- Explain social structure and social stratification, and how both constrain what an individual can do
- Contrast Durkheim’s idea of social constraint with Marx’s stress on human agency
- Name the three forms of advantage: life chances, social status, political influence
- Compare the functionalist and conflict ways of understanding cooperation, competition and conflict
- Explain mechanical and organic solidarity, alienation, and enforced vs voluntary cooperation
- Show why competition is a social idea tied to capitalism, and how conflict can stay hidden under cooperation
| Board (2026-27) | Marks for this chapter | Paper |
|---|---|---|
| CBSE (039) | Not examined in 2026-27 (still in the NCERT book) | Theory 80 + project 20 |
| UP Board | 10 marks | One 100-mark theory paper, no project |
| Rajasthan Board (RBSE) | 10 marks | One 100-mark theory paper |
| MP Board | 8 marks | Theory 80 + project 20 |
CBSE students: CBSE has dropped this chapter (its Unit 6) from the 2026-27 exam, so you can treat it as background reading. UP, Rajasthan and MP Board students: your board examines the whole chapter, so learn every section.
1 Introduction: Where Do You Stand in Society?
The first book, Introducing Sociology, Class XI (NCERT, 2006), showed that every individual belongs to many overlapping collectivities (groups larger than one person) at once:
Peer group
Friends of your own age
Family and kin
Your family and relatives
Class and gender
Your economic group; being a girl or a boy
Country and region
India, and your own part of it
So each individual has a specific location in the social structure and in the social stratification system. That location decides the level and type of access to social resources: which school a child goes to (or whether she goes at all), the clothes she wears, the food she eats, her leisure, her health care: in short her whole lifestyle. The book’s point: “As in the case of social structure, social stratification constrains individual action.” To constrain means to limit or hold back.
A central concern of sociology is the dialectical relationship between the individual and society: each acts on the other, often pulling in opposite directions. Recall C. Wright Mills’s sociological imagination, which unfolds the interplay between an individual’s biography and society’s history.
To what extent is the individual constrained by the social structure, and to what extent is s/he free of it? Does one’s position in the stratification system govern individual choice? Do structure and stratification shape the way people cooperate, compete and conflict with each other?
2 Social Structure
Social structure: the term points to the fact that society is structured, that is, organised or arranged in particular ways. There are underlying regularities, or patterns, in how people behave and in the relationships they have with one another. The concept of social structure refers to these regularities.
Structures (glossary): constructed frameworks and patterns of organisation, which in some way constrain or direct human behaviour.
2.1 The building metaphor, and its limit
Up to a point, society’s structure is like the structure of a building: walls, a floor and a roof together give it a particular “shape” or form (Giddens 2004: 667). But the book warns that the metaphor is misleading if applied too strictly:
Like a building
- Society has a lasting shape or form
- That shape limits what people inside can do
Unlike a building
- Social structures are made up of human actions and relationships
- They get their pattern from repetition across time and space
- They are rebuilt every day by the people inside them
Because structure exists only through repetition, the ideas of social reproduction (behaviour being repeated so that the structure carries on) and social structure are very closely related.
| Institution | Ways of behaving repeated over the years |
|---|---|
| School | Admission procedures, codes of conduct, annual functions, daily assemblies, in some cases even school anthems |
| Family | Marriage practices, notions of relationships, duties and expectations |
Old members pass away, new members enter, and the institution goes on. Yet changes do take place inside families and schools. So the book describes human societies as buildings “that are at every moment being reconstructed by the very bricks that compose them”. People cooperate to reproduce the structure, they also compete, “often viciously and ruthlessly”, and there is serious conflict too. As the chapter shows later, cooperation can be enforced and so serve to conceal conflict.
Ask grandparents how families and schools have changed and stayed the same; compare families in old films, serials or novels with today’s. Can you describe your family’s structure? Who resisted changes in your school or family, and why? The activity shows structure as both lasting and changing.
2.2 Durkheim: society constrains the individual
A major theme of Emile Durkheim (and of many sociologists since) is that societies exert social constraint over the actions of their members.
Social constraint: the fact that the groups and societies of which we are a part exert a conditioning influence on our behaviour. Durkheim regarded social constraint as one of the distinctive properties of “social facts”.
