Sociology

1. RESOURCE PERSON: IFFAT KHALID
LECTURER
DEPARTMENT OF HUMANITIES

3. WHAT IS SOCIETY
• Society is a concept used to describe the structured relations and institutions among a large
community of people which cannot be reduced to a simple collection or aggregation of
individuals.
• The concept of society can be traced to the fourteenth century, when the primary meaning was
companionship or association, a meaning which still exists today. However, the specific
sociological meaning of society was not developed until the nineteenth century.
• A strong argument can be made for the view that it was Emile Durkheim who first developed
the sociological meaning of ‘society’ which he used when he established sociology as a new
discipline which dealt with the collective reality of human life as opposed to studying
individuals.

4. TYPES OF SOCIETY
Following are the five major types of society
• Hunting and Gathering Societies
• Horticultural and Pastoral Societies
• Agrarian (agricultural) Societies
• Industrial Societies
• Post-industrial Societies

6. HUNTING AND GATHERING SOCIETIES
• The oldest societies that existed almost 250,000 years ago.
• Hunting and food-gathering constitute the main occupation of such societies.
• There exists a simple division of labour based on age and gender.
• Men do most of the hunting and women most of the gathering
• These societies are fairly egalitarian (i-e women and men in these societies are
roughly equal).
• To ensure their mutual survival, everyone is expected to help find food and share the
food.
• These societies tend to be quite small, often consisting of only a few dozen people.
• Private ownership of property is virtually non-existent, so also is exchange and credit.

7. HUNTING AND GATHERING SOCIETIES
• The patterns of economic activity are, thus, simple and undifferentiated.
• Due to intense interdependence hunting-and-gathering peoples tend to be very peaceful,
• The social structure is highly integrated and unified
• The interaction among the members of a tribal society follows the pattern of interaction among the
members of a primary group.
• social control is exercised through folkways and similar other informal ways.
• Religion of the tribal people is expressed in terms of totemism and magic.
Totem refers to an emblematic depiction of an animal or plant that gives a family or clan its name
and that often serves as a reminder of its ancestry.
totemism, system of belief in which humans are said to have kinship or a mystical relationship with
a spirit-being, such as an animal or plant. The entity, or totem, is thought to interact with a given
kin group or an individual and to serve as their emblem or symbol.

8. HUNTING AND GATHERING SOCIETIES
• Over the last 500 years, the
population of hunter-
gatherers has declined dramatic
ally. Today very few exist, with
the Hadza people of Tanzania
being one of the last groups to
live in this tradition.

9. HORTICULTURAL AND PASTORAL SOCIETIES

10. HORTICULTURAL AND PASTORAL SOCIETIES
• Horticultural and pastoral societies both developed about 10,000–12,000 years ago.
• In horticultural societies, people use hoes and other simple hand tools to raise crops.
• Horticultural societies tend to be less nomadic, as they are able to keep growing their
crops in the same location for some time.
• In pastoral societies, people raise and herd sheep, goats, camels, and other domesticated
animals
• They use them as their major source of food and also, depending on the animal, as a
means of transportation.
• Pastoral societies tend to be at least somewhat nomadic, as they often have to move to
find better grazing land for their animals.
• Some societies are either primarily horticultural or pastoral, while other societies combine
both forms.

11. • Both types of societies often manage to produce a surplus of food from vegetable or
animal sources, respectively, and this surplus allows them to trade their extra food with
other societies.
• It also allows them to have a larger population size than hunting-and-gathering societies
that often reaches several hundred members.
• Horticultural and pastoral societies have greater inequality in terms of gender and wealth
than is found in hunting-and-gathering societies.
• In pastoral societies, wealth stems from the number of animals a family owns, and families
with more animals are wealthier and more powerful than families with fewer animals.
• In horticultural societies, wealth stems from the amount of land a family owns, and families
with more land are wealthier and more powerful.
• The greater complexity and wealth of horticultural and pastoral societies generates greater
conflict.
• The differences in wealth leads to disputes and even fighting over land and animals.

13. AGRARIAN OR AGRICULTURAL SOCIETIES
• Agricultural societies developed some 5,000 years ago in the Middle East with the invention of
the plow.
• When pulled by oxen and other large animals, the plow allowed for much more cultivation of
crops than the simple tools of horticultural societies permitted.
• The wheel was also invented about the same time, and written language and numbers began to
be used.
• The development of agricultural societies thus marked a watershed in the development of
human society.
• Ancient Egypt, China, Greece and Rome were all agricultural societies. Pakistan, India and many
other large nations even today remain primarily agricultural.
• Due to the greater food production these societies become quite large, with their numbers
sometimes reaching into the millions.
• Their huge food surpluses lead to extensive trade, both within the society itself and with other
societies.

