality it is conflict rather than competition that is
the opposite of cooperation. Yet cooperation may occur without
making internal use of competition and between two competitors the
overarching elements of cooperation may be lost from sight. In fact,
each of two competitors trying to outstrip each other may view his
organization as cooperating within itself but not cooperating at all
with the other organizations. Often, therefore the ultimate
cooperative effect of competition escapes awareness; the closer and
more intimate cooperation of the organized group is the center of
attention. This is what gives the illusion that competition and
cooperation are necessarily opposed.
The Interrelation of the Forms of Interaction

It should be clear that the forms of interaction discussed here—

conflict, competition and cooperation— are all interdependent. They
are ever-present aspects of human society. Any social system, in fact
any concrete situation, will manifest all three in a complex and
intertwined manner. There is no cooperating group, no matter how
harmonious, which will not contain the seeds of suppressed conflict.
There is no conflict, no matter how bitter, which will not have some
hidden basis of compromise. There is no competition, no matter how
impersonal and ruthless, which cannot claim some contribution to a
larger cooperative cause.
It should also be clear that any analysis of social behaviour in terms
of the forms of interaction is an indispensable mode of approaching
social phenomenon.
Assimilation

Whenever groups meet, some mutual interchange or diffusion of

culture takes place. Even groups who seek to prevent such diffusion
do not fully succeed in protecting their culture from all cultural
interchange. This process of mutual cultural diffusion through
which persons and groups come to share a common culture is
called assimilation. It is always a two-way process with each group
contributing varying proportions of the eventual blend, depending
upon respective group size, prestige and other factors.
The assimilation process is nicely illustrated in the Americanisation
of European immigrants. Arriving in great numbers between 1850
and 1913, many of them settled, in immigrant colonies in the
Northern cities. Within these ethnic colonies—Little Italy, Little
Poland and so on—they practiced much of their native European
culture while absorbing some of the American culture. The
immigrant parents often sought to transmit European culture to their
children, while the children generally sought to become American as
rapidly as possible. This conflict often caused parental anguish,
family disorganisation, and loss of parental care, so that many
second-generation immigrants became confused, rebellious and
delinquent. As the third generation matured, the assimilation
difficulties generally subsided; Americanisation became fairly
complete, and the ethnic colony disappeared as the descendents
scattered over city and suburb (Thomas and Znaniecki, 1927).
Assimilation reduces group conflicts by blending differing groups
into larger, culturally homogenous groups. The bitter riots against the
Irish and the discrimination against Scandinavians in the United
States have disappeared as assimilation has erased the group
differences and blurred the sense of separate group identity.
Anything, which binds people into a larger group, will tend to reduce
rivalry and conflict between them. This is strikingly illustrated by an
experiment, which involved the experimental formation of different
groupings at a summer camp (Sherif and Sherif, 1953). The boys
were all from the same community and were similar in religion,
social class, status, age and national background. For the first
experimental period they were treated as single group, and they
showed no signs of incipient social conflict. In the second
experimental period they were divided into two groups who were
housed separately and encouraged to develop separate programmes
of activities. The groups took the names of “Red Devils” and “Bull
Dogs.” Group antagonism quickly developed and physical violence
between the groups reached the point where it had to be suppressed
by the adult leaders.

This experiment shows how, even when there are no real differences
or issues to fight over, conflict tends to develop wherever separate
group identity is recognized. Assimilation removes some, but not all
possible pressures towards conflict.

Check Your Progress IV

Note: a) Use the space provided for your answer.

b) Check your answers with those provided at the end

of this unit.

1) Explain meaning of the term assimilation and how it

reduces group conflict in your own words.

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3.4 SOCIAL CONTROL

Social control means the way in which the entire social order coheres
and maintains itself—how it operates as a whole, as a changing
equilibrium.
The study of social control – the means through which people are led
to fill their roles as expected – begins with the study of social order
within which people interact. Consider, for example, the orderly
arrangements, which underlie the bustling confusion of a great city.
Tens of thousands of people take their places and perform their tasks
with no apparent direction. Thousands of vehicles butt their way
through clogged lanes, missing by inches, but seldom actually
colliding. Thousands of kinds of merchandise arrive at the proper
places in the proper amounts at the proper times. Ten thousand
people whom an individual never sees will labor on this day so that
meals will be ready for him when needed, drinking fountains will
flow, drains will carry off the wastes, bulbs will blink and glow,
traffic will part to let him pass, and various conveniences, will meet
his other needs. A hundred people may serve him within an hour,
perhaps without a word from him to any of them.

