Pluralities and Inequalities Among Societies

In the contemporary world, we belong, in a sense, to more than one society. When we are amidst foreigners, a reference to “our society” may mean Indian society. But when we are amongst fellow Indians, the same phrase can denote a linguistic or ethnic community, a religious, caste, or tribal society. This diversity makes deciding which “society” we are talking about genuinely difficult.

This difficulty of mapping society is not confined to sociologists alone. The great Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray once reflected on what to focus on in his films, and his wondering captures the same problem. What should you put in your films? What can you leave out? Would you leave the city behind and go to the village where cows graze in the endless fields and the shepherd plays the flute? You could make a film there that would be pure and fresh, with the delicate rhythm of a boatman’s song. Or would you rather go back in time, way back to the Epics, where gods and demons took sides in a great battle where brothers killed brothers? Or would you stay where you are, right in the present, in the heart of this monstrous, teeming, bewildering city, and try to orchestrate its dizzying contrasts of sight and sound and milieu?

Ray’s dilemma shows that the plurality of Indian society is not an abstract academic problem. It is something every thinking person confronts. The same society contains the village and the metropolis, the ancient and the modern, the sacred and the chaotic. This is the plural character of society itself.

Along with plurality, there is inequality. Societies are not just different from one another; they are also marked by unequal access to resources, opportunities, and dignity. The textbook asks you to discuss the visuals and think about what kinds of pluralities and inequalities they show. This is a reminder that diversity and inequality often coexist — a society can be plural in its cultures and yet deeply unequal in its social structure.

Our everyday life is full of notions about our own society and about others’ societies. These are our everyday notions, our common sense, in terms of which we live our lives. But the observations and ideas that sociology as a discipline makes about society are different from both philosophical reflections and common sense.

Observations of philosophical and religious thinkers are often about what is moral or immoral in human behaviour, about the desirable way of living, and about a good society. Sociology too concerns itself with norms and values. But its focus is not on norms and values as they ought to be, as goals that people should pursue. Its concern is with the way they function in actual societies. In other words, the philosopher asks what a good society should look like; the sociologist asks how the norms and values of a real society actually operate in practice.

Empirical study of societies is an important part of what sociologists do. This does not mean that sociology is not concerned with values. It only means that when a sociologist studies a society, the sociologist is willing to observe and collect findings, even if they are not to her or his personal liking. Peter Berger makes an unusual but effective comparison to make this point — the sociologist, like a detective or a scientist, must report what is found, not what one wishes to find.