Society, Human Behaviour and Communities I: Sociological Concepts, Approaches to the Study of Society, Family, Religion and Stratification, and Rural, Urban, Tribal and Virtual Communities, Vulnerable Groups, Caste and Class, Read for Social Work Practice

The functionalist approach, from Émile Durkheim to Talcott Parsons and Robert Merton, sees society as a system of interdependent parts, each contributing to stability and integration, held together by shared values. Parsons's AGIL scheme names four functional prerequisites every system must meet: adaptation, goal attainment, integration and latency (pattern maintenance). Merton distinguished manifest functions (intended and recognised) from latent functions (unintended and unrecognised), and introduced dysfunctions. The conflict or dialectical approach, from Karl Marx through Ralf Dahrendorf and Lewis Coser, sees society as an arena of competing interests in which the powerful shape institutions to their advantage and change comes through contradiction and struggle; Dahrendorf located conflict in authority relations, and Coser (1956) showed that conflict can also have integrating functions. Structuralism, associated with Claude Lévi-Strauss, looks for the deep, often unconscious, structures of thought (binary oppositions such as nature and culture, raw and cooked) that underlie kinship, myth and culture. Postmodernism, with Jean-François Lyotard's "incredulity toward metanarratives" (The Postmodern Condition, 1979), Michel Foucault's analysis of power and knowledge, and Jean Baudrillard's simulation and hyperreality, rejects grand theories and fixed truths and attends to discourse, difference and the plurality of voices.

The syllabus names family and religion as the major social systems. George Murdock (1949) defined the family as a social group characterised by common residence, economic cooperation and reproduction, and identified four universal functions: sexual, reproductive, economic and educational. Families are classified by structure (nuclear, joint or extended), by descent (patrilineal, matrilineal, as among the Nairs and Khasis), by residence (patrilocal, matrilocal, neolocal) and by authority. The Indian joint family, with its common kitchen, property and worship, has been giving way to nuclear households, though kinship obligations remain strong, which is why a social worker in India often works with the extended family rather than the couple alone. Durkheim (The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, 1912) defined religion by the distinction between sacred and profane and saw it as a source of solidarity; Max Weber (The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, 1905) showed how religious ideas shape economic conduct; Marx called religion "the opium of the people". For practice, religion is both a resource (faith-based organisations, coping, community support) and, at times, a source of exclusion and conflict.

Stratification is the hierarchical arrangement of groups by unequal access to resources, power and prestige. For Marx, class is defined by relation to the means of production: in capitalism, the bourgeoisie who own them and the proletariat who sell their labour power; a class becomes a "class for itself" when its members become conscious of their common interest. The functionalist theory of Kingsley Davis and Wilbert Moore (1945) argued that stratification is universal and functional because society must motivate the most talented to fill the most important positions with unequal rewards; Melvin Tumin (1953) replied that stratification limits the discovery of talent, is passed on by inheritance and creates hostility. Weber saw three distinct dimensions of inequality: class (economic position in the market, which shapes "life chances"), status (social honour and lifestyle) and party (organised power). Weber's separation of status from class is what makes caste intelligible in his scheme, as a status group closed by birth.

Ferdinand Tönnies (1887) contrasted Gemeinschaft, community based on kinship, place and shared sentiment, with Gesellschaft, association based on contract and self-interest. Robert Redfield's folk-urban continuum placed small, homogeneous, sacred folk societies at one end and large, heterogeneous, secular urban ones at the other; with McKim Marriott, the idea of the "little tradition" of the village and the "great tradition" of the civilisation was applied to India. Rural communities in India are marked by dependence on agriculture, the importance of caste and kinship, the panchayat and face-to-face relations, together with landlessness, indebtedness and seasonal migration. Louis Wirth's "Urbanism as a Way of Life" (1938) derived urban characteristics from size, density and heterogeneity: relations become impersonal, segmental and transitory, with formal controls replacing informal ones. Urban practice deals with slums, homelessness, migrants, informal work and urban poverty.

Tribal communities, notified as Scheduled Tribes under Article 342 of the Constitution, formed 8.6 per cent of India's population in the 2011 Census. They are commonly characterised by a distinct culture and dialect, relative geographical isolation, dependence on forests and land, and, in the classic literature, a relatively egalitarian social organisation, though tribes vary greatly. Their central issues are land alienation, displacement by dams, mines and sanctuaries, forest rights (the Forest Rights Act 2006), indebtedness and the self-governance guaranteed by the Fifth and Sixth Schedules and the Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act 1996. Virtual communities, a term popularised by Howard Rheingold (The Virtual Community, 1993), are groups formed through computer-mediated communication around shared interests rather than place; they now matter for practice as sources of peer support (disability, mental health and caregiver groups), as sites of cyberbullying and exploitation, and as a new divide between the connected and the unconnected.

The syllabus lists women, children, the aged and Dalits among vulnerable groups, "etc.". Vulnerability is not a trait of the person but a product of exposure to risk combined with limited capacity to cope, and it is compounded where identities intersect, a Dalit widow, a tribal child labourer, a disabled older woman. Kimberlé Crenshaw's term intersectionality (1989) names this compounding. Scheduled Castes formed 16.6 per cent of the population in the 2011 Census; their vulnerability rests on untouchability, abolished by Article 17 and punished under the Protection of Civil Rights Act 1955 and the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act 1989, and on landlessness and exclusion from resources. Religious minorities, persons with disabilities, transgender persons and sexual minorities, migrant workers and the homeless complete the list that a social worker uses.

G. S. Ghurye (Caste and Race in India, 1932) described six features of caste: segmental division of society; hierarchy; restrictions on feeding and social intercourse; civil and religious disabilities and privileges of the different sections; lack of unrestricted choice of occupation; and restrictions on marriage, that is, endogamy. Varna is the fourfold scriptural scheme; jati is the local, endogamous, occupationally associated group that actually structures social life. M. N. Srinivas added the concepts of Sanskritisation (a lower caste adopting the customs of higher castes to claim higher status) and the dominant caste (numerical strength, economic power through land, and political influence). Class, by contrast, is in principle open and achieved, based on income, occupation and wealth. In India the two overlap without coinciding: most landless labourers are Dalits and tribals, yet an educated Dalit middle class faces caste discrimination despite class mobility, which is why reservations are based on caste and tribe rather than income alone.