Social Theory

Theory is a kind of conclusion or generalization which is universal, testable, logical etc that modifies the facts of beyond the boundary. Social theories are facts based on scientific analysis or conclusion about casual relationship of social actions, events, situation, facts and phenomenon. To find the causal relationship about social phenomenon is the main aim of social theory. Social theory embraces testable or verifiable, logical, universal, formal, predictable, scientific and systematic characteristics.

It is a kind of scheme designed to explain, observe, regularities or relationship between two or more variables. It appears as a device of interpreting, criticizing and unifying established laws, modifying them to fit date unanticipated in their formulation and guiding the enterprise of discovering new and more powerful generalization. To engaged in theorizing means not just to learn by experience but to take thought what is there to be learned.

In short social theory could be logically constructed impressionistic generalization between law and hypothesis. It is presented in more formal way intended to find out casual relationship of variables or social phenomena and which are verifiable more or less universal.

Finally we can say that social theories are a verified statement concerning the relationship among social variables. It usually consists of a set of interpreted concept and proposition that specify how variables related to the phenomena to be explained. Theory in develop form of social thought. Theory modifies the facts beyond the boundary of every time, space and people. Theory is generalization or conclusion and it can be tested and retested time and again. According to Merton-“The term social theory refrs to logically inter connected sets of proposition from which empirical uniformities can be derived”.

Types of theories

According to Homans:

• Normative Theory
• Non-normative Theory

According to Helmut Wager

• Positive Sociological Theory
• Interpretative Sociological theory
• Non-Scientific or evaluative social theory

Major types of Theory

• Speculative Vs Grounded theory
• Grand Vs Miniature Theory
• Macro Vs Micro Theory

Social Thoughts

Thoughts simply can be said as thinking as we can that it is a way of thinking. The individual and society are inseparable. So, human beings are always surrounded by social context and numbers of social problems to overcome these problems they generate new ideas and adopt various techniques. In this way to deal social or personal social relationship, interrelations between different variables social thoughts are emerged.

So, we can say that people living in a particular place, being involve in particular class when develops a kind of thinking to deal with different social context being based in specific environment is a social thoughts.

There were even different philosophers who talk about social thoughts and designed a new moral social order. August Comte emerged as a true positivist who wanted to understand and explain social phenomena. Similarly H. Spencer coined the term survival of the fittest and laid the foundation of social Darwinism. According to Bogardus –“Social thoughts is thinking about society and problem by one or few persons here and there in human history or at the present”.

Types of Social Thoughts

• Individual social Thoughts
• Collective social Thought
• Scientific social Thoughts

Nature of social thoughts:

• It differs from society one society/context/place to another.
• It is related with social problems and social context/system.
• Social thoughts are based on social experiences
• It is an abstract statement based on assumption
• It indicates to the human social development

Gender based stratification in Nepali society

The word gender is being used sociologically and has been one of the major agendas of discourse, including the socio-political, intellectual and disciplinary discussion and debates. In Nepal, it has been the hot issue before and after the 2nd Jana Andolan.Gender issues like woman’s violence, the concern of property right, the question of proportionate representative in NGOs and GOs, attitudes and belief system towards woman, religious and cultural based discrimination, etc. are making the hot debate among the various group of people, including political parties, feminists, social worker, etc.

According to Kamala Bhasin, an Indian scholar and feminist, defined gender as- in its new incarnation gender refers to the socio-cultural definition of man and woman, the way societies distinguish man and woman and assign them social roles.

Whereas sex is the biological predisposition of man and woman, gender is the socio- cultural and political manifestation of man and woman. As elsewhere, gender is the key locus of the cultural structure in Nepal. The construction of gender and gender relations may very from society to society in terms of age, life related positions within family, caste, ethnicity, class, region, etc. Gender based discrimination is highly experienced with the patrilineality and patrilocality which contribute to an extremely unequal level of life opportunities between man and woman.

How the gender based discrimination is expressed 
1.    The high rituals and other values (especially, Hindu based rituals in Nepal) attached to son as against daughters make emphasis on gender specific socialization.
2.    Highly gender based access to household productive resources, income and household decision making and schooling are the issues greatly discussed and these are the specific concern of gender based discrimination in Nepal.
Unpaid economic participation, unequal access to public decision making structures and low public facilities, a

Barriers and mal practices to gender equity and gender based Relation in Nepal
•    Patriarchal society- That means the authority of family and society lie on male head of the family.
•    Patrilineal Society- That means descent and property transforms from male head of family to offspring
•    Belief, Values and norms are as against to woman’s welfare and justice-Chaupadi    and Dewaki in far western region of Nepal, for instance, provide evidence of how woman’s dignity , justice and their basic right are threatened and violated
•    Non sense practices prevailing in society- The popular non-sense practices like witchcrafts and dowry system in many parts of Nepal, especially in the middle Terai, are as against the practices of woman’s justice and welfare.
•    Category of work and burden- Women in developing countries like ours have to shoulder 3 burdens at a time- reproduction, house hold chores and outside work (in underdeveloped societies reproduction is taken as burden, since many of the women can not get proper care and health facilities during the gestation period and in the post delivery period).
•    Lack of implementation of woman related law- Due to the deeply rooted social values, woman’s law like property right bill and abortion bill are not being effectively implemented. 
•    Domestic violence and sexual abuses- Domestic violence is on increasing and sexual abuses are rampant. But the law related to these problems are either not effective or are ambiguous in meaning and interpretation, giving the defendant or culprit more chances to get free.
•    Religion and social beliefs- Some religions like Hindu and Islam, in its extreme form, are barriers for the uplift  and equity of women (many aspects mentioned in their religious books are against the welfare of woman)
•    Maternal mortality rate- As compared to other SAARC countries and developed countries, the maternal and neo-natal mortality rate in Nepal is high. It is due to the lack of proper health care and health facilities provided to the many of rural women in Nepal.

