Thursday, April 21, 2011
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PMS - S&GAD
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Join Date: Jun 2009
Location: Lahore
Posts: 742
Thanks: 434
Thanked 752 Times in 448 Posts
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2. Pakistani Society
a) Definition and description of the term “Society”
b) Characteristics of Pakistani Society
c) Comparison of Rural and Urban Communities
Definitions of Society:
"It is sum total of human relationships"
or
"Is an abstraction of a collection of relationships between individuals, usually including distinctive cultural, economic, or political properties and vary greatly in complexity and scope"
or
"A society or a human society is a group of people related to each other through persistent relations such as social status, roles and social networks."
or
"A large social grouping that shares the same geographical territory, subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations."
or
Robert E. Perk says "A level of Human organization based on communication and culture as regarded as superimposed or distinguished from power."
Description:
Our society, the world in which we live, consists of many social groups and individuals of different age range, class, race and religion. As individuals, we choose to live by the morals and principles that are handed down to us from the society in which we have been brought up in. We will choose to apply these in the social groups in which we live.
Characteristics of society:
Always changing
Felxible
Satisfies need of its members
large human group
established rule and law
own cultural identity
self-sufficient social system
common interests among members
interrelated or interdependent
own means to survive
Difference between Rural - Urban Communities
Some sociologists have used the concept of rural-urban continuum to stress the idea that there are no sharp breaking points to be found in the degree or quantity of rural urban differences. Robert Redfield has given the concept of rural -urban continuum on the basis of his study of Mexican peasants of Tepoztlain.The rapid process of urbanization through the establishment of industries, urban traits and facilities have decreased the differences between villages and cities.
There are some sociologists whose treat rural-urban as dichotomous categories have differentiated the two at various levels including occupational differences, environmental differences, differences in the sizes of communities, differences in the density of population, differences in social mobility and direction of migration, differences in social stratification and in the systems of social interaction.
A third view regarding rural and urban communities has been given by Pocock who believe that both village and city are elements of the same civilization and hence neither rural urban dichotomy, nor continuum is meaningful. M.S.A. Rao points out in the Indian context that although both village and town formed part of the same civilization characterized by institution of kinship and caste system in pre-British India, there were certain specific institutional forms and organizational ways distinguishing social and cultural life in towns form that in village. Thus, according to Rao, Rural Urban continuum makes more sense
Ghurye believes that urbanization is migration of people from village to city and the impact it has on the migrants and their families.
Maclver remarks that though the communities are normally divided into rural and urban the line of demarcation is not always clear between these two types of communities. There is no sharp demarcation to tell where the city ends and country begins. Every village possesses some elements of the city and every city carries some features of the village.
R.K Mukherjee prefers the continuum model by talking of the degree of urbanization as a useful conceptual tool for understanding rural-urban relations.
P.A Sorokin and Zimmerman in 'Principles of Rural-Urban sociology have stated that the factors distinguishing rural from urban communities include occupation, size and density of population as well as mobility, differentiation and stratification.
Slides on Difference between Rural and Urban Communities
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“The greatest discovery of all time is that a person can change his future by merely changing his attitude.”
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