- Society has primacy (comes first) over the individual person.
- Society is far more than the sum of individual acts; it has a “firmness” or “solidity” like structures in the material environment.
- The room analogy: a person stands in a room with several doors. The walls and doors define the routes of exit and entry. Social structure limits our activities in a parallel way. It is “external” to us, just as the walls are.
When I perform my duties as a brother, a husband or a citizen and carry out the commitments I have entered into, I fulfil my obligations which are defined in law and custom and which are external to myself and my actions…
Durkheim, The Division of Labour in Society (1933), pp. 50-1, quoted in the book’s box
The same box adds: a believer finds the beliefs and practices of his religion “ready fashioned” at birth, so they exist outside him; the signs we use to express thoughts, the monetary system, credit instruments and the practices of a profession all function independently of the individual who uses them.
2.3 Marx: constraint, but also human agency
Karl Marx also stressed the constraints of social structure, but at the same time stressed human creativity or agency (the power to act) to both reproduce and change the structure.
Human beings make history, but not as they wish to or in conditions of their choice, but within the constraints and possibilities of the historical and structural situation that they are in.
Marx’s argument, as given in the chapter
Durkheim
- Society has primacy over the individual
- Structure is “external”, like walls of a room
- Stress on constraint
Marx
- Structure constrains, but people act
- People make history within limits
- Stress on agency to reproduce and change structure
Think of examples of people constrained by social structure, and of individuals who defy it and transform it. Recall socialisation from the first book.
3 Social Stratification
Social stratification refers to the existence of structured inequalities between groups in society, in terms of their access to material or symbolic rewards.
- All societies have some form of stratification; modern societies are often marked by wide differences in wealth and power.
- The most evident form in modern societies is class. Others continue to matter: race and caste, region and community, tribe and gender.
- Stratification, as part of the broader social structure, has its own pattern of inequality. Inequality is not randomly distributed between individuals; it is systematically linked to membership of social groups.
- Members of a privileged group usually see to it that their privileged position is passed on to their children.
The concept of stratification, then, refers to the idea that society is divided into a patterned structure of unequal groups, and usually implies that this structure tends to persist across generations.
Jayaram 1987: 22
3.1 Three basic forms of advantage
Life chances
All material advantages that improve the quality of life: not only wealth and income, but also health, job security and recreation.
Social status
Prestige or high standing in the eyes of other members of society.
Political influence
The ability of one group to dominate others, to have preponderant influence over decision-making, or to benefit from decisions.
The rest of the chapter keeps showing how bases of stratification such as gender or class constrain social processes. The opportunities and resources to compete, cooperate or conflict are shaped by structure and stratification. At the same time, humans do act to modify the structure and the system of stratification.
4 Two Ways of Understanding Social Processes
4.1 Why “human nature” is not an answer
Common sense knowledge is not necessarily false, but it is unexamined and taken for granted. Sociology questions everything. It will not accept that people cooperate, compete or conflict “because it is human nature”. That explanation assumes something intrinsic and universal in human nature. Sociology is not satisfied with psychological or naturalist explanations; it explains these processes in terms of the actual social structure of society.
List examples of cooperation, competition and conflict from your own everyday life.
4.2 The common ground
The functionalist and conflict perspectives understand the processes a bit differently. But both Karl Marx (usually linked with the conflict perspective) and Emile Durkheim (usually linked with the functionalist perspective) presume that human beings have to cooperate to meet their basic needs, and to produce and reproduce themselves and their world.
4.3 The conflict perspective
- Stresses how forms of cooperation changed from one historical society to another.
- In simple societies where no surplus was produced (nothing extra beyond needs), there was cooperation between individuals and groups who were not divided on class, caste or race lines.
- In societies where surplus is produced, whether feudal or capitalist, the dominant class appropriates (takes over) the surplus, and cooperation necessarily involves potential conflict and competition.
- Groups and individuals are placed differentially and unequally within the system of production relations. The factory owner and the factory worker cooperate in everyday work, but a conflict of interests defines their relationship.
- In societies divided by caste, class or patriarchy, some groups are disadvantaged and discriminated against; dominant groups sustain this order by cultural norms, and often coercion or even violence.