Marriage-“A Social Institution”

Generally, the term “marriage” is a universal Social institution which is established by human society. It is socially approved mating arrangement between two or more than two persons. It involves residential co-habitation, economic co-operation and formulation of nuclear family. It is also said that marriage is a sanctioning of durable bond between two different individual to control and regulate the sex life. So it is closely connected with the institution of family. Its purpose, function and forms may differ from society to society but it is present everywhere. According to Robert H. Lowie “Marriage is a relatively permanent bond between permissible mates. In the same way Malinowski defines marriage as a contract for the production and maintenance of children.
Marriage has been a permanent fixture in Western society for millennia. While the institution of marriage has changed throughout the years, still it is a constant presence in our world. Marriage has been important to society for a variety of reasons. In earlier times, marriage helped to stabilize the economics of a rural agricultural society. By having one man and one woman together with their children, a regular workforce for the farm was grown at home. In industrial society, this emphasis changed from children who contribute to the family economy to a view in which the family serves as the training ground and shelter for children, preparing them for life in the adult world.

In the modern world, marriage is no longer a situation of bondage or slavery for women, as it was in medieval times. Both men and women benefit financially as well as emotionally and spiritually from the arrangement of marriage. Some studies even suggest a link between better health and marriage. In addition, marriage is an important institution to many religions who, even though marriage is licensed by the state, nevertheless sanction marriages and perform marriage ceremonies.
 

Function of Marriage:

Biological Function

Economic Function

Social Function

Educational Function

Socialization Function 

Recreational Function
Protective Function
Religious Function

Types of Marriage:

On the basis of Number:-

•      Monogamy Marriage
•      Polygamy Marriage
•      Group Marriage

On the basis of Social Norms:-

•      Endogamy Marriage
•      Exogamy Marriage 
•      Cousin Marriage

On the basis of Modern Marriage System:-

•       Love Marriage
•       Court / Paper Marriage
•       Homo sex Marriage
•       Contract Marriage

On the basis of Hindu Marriage System

•    Brahma Marriage
•    Daiva Marriage
•    Arsha Marriage
•    Rakshyas Marriage
•    Gandarva Marriage
•    Ashura Marriage
•    Paichash Marriage

  

Social Stratification

social stratification refers to the hierarchical arrangement of individuals into divisions of power and wealth within a society. Stratification derives from the geological concept of strata - rock layers created by natural processes. The term most commonly relates to the socio-economic concept of class, involving the "classification of persons into groups based on shared socio-economic conditions, a relational set of inequalities with economic, social, political and ideological dimensions.

In sociology and anthropology, social stratification is the hierarchical arrangement of individuals into social classes, castes, and divisions within a society. These hierarchies, which may be overtly or covertly present, or not present at all in some societies, are quite common in state-level societies (as distinguished from hunter-gatherer or other social arrangements). The process by which people are assigned different social ranks in society. Social stratification forms the basis of inequalities within a society: higher social ranks tend to have more power, prestige, and privilege than the lower ranks. Social stratification is based on social or biological characteristics, such as social class, age, gender, ethnic group, rather than natural ability. It is possible for a person to be assigned a high social rank with respect to one factor, such as economic status, and a lower rank with regards another factor, such as gender.
Ogburn and Nimkoff defines social stratification as, “The process by which individuals and groups are ranked in a more or less enduring hierarchy of status.”
                                            
According to Peter Robert Saunders,In modern Western societies, stratification depends on social and economic classes comprising three main layers: upper class, middle class, and lower class. Each class is further subdivided into smaller classes related, in part, to occupation

So we can say that in Social stratification individual belong to a particular group or stratum having some awareness of common interest and common identity. They share a similar life style and on the basis of which they are distinguished from members of other social strata. The Nepalese caste system is the example of social stratification system.

Cast System in Hindu Society

The term caste was first used by Portuguese to describe inherited class status in their own European society. In English the term caste derived from Latin word “castus” which means “pure, cut off, segregated”. In Hindu social group Caste originated in the 17th century, via Portuguese casta which means “breed, race” The origin of the caste system is in Hinduism but it affected the whole Indian society later it has transmitted to Nepal. The caste system in the religious form is basically a simple division of society in which there is four castes arranged in a hierarchy and below them the outcast. But socially the caste system was more complicated, with much more castes and sub-castes and other divisions. Legally the government disallows the practice of caste system but has a policy of affirmative discrimination of the backward classes.