This is what is meant by social order—a system of people,

relationships and customs operating smoothly to accomplish the
work of a society. Unless people know what they may expect from
one another not much will get done. The orderliness of a society rests
upon a network of roles according to which each person accepts
certain duties towards others and claims certain rights from others.
How is this network of reciprocal rights and duties kept in force?
Sociologists use the term social control to describe all the means and
processes whereby a group or a society secures its members’
conformity to its expectations.
How does a group or a society cause its members to behave in the
expected manner which in a number of ways, whose relative
importance is difficult to measure? Following are different modes of
social control:
1) Social Control Through Socialisation
People are controlled mainly by being socialised so that they fill their
roles in expected ways through habit and preference. How do women
in our society tend to give greater emphasis on their family? How do
men tend to shoulder responsibility of their offspring? Mainly by
cultivating within them a set of roles and responsibilities.
Socialisation shapes our customs, our wishes and our habits. The
members of a society are schooled in the same customs and tend to
develop much the same set of habits. Thus habits and customs are
great standardisers of behaviour within a group. If all members of
society share similar socialization experiences, they will voluntarily
and unthinkingly act in very much the same ways. They will conform
to the social expectations without any conscious awareness that they
are doing so.
2) Social Control Through Group Pressure
Most social scientists see social control as primarily a process of
growing out of the individual’s need for status within his primary
groups. Lapiere (1954) claims that these groups are most influential
when they are small and intimate, when the individual expects to
remain in the group for a long time, and when he has frequent
contacts with them. All the authorities agree that our need for
acceptance within the intimate groups is the most powerful lever for
the use of group pressure towards group norms.

Social psychologists (Sherif, 1935; Bovard, 1951) have made a

number of experiments, which show how a person tends to bring his
expressions in line with those of the group. The method in such
experiments usually consists of asking the members for individual
estimates, attitudes or observations on a topic, then informing them
of the group norm, and finally asking for a new expression from each
member. Many of the informants modify their second expression in
the direction of the group norm. Schachter (1951) has also shown
experimentally how the member who sharply deviates from the group
norms in opinion is rejected by the group.
We often notice that a new member of a group is more carefully
conformist and more fiercely loyal than the old members. Meticulous
conformity is a tool for gaining acceptance and status within a group,
while rejection is the price of nonconformity.

Groups are of two kinds, primary and secondary. For our present
discussion, it is sufficient to note that primary groups are small,
intimate, informal, face-to-face groups like the family, clique or play
group, while secondary groups are larger, more impersonal, more
formal and more utilitarian like a labour union, trade association,
church congregation or student body.

a) Social control through primary group

Within primary groups, control is informal, spontaneous and
unplanned. The members of the group react to the actions of each
member. When a member irritates or annoys the others, they may
show their disapproval through ridicule, laughter, criticism or even
ostracism. When a member’s behaviour is acceptable, a secure and
comfortable “belonging” is his usual reward.

Informal modes of Social control —The folkways and mores

represent the norms or modes of procedure in a society or in a
group—they present to us the most frequent or most accepted or
most standardized ways of doing this or that. They are regulative,
exerting pressure upon individual and group to conform to the norms.
Following are the general functions of mores in social life—
i) The mores determine much of our individual behaviour. They
are the compelling and forbidding apparatus of the social world that
constantly exerts pressure on every member.
ii) The mores identify individual within the group. If on the one
hand, the mores exert a pressure upon the individual to conform to
the ways of his community or social class or sex, the individual, on
the other, gains identification with his fellows by conforming. He
thus maintains those social bonds that are clearly essential for
satisfactory living.
In traditional Indian society, three social institutions that used to
exercise great control over conduct of its members are joint family,
caste system and panchayat. Earlier on, in all three contexts any
instance of non-conformity used to be a rarity. Now with the advent
of industrialization and urbanization these social institutions have
started disintegrating and informal social control is gradually
replaced by formal social control.
b) Social Control through Secondary Group