4.4 The functionalist perspective
Functionalism does see the role of norms and sanctions (rewards and punishments that enforce norms), but it understands their function in terms of society as a whole, not in terms of the dominant sections who control society. It is concerned with the “system requirements” of society: functional imperatives, functional requisites and prerequisites, the broadest conditions necessary for a system to exist, such as:
Different parts of society each have a function for the whole. Seen this way, cooperation, competition and conflict are universal features of all societies, the result of inevitable interactions among humans pursuing their ends. Since the focus is on keeping the system going, competition and conflict are seen as things that tend to get resolved without too much distress, and that may even help society.
| Point | Functionalist perspective (Durkheim) | Conflict perspective (Marx) |
|---|---|---|
| Main concern | System requirements of society as a whole | How groups are placed unequally in production relations |
| Norms and sanctions | Function for the whole society | Used by dominant groups, with coercion or violence, to sustain inequality |
| The three processes | Universal features; conflict tends to get resolved and may help society | Forms change historically; in surplus societies cooperation hides potential conflict |
| Shared belief | Humans have to cooperate to meet basic needs and to produce and reproduce their world | |
4.5 Enforced and voluntary cooperation: women and natal property
Studies show that norms and socialisation often keep an order going even though it is skewed in the interests of one section. So cooperation, competition and conflict are often complex and not easily separable. The book’s example is women’s right to property in their natal family (the family one is born into).
- 41.7 per cent of women evoked the theme of a daughter’s love and love for a daughter when speaking about property rights.
- But they stressed apprehension rather than affection: they would not claim a full or any share because it might sour relations with their brothers or make their brothers’ wives hate them, and they would no longer be welcome in their natal homes.
- A woman demanding her share is seen as a greedy shrew or “hak lene wali”.
- Close to these feelings was the wish to stay part of the natal family by helping its prosperity or being there in its crises.
So behaviour that looks cooperative can be a product of deep conflicts. When such conflicts are not expressed openly or challenged, it looks as if there is no conflict, only cooperation. (The book’s photograph shows a bride leaving for the groom’s house in a “Doli”.)
Accommodation: the term a functionalist view uses for situations like the one above, where women prefer not to claim property in their natal home. It is seen as an effort to compromise and co-exist despite conflict.
Activity 4 asks whether women cooperate with the norm of male inheritance because of the fear of losing their brothers’ affection. Activity 5 asks for other behaviour that appears cooperative but conceals deeper conflicts.
5 Cooperation and Division of Labour
The idea of cooperation rests on assumptions: without cooperation human life would hardly survive, and even in the animal world (ants, bees, mammals) we see cooperation. The book warns that the comparison with animals must be done carefully, and uses Durkheim and Marx to show why.
5.1 Durkheim: altruism and solidarity
Sociology mostly did not agree that human nature is necessarily “nasty and brutish”. Durkheim argued against a vision of “primitive humanity whose hunger and thirst, always badly satisfied, were their only passions”.
Instead he argued that such views overlook the essential element of moral life: the moderating influence that society exercises over its members, which tempers and neutralises the brutal action of the struggle for existence and selection.
Wherever there are societies, there is altruism, because there is solidarity. Thus, we find altruism from the beginning of humanity and even in truly intemperate form.
Durkheim 1933
Altruism: the principle of acting to benefit others without any selfishness or self-interest.
- For Durkheim, solidarity, the moral force of society, is fundamental to understanding cooperation and the functioning of society.
- The division of labour, which implies cooperation, exists to fulfil certain needs of society. It is at the same time a law of nature and a moral rule of human conduct.
Division of labour: the specialisation of work tasks, by which different occupations are combined within a production system. All societies have at least a rudimentary form, especially between tasks of men and of women; with industrialism it became more complex than ever, and in the modern world it is international in scope.
5.2 Mechanical and organic solidarity
Durkheim distinguished two forms of cooperation (solidarity), found in pre-industrial and complex industrial societies respectively.
Mechanical solidarity
- Pre-industrial societies
- Cohesion based on sameness
- Members live very similar lives; little specialisation beyond that of age and sex
- Bonded by shared beliefs and sentiments, common conscience and consciousness
- The book’s contrast: a family in subsistence farming may survive with little or no help from similar homesteaders
Organic solidarity
- Complex industrial societies
- Cohesion based on division of labour
- More specialisation means more interdependence
- Economic reciprocity and mutual dependency replace shared beliefs in creating consensus
- Example: specialised workers in a garment or car factory cannot survive without many other specialised workers
Mechanical solidarity (Durkheim): found in traditional cultures with a low division of labour. Because most members are in similar occupations, they are bound together by common experience and shared beliefs.
