Principles and Techniques of Veterinary and AH Extension

BASIC CONCEPTS IN SOCIOLOGY

• Society is a group of people who have lived together, sharing common values and general interests, long enough to be considered by others and by themselves as a unit.
• Society has both structural and functional elements
• Structure is a systematic arrangement of characteristics of a society, the smaller parts arranged to form a larger.

System	Organizations	State
Organ	Group	District
Tissue	Family	Block
Cell	Individual	Village

Structural elements

• Identity: Refers to the characteristics by which one society may be differentiated from the other. e.g. residence, caste, religion etc.
• Composition: Refers to makeup of the society. e.g.: male-female, educated-uneducated, rural-urban etc.
• Intergroup relation: Refers to relationship between groups. e.g.: relationships between villages, castes, classes etc.
• Intragroup relation: Refers to relationship within the group; e.g., between husband and wife or between families in a village.
  • Function involves the services provided by one component to another within the same social structure.

Functional elements

• Objectives or ends: Refer to changes or things which members of the group are expected to accomplish through their interaction and activities. e.g., to attain higher productivity or income from an enterprise.
• Norms: Refer to rules or the guiding standards which prescribe what is socially acceptable or unacceptable.
• Leadership: Refers to a process through which a person directs, guides and influences the thought, feeling and behaviour of other members of the society such as land, ponds, animals, etc.
• Resources: Refers to various types of resources and potentialities a society possess.
  • Change means some aspect of function or structure which differs at later times from what it was at earlier times. It involves the process of disorganization, organization or reorganization.
  • Groups are defined as two or more people in reciprocal interaction with one another.
  • Institutions are ‘crystallized mechanisms’ and are clearly defined ways in which society meets its needs that have existed long enough to become embedded in the social structures.
    • e.g.: Government bodies, school systems, the Panchayat or village council, religious system.
  • Organizations are groups with special concerns and interests that have developed a structure involving specific roles for various members and that have a more or less formal set of rules and regulations for operation.
  • Communities and Neighborhoods are groups of people living within a contiguous geographic area, sharing common values and a feeling of belonging to the group who come together in the common concerns of daily life.
    • Society
    • Community
    • Neighbourhood