14. AGRARIAN OR AGRICULTURAL SOCIETIES
• The surpluses and trade both lead to degrees of wealth unknown in the earlier types
of societies.
• This leads to unprecedented inequality.
• This inequality of wealth caused for the first time the appearance of peasants, people
who work on the land of rich landowners.
• Agricultural societies’ greater size and inequality also produce more conflict, both on
internal as well as external levels.
• A form of internal conflicts is rich landowners’ struggle with each other for even
greater wealth and power.
• The example of External conflicts is the struggle of governments of these societies to
seek other markets for trade and greater wealth.

15. AGRARIAN OR AGRICULTURAL SOCIETIES
• Gender inequality becomes very pronounced in agricultural societies
• It is because men do more of the physical labor in agricultural societies—labor on
which these societies depend—they have acquired greater power over women.

17. INDUSTRIAL SOCIETIES
• Industrial societies emerged in the 1700s as the development of machines and then
factories replaced the plow and other agricultural equipment as the primary mode of
production.
• Due to marked transformation brought by industry in many of the world’s societies the
period from about 1750 to the late 1800s is called the Industrial Revolution.
• On the Positive side, industrialization brought about technological advances that improved
people’s health and living styles.
• For a greater emphasis on individualism in industrial societies, people in these societies
typically enjoy greater political freedom than those in older societies.
• Industrial societies also have lowered economic and gender inequality.
• On the negative side, industrialization meant the rise and growth of large cities and
concentrated poverty and degrading conditions in these cities.

18. INDUSTRIAL SOCIETIES
• his urbanization changed the character of social life by creating a more impersonal
and less traditional Gesellschaft society.
• It also led to riots and other urban violence
• It helped the rise of the modern police force and forced factory owners to improve
workplace conditions.
• Today industrial societies consume most of the world’s resources
• They have polluted the environment to an unprecedented degree
• They have compiled nuclear arsenals that could undo thousands of years of human
society in an instant.
• Religion was divorced from the public life and made a personal matter to the larger
extent.

19. POSTINDUSTRIAL SOCIETIES
• We are increasingly living in what has been called the information technology
age
• Wireless technology vies with machines and factories as the basis for our
economy.
• Compared to industrial economies, we now have many more service jobs, ranging
from housecleaning to secretarial work to repairing computers.
• In postindustrial societies, then, information technology and service jobs have
replaced machines and manufacturing jobs as the primary dimension of the
economy
• the smartphone or netbook/laptop is the sign of the economic and social future
in the early years of the 21st century.
• Cell phone, computer, and software companies are dominant industries at the
beginning of the 21st century, with workers huddled over their wireless

20. POSTINDUSTRIAL SOCIETIES
• The Industrial Revolution has now been replaced by the Information Revolution,
and we now have what has been called an information society
• Some scholars fear that the information age will aggravate the disparities we
already have between the “haves” and “have-nots” of society.
• Postindustrial societies may also have a leg up over industrial or, especially,
agricultural societies as the world moves ever more into the information age.

21. LIMITS OF TECHNOLOGY
• What is technology?
• Basic technology was hammer, plow , shelter etc
• Modern technology: mobile, laptop, speaker etc
• Limits of technology
• 1.. Natural limit
• 2.. Economical Limit
• 3.. Ethical Limit

22. LIMITS OF TECHNOLOGY
• Natural Limit
• The laws of physics tell us that we cannot travel faster than the speed of light. So no matter what technology we come
up with, we believe that no spaceship will ever be able to break that. Another kind of natural limit is a logical limit:
something can't be true and untrue at the same time. For example there's no way for technology to allow us to use every
inch of land on Earth and also protect every natural ecosystem. Technology can help us protect the environment by
finding ways to achieve the same thing with fewer resources, but there's only so much it can do.
• Economic Limits:
• It's possible that certain things are within the reach of technology but are so expensive that they're completely
impractical. Medicines for therapy etc
• Ethical Limits
• genetic engineering, cloning, artificial intelligence, surveillance, cybernetics, and biological warfare

23. SOCIETIES
 What Holds Societies Together?
 People's norms, beliefs, and values make up a collective consciousness, or a shared way of understanding and behaving in the world. The collective
consciousness binds individuals together and creates social integration.
 How Have Societies Changed?
 Some of the more important of these changes include commercialization, increasing division of labour, growth of production, formation of nation-states,
bureaucratization, growth of technology and science, secularization, urbanization, spread of literacy, increasing geographic and social mobility, and growth
……
• Why Do Societies Change?
• Social change can evolve from a number of different sources, including contact with other societies (diffusion), changes in the
ecosystem (which can cause the loss of natural resources or widespread disease), technological change (epitomized by
the Industrial Revolution, which created a new social group, the urban proletariat), and population growth and
other demographic variables. Social change is also spurred by ideological, economic, and political movements.