Sociology · Ch 2 — Terms, Concepts and their use in Sociology
Social Groups and Society
Social Groups and Society
Drawn by us to help you understand the concept clearly, and verified to make sure it's accurate. For exams, practice from your NCERT textbook's own diagram.
A loose street cluster around a motorbike, and a row of people sitting against a shopfront wall, are both examples of AGGREGATES -- people who happen to occupy the same physical space without necessarily sharing an ongoing sense of identity, interaction, or mutual obligation. The chapter uses images like this to sharpen the distinction between a true social GROUP, whose members are bound by shared norms, roles and a sense of b …
Sociology begins with the basic observation that human beings everywhere interact, communicate and form collectivities, though the exact form these collectivities take differs from society to society. Not every gathering of people counts as a social group in the sociological sense: passengers at a bus stop or a cinema audience are simply an 'aggregate' — people who happen to share a place and time but have no real connection to each other. Somewhere between an aggregate and a full-fledged group sits the 'quasi-group' — a category such as a social class, a caste, an age group or a crowd, whose members may share a position but are not yet organised around a shared sense of 'we'. Quasi-groups can, under the right historical conditions, turn into real social groups — a caste can become the base of a political party, a shared experience of colonial rule can help forge a scattered population into a nation. A genuine social group, by contrast, is marked by continuing interaction, a stable pattern to that interaction, a shared sen …
| Heading | A movement | An organisation/party |
|---|---|---|
| Caste | An anti-caste movement | A caste based political party |
| Class | A class based movement | A class based political party |
| Women | A women's movement | A women's organisation |
| Tribe | A tribal movement | A tribe/tribes based political party |