Organic solidarity (Durkheim): societies held together by people’s economic interdependence and a recognition of the importance of others’ contributions. As the division of labour grows more complex, people depend more on one another, because each needs goods and services that people in other occupations supply.
5.3 Marx: consciousness and production
Marx too separates human life from animal life. Durkheim stressed altruism and solidarity; Marx stressed consciousness.
Men can be distinguished from animals by consciousness, by religion or anything else you like. They themselves begin to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce their means of subsistence… By producing their means of subsistence men are indirectly producing their material life.
Marx 1972: 37
What this means: humans do not only adjust and accommodate to cooperate; in that process they alter society, and through technological innovations, in some sense, nature too. For example, Indians had to adjust to and cooperate with the English language because of British colonialism, but in that process Hinglish emerged as a living social entity.
5.4 Marx: cooperation is not voluntary in a class society
Durkheim (functionalist) and Marx (conflict) both stress cooperation, but they differ. For Marx, cooperation is not voluntary in a society where class exists.
The social power, i.e., the multiplied productive force, which arises through the cooperation of different individuals as it is caused by the division of labour, appears to these individuals, since their cooperation is not voluntary but has come about naturally, not as their own united power, but as an alien force existing outside them…
Marx 1972: 53
Alienation: Marx’s term for the loss of control on the part of workers over the nature (concrete content) of the labour task, and over the products of their labour. Workers lose control over how to organise their own work and over the fruits of their labour.
Craft worker
- Weaver, potter or ironsmith
- Feels fulfilment and creativity
Factory worker
- Sole task may be to pull a lever or press a button all day
- Cooperation here is enforced
6 Competition as an Idea and Practice
Like cooperation, competition is often taken to be universal and natural. Sociology instead sees it as a social entity that emerges and becomes dominant at a particular historical point of time. Today it is so dominant that we find it hard to imagine a society where competition is not a guiding force.
A school teacher working with children in a remote area in Africa proposed a race with a chocolate as the winner’s prize, expecting the children to rejoice. Instead the idea caused anxiety and distress. The children disliked a game with “winners” and “losers”: for them fun was a cooperative and collective experience, not one where rewards exclude some and reward one or a few. So competition itself has to be explained sociologically, not as a natural phenomenon.
6.1 Competition and capitalism
In the contemporary world competition is the dominant norm and practice. Durkheim and Marx noted the growth of individualism and competition respectively in modern societies. Both are intrinsic to the way modern capitalist society works, with its stress on greater efficiency and greater profit maximisation.
These four underlying assumptions of capitalism drive self-sustaining growth, fuelled by its central theme: rational individuals in free competition in the marketplace, each striving to maximise profits.
Capitalism: an economic system in which the means of production are privately owned and organised to accumulate profits within a market framework, in which labour is provided by waged workers.
Individualism: doctrines or ways of thinking that focus on the autonomous individual, rather than on the group.
6.2 The ideology of competition
The ideology of competition is the dominant ideology in capitalism. Its logic: the market works to ensure the greatest efficiency. Competition ensures that the most efficient firm survives, and that students with higher marks get into prestigious colleges and then the best jobs. In every case “best” means that which brings the greatest material rewards.
Dominant ideology: shared ideas or beliefs which serve to justify the interests of dominant groups. Such ideologies are found in all societies with systematic and ingrained inequalities; they connect closely with power, since they legitimise (make acceptable) the differential power that groups hold.
The flaw in the ideology: it assumes everyone competes on an equal basis. But stratification places individuals differentially. If the greater number of children in India do not go to school or drop out sooner rather than later, they remain out of the competition entirely. The view that humans naturally like to compete must be examined critically, like all naturalist explanations: competition as a desirable value flourished with the onset of capitalism.
India has seen intense debate on the government’s decision to give 27 per cent reservation for OBCs and 10 per cent reservation for economically weaker sections among the upper castes. Mostly lower caste students drop out of school, while most higher educational institutions are dominated by the upper castes. The activity asks you to discuss cooperation, competition and conflict in this setting.