As we shift from primary to secondary group situations, we also shift

from informal to formal modes of social controls. Secondary groups
are generally larger, more impersonal and specialised in purpose. We
do not use
them to meet our needs for intimate human response, but to help us
to get certain jobs done. If a secondary group does not meet our
needs, we can generally withdraw with no greater anguish, for our
emotional lives are not deeply involved. To maintain our status in the
secondary group is desirable but not a desperate emotional necessity
as it is in the primary group. True, it is possible in our society for
people to change their primary groups—leave their families, divorce
their mates, find new friends—but the process is generally painful.
The secondary group is a less compelling control agency than the
primary group.
The secondary group is still an effective control. Some of the
informal controls still operate in the secondary groups. No normal
person wants to appear ridiculous at the union meeting or at the
Chamber of Commerce banquet. Such informal controls such as
ridicule, laughter, gossip and ostracism operate in secondary group
settings but generally with a reduced impact. Meanwhile, other more
formal controls are characteristic of secondary groups are
parliamentary rules of order, official regulations and standardised
procedures, propaganda, promotion and titles, rewards and prizes,
formal penalties and punishments etc.
2) Social Control Through Force
Many primitive societies succeeded in controlling the behaviour of
individuals through the mores, reinforced by the informal controls of
the primary group, so that no formal laws or punishments were
necessary. But with larger populations and more complex cultures,
formal governments, laws and punishments are developed. Wherever
it becomes possible for the individual to get lost in the crowd,
informal controls are inadequate and formal controls are necessary.
For example, in joint family, it is practical enough to exercise control
over conduct of each and every member and punish him/her in case
of any misconduct on his/her part. But in a town of thousands of
people, it would be impossible to keep tab on each person informally.
Some system of assigning work and distributing rewards becomes
necessary. Thus, with larger populations and cultural complexity
comes a shift to impersonal secondary group controls—laws,
regulations and formalised procedures.
When the individual does not wish to follow these regulations, the
group tries to compel him to do so. In such larger groups, he is too
anonymous for informal group pressures to be brought upon him.
Furthermore, in larger groups with complex cultures, some
subcultures that conflict with the culture of the majority are also
likely to develop. The individual who rejects the conventional
regulations of the society may find emotional support from other
persons who think and act as he does. Although he is still subject to
group pressure, it now comes from a non-conforming group, which
insulates him from the pressures of conventional society. So,
conventional society uses force upon him—force in the form of laws
and formal punishments—to compel his conformity.

3.5 LET SUM UP

Social processes discussed above are found in all the societies,
although there is great variation in emphasis. Cooperation may be
personal or impersonal, deliberate or symbiotic in character. Primary
groups demand highly personalized cooperation; secondary- group
cooperation is found in most organized social groups.
Competition serves the function of allocating scarce rewards among
the competitors. It has the additional function of stimulating both
individual and group activity in a manner to increase the total
productivity, but it also discourages the efforts of those who
regularly fail.
Conflict develops when attention shifts from the contest itself to an
effort to eliminate rivals. Different mechanisms of eliminating social
conflict have been discussed in preceding pages. Assimilation is also
one mechanism of reducing conflict between two conflicting groups
through fusion of two cultures.
Further, social control has been discussed in great detail as one of the
mechanism of maintaining social order — how it operates as a
whole, as a changing equilibrium. Further there are different modes
of maintaining this social control. Individuals are led to conform to
social norms through socialization and also through group pressure.
In primary groups, informal modes of social control play prominent
role such as ridicule, laughter, folkways and mores etc. As we move
on to the secondary groups these informal modes of social control
cease to play important role. Here informal modes of social control
are replaced by much formal modes such as formalized rules,
regulations, laws and punishment etc.