6.3 Two views from the boxes: J.S. Mill and Bottomore
J.S. Mill (a liberal)
- Felt the effects of competition were generally harmful
- Yet modern competition is “the fight of all against all, but at the same time it is the fight for all“: economic competition aims at maximum output at minimum cost
- In an individualistic society, interests that hold the group together seem to come alive and stay alive only when the competitive struggle forces them on the individual
Bottomore (1975: 174-5)
- Competition and the laissez-faire economy of 19th-century capitalism may have promoted growth
- The rapid growth of the American economy may be due to the greater scope of competition in the United States
- But there is no exact correlation between competition and the rate of growth, and competition has less welcome effects
Laissez-faire liberalism: a political and economic approach based on the principle of non-interference in the economy by government and freedom for markets and property owners.
Activity 7: debate whether competition is a necessary good and a must for development, and write about how competition affects different students. Activity 8: list the occasions when individuals must compete in our society, from admission to school onwards through life.
7 Conflict and Cooperation
Conflict: the term implies a clash of interests. Conflict theorists believe that scarcity of resources produces conflict, as groups struggle to gain access to and control over those resources.
The bases of conflict vary: class or caste, tribe or gender, ethnicity or religious community. The scale and nature of conflicts also differ.
At the widest level there are conflicts between nations and blocs of nations; many kinds of conflict also exist within nations. List them and compare how they are similar and different.
7.1 Are conflicts new?
Common sense says conflicts in society are new. Sociologists show that conflicts change in nature and form at different stages of social development, but have always been part of every society. Social change and the greater assertion of democratic rights by disadvantaged and discriminated groups make conflict more visible; that does not mean its causes did not exist earlier.
A moment’s reflection should convince him that the old order was not conflict-free and that it perpetrated inhuman cruelties on vast sections of the population.
M.N. Srinivas, Social Change in Modern India (1972), pp. 159-160
Srinivas’s box says developing countries are arenas for conflict between the old and the new: the old order cannot meet new wants and aspirations, yet it is still very much alive. The conflict produces much unseemly argument, discord, confusion and, on occasion, even bloodshed, so it is tempting for the sociologist to look to the good old peaceful days in sheer nostalgia; a moment’s reflection shows the old order was not conflict-free. A theory that treats conflict as abnormal, or gives equilibrium a special value in the name of science, can be a handicap in studying developing societies.
7.2 Overt and covert conflict
Conflict appears as an overt clash (open, visible) only when it is openly expressed. A peasant movement is an overt expression of deep-rooted conflict over land. But the absence of a movement does not imply the absence of conflict. This is why the chapter links conflict with involuntary cooperation and resistance.
7.3 Instance 1: the family and household
Traditionally the family was seen as a harmonious unit where cooperation dominated and altruism was the driving principle. In the last three decades feminist analysis has questioned this. Scholars such as Amartya Sen have noted the possibility of enforced cooperation.
Not only do the different parties have much to gain from cooperation; their individual activities have to take the form of being overtly cooperative, even when substantial conflicts exist… Although serious conflicts of interests may be involved in the choice of ‘social technology’, the nature of the family organisation requires that these conflicts be moulded in a general format of cooperation, with conflicts treated as aberrations or deviant behaviour.
Sen 1990: 147
Since conflict is often not openly expressed, subaltern or subordinate sections (people of low rank), whether women in households or peasants in agrarian societies, develop strategies to cope with conflict and keep up cooperation. Many studies suggest that covert conflict and overt cooperation is common.
- There is a hierarchy of decision-making, needs and priorities (by age, gender and lifecycle) to which both men and women appear to subscribe.
- Women appear to accept, and even perpetuate, discriminatory sharing inside the household to assure their own longer-term security.
- Denied resources outside the household, they subscribe to son-preference and invest “selfless” devotion to win their sons as allies and insurance against an uncertain future.
- “Maternal altruism” in the northern Indian plain is likely to be biased towards sons: a response to patriarchal risk.
- Women resist male power covertly: using trusted allies (relatives or neighbours) to run small businesses for them, secret lending and borrowing of money, and negotiating the meaning of purdah and motherhood (Abdullah and Zeidenstein, 1982; White, 1992).