3.6 KEY WORDS

Social Control : Social control may be
defined as any social to cultural
means by which systematic and
relatively consistent restraints are
imposed upon individual
behaviour and by which human
being are persuaded and
motivated to behave in
accordance with the traditions,
 patterns and value framework
thought necessary for the smooth
functioning of a group or society.
Social order : A condition/situation of a
society/group characterized by
the predominance of harmonious
social relationships.
Human behaviour : Any response or reaction of an
individual i.e. anything and
individual does, says, things or
feels.

3.7 SUGGESTED READINGS

Davis K. (1954), “Human Society”, McGraw-Hill Book
Company, New York.
MacIver, R.M. and Page (1964), “Society: An Introductory
Analysis”, Macmillan Press Ltd. London.

3.8 ANSWERS TO CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

Check Your Progress I

1) Any society contains hundreds and perhaps thousands
of socially defined relationships. The immediate family
alone may contain as many as fifteen. How many
relationships a society utilizes is simply a matter of how
many criteria it takes into account in defining behaviour
between individuals? The fifteen relationships of the
immediate family rest on three criteria-age, sex and
generation. Outside the family an infinite number of
criteria may be used , so there is no limit to the number
of possible relationships.
It follows that to catalogue all the meaningful
relationships in which human beings are involved would
be a never-ending task. Instead, they must be classified
and dealt with as general types. Any classification,
however must have some point to it. In social sciences,
as in all natural and physical sciences, classification is
worthless unless it seizes upon traits that are significant
traits that facilitate causal analysis. For this reason,
 social relationships have been classified and discussed
in terms of the kind of interaction they manifest.
Check Your Progress II
1) Conflict is formally defined as the process of seeking to
obtain rewards by eliminating or weakening the
competitors.
Conflict is an ever-present process in human relations.
It may be solved at one level, as when there is
agreement on ends, and break out anew over the
question of means. One may raise a profound question
as to why conflict is such a constant feature of human
society. The answer lies in the basic nature of human
society. Human society is not a tightly compressed
affair, but instead, has loose integration. The
integration is not on a biological, but on a mental level.
It must be created anew and constantly maintained
through psychic processes such as indoctrination,
inspiration and repetition. It must somehow rest on the
possession of common and extra-personal ends on the
part of its members. These ends cannot come from
man’s biological, but only from communicative contact
with his fellows; they thus differ greatly from one
society to another because they are associated with
differences of culture. This, then, given first basis of
conflict-ethnocentrism- the dislike of people with
different culture and different ultimate ends from one’s
own.
Check Your Progress III
1) In contrast to conflict, which aims to destroy or
liquidate the opponent, competition simply aims to out-
do the competitor in achieving some mutually desired
goal. It is thus, a modified form of struggle. It implies
that there are rules of game to which the competitors
must conform and that behind these rules, justifying and
maintaining them, is a common set of values superior to
the competitive interest. It also implies an absence of
coercion. The rules are so arranged that the ends must
be obtained by other methods than fraud or physical
force.

2) Present day society is characterized by excessive

amount of competition. Today man overlooks the
institutions and rules, which alone make competition
 work- the protection of property, the enforcement of
contracts, the prevention of fraud. He overlooks the
common ends and values which are not competitive, but
which are superior to those that are. He forgets that
competition can be vicious as well as beneficent, that it
can lead to starvation in the midst of plenty, to fear and
insecurity, to instability and panic. Today, we have
forgotten that unlimited competition leads inevitably to
monopoly, that the very success of strong leads to
gigantic power over the weak and creates such
inequality that a mockery is made of free contract.

Check Your Progress IV

1) Whenever groups meet, some mutual interchange or

diffusion of culture takes place. Even groups which
seek to prevent such diffusion do not fully succeed in
protecting their culture from all cultural interchange.
This process of mutual cultural diffusion through which
persons and groups come to share common culture is
called assimilation.
Assimilation reduces group conflicts by blending
differing groups into larger, culturally homogenous
groups. The bitter riots against the Irish and the
discrimination against Scandinavians in the United
States have disappeared as assimilation has erased the
group differences and blurred the sense of separate
group identity. Anything, which binds people into a
larger group, will tend to reduce rivalry and conflict
between them.