- The secret form of resistance reflects their lack of options outside household cooperation and the high risks of open conflict.
7.4 Instance 2: land-based conflict
The sociological approach does not see these processes as “natural”; it relates them to other social developments. The book’s two boxes come from T.K. Oommen’s study of land relations and the Bhoodan-Gramdan movement (Charisma, Stability and Change, 1972).
Identify the social groups in this land conflict (a Rajput, an Ahir, a police constable, the police, the villagers) and notice the role of power and access to resources. (Our reading: Ganpat’s influence over the police, rather than any court case, settled the matter.)
7.5 Technology and the need for cooperation
An ordinary peasant cannot afford four bullocks, and a household may lack the manpower, so for a Charas families borrow bullocks and men from others, promising similar services in return. A Rehat needs heavier capital but only one pair of bullocks and one person, so the need to cooperate falls. Oommen’s conclusion: “the level of technology in a system may determine the need for cooperation between men and groups.” The advent of technology had reduced the necessity for cooperation.
8 Conclusion: Three Processes, Never Separate
The chapter’s effort is to understand the relationship between structure and stratification on one side and the processes of cooperation, competition and conflict on the other. The three processes are different, yet they often co-exist, overlap and sometimes exist in a concealed fashion, as forced cooperation shows.
8.1 Two more glossary terms
Anomie: for Durkheim, a social condition where the norms guiding conduct break down, leaving individuals without social restraint or guidance. A situation of normlessness.
Modernity: a term for the distinctiveness, complexity and dynamism of social processes unleashed during the 18th and 19th centuries, which mark a distinct break from traditional ways of living.
9 Quick Revision
| Thinker or source | Key idea in this chapter |
|---|---|
| C. Wright Mills | Sociological imagination: biography and history |
| Giddens (2004) | Structure like a building, but the metaphor misleads if pushed too far |
| Emile Durkheim | Social constraint; altruism and solidarity; mechanical and organic solidarity; individualism |
| Karl Marx | People make history within limits; consciousness; cooperation not voluntary in class society; alienation; competition |
| Jayaram (1987) | Stratification: patterned structure of unequal groups persisting across generations |
| J.S. Mill | Competition harmful, yet “the fight for all” |
| Bottomore (1975) | No exact correlation between competition and growth |
| M.N. Srinivas (1972) | The old order was not conflict-free |
| Amartya Sen (1990) | Enforced cooperation in the family; conflicts treated as deviant |
| Kabeer (1996) | Maternal altruism, son-preference, covert resistance |
| T.K. Oommen (1972) | Land conflict; Charas and Rehat: technology and cooperation |
- Each individual has a location in social structure and stratification; it decides access to resources and lifestyle and constrains action.
- Social structure = patterned, repeated behaviour (school, family); like a building, but rebuilt every moment by its own bricks.
- Durkheim: social constraint, society external like the walls of a room. Marx: people make history, but not as they wish.
- Stratification = structured inequality between groups, persisting across generations; three advantages: life chances, social status, political influence.
- Both perspectives: humans must cooperate. Conflict view: surplus and production relations make cooperation hide conflict. Functionalist view: system requirements; conflict tends to get resolved.
- Women and natal property (41.7 per cent, “hak lene wali”): cooperation that conceals conflict; functionalists call it accommodation.
- Durkheim: altruism, solidarity, mechanical vs organic solidarity. Marx: consciousness, cooperation not voluntary, alienation.
- Competition is social, not natural (Africa anecdote); it flourished with capitalism; its ideology assumes equal positions that do not exist (Mill, Bottomore).
- Conflict = clash of interests over scarce resources; not new, only more visible (Srinivas); often covert under overt cooperation (Sen, Kabeer); land conflict and Charas/Rehat (Oommen).
- Can I define social structure and social stratification in the book’s words?
- Can I contrast Durkheim’s social constraint with Marx’s view of agency?
- Can I name and explain the three forms of advantage?
- Can I compare the functionalist and conflict views of cooperation, competition and conflict?
- Can I write four differences between mechanical and organic solidarity?
- Can I explain enforced cooperation with the natal-property and household examples?
- Can I retell the land-conflict box and the Charas and Rehat example?