The origin of this caste system in Nepalese and Indian society relates with the ‘Chaturvarna’ system of Hindu philosophy. Chaturvarna doctrine explains the Hindu society was divided into four main varnas, namely, Brahmins, the kashtriyas, the Vaishyas and the Shudras. The Varna system which was prevalent during Vedic period was mainly based on the division of occupation and labor. The caste system, therefore, has its origin to the Varna system. The present caste system is the modified form of the original.Caste orders the lives of Hindus. Within each varna there exist myriad jati, which are small endogamous groups, tied to a defining occupation, based in a village or group of villages, and which provide for the element of mobility within a system where otherwise birth determines social rank.

Maciver and Page argues that when status is wholly predetermined, so that men are born to their lot in life without any hope of changing it, then class takes the extreme form of caste. Quoting the Report of Indian Statutory Commission, they mention, “Every Hindu necessarily belongs to the caste of his parents and in that caste he inevitably remains. No accumulation of wealth and no exercise of talents can alter his caste status; and marriage outside his caste is prohibited or severely discouraged.”

So we can say that cast is one of the main form of social stratification which is ascribed or gained by birth but not achieved by owns effort.  

Social Process

Social process is a fundamental ways in which human beings interact and establish relationship. In other word, social process is the repetition of interaction which leads to social result. Here interaction refers to action done in response to another action, but when this interaction through repetition leads to a result.

Social process is the way where interaction and relationship among the members of a society takes place. There are different forms of social change they are: Acculturation, Assimilation, Integration, Differentiation and Enculturation.

• Acculturation: Acculturation is the process of adopting other culture without losing own identity. It is generally a contact with advanced culture to modify own culture. It also can be said as the process modernization of culture by which the culture is transmitted through first hand contact of a group with different culture having highly developed civilization. Dictionary of anthropology defines “Acculturation refers to those phenomenons which result when a group of individuals having different culture comes into first hand contact with subsequent changes in the original cultural pattern of both groups.”  
• Assimilation: Assimilation is a social and psychological process whereby a person and group acquire the culture of other groups in which they come to live by adopting its attitude and values, its patterns of thinking and behaving. In short it is a process in which individuals and groups come to share sentiments, values and goals making them self similar in their way of life. According to Horton and Hont- “The process of mutual cultural diffusion through which person and groups come to share a common culture is called assimilation.” 
• Integration: Integration is the process of maintaining a harmonious and active relationship between various components of the society. It also refers for the process by which the different races come to have close social, economic and political relationship. Theodore Caplwer defines Integration as the fitting together of the parts of a social system to make a unified whole. 
• Differentiation: It refers to the process by which sets of social activities performed by one social institution becomes split off between different institution. It is an increasing specialization of the parts of a society. 
• Enculturation: Enculturation simply means to follow the traditional culture, norms, values, customs etc. The term Enculturation was used instead of the term socialization by American Anthropologist “Herskovits”. The individual in this process prefer to stick to their own culture and behave that they are culturally superior to other .

Family-"A Social Institution"

The family is the most important primary group in society. It is the simplest and the most elementary form of society. The family, as a social institution is universal. It is the most pervasive and the most permanent of all social institutions. The family, in general, is a small group consisting ordinarily of father, mother, one or more children and sometimes near or distant relatives.

Many sociologists have regarded the family as the cornerstone of society and it forms the basic unit of social organization. In the most primitive societies the family is the only social institution. Among the Polar Eskimos, there were no other institutions – no chiefs or formal laws, no priests or medicine men, no specialized occupations. More clearly, most primitive societies experienced no physical or social needs of any other social institution beyond the family. That is, in those societies, order is maintained with no formal laws, police, or courts. The only authority known in many simple societies is family authority. With increasing tribal size and growing cultural complexity, more formal political organization is needed. Family heads are joined intro tribal councils, tribes combine into confederation and bureaucracies begin to develop. The family, therefore, is the basic social institution from which other institutions have grown as increasing cultural complexity made them necessary.

                  Maciver and Page defines family as, “a group defined by sex relationship sufficiently precise and enduring to provide for procreation and upbringing of children.”

      

  Types of Family:

 Sociologists have discussed about the various types of family, important of which have described or mentioned as below:

• On the basis of marriage family can be divided into: Polygynous, Polyandrous, and Monogamous. 
• On the basis of nature of residence marriage can be divided into three types: Matrilocal, Patrilocal and          Changing residence 
• On the basis of ancestry or descent family can be divided into two main types: Matrilineal, Patrilineal 
• On the basis of size or structure: The Nuclear family, The Joint family.

The changing pattern of family in Nepalese society is pointed as follows:

• The sexual regulation function: In most of the urban societies of Nepal the pre- marital and extra marital    sex relations are on increase.
• The formation of nuclear family is on rise. Because of the increasing urbanization process and rise on foreign employment, a part of the rural population is deviating from their old traditional agriculture occupation resulting in holding a non agriculture profession.  

Social Institution

                          The sociological concept of institution is different from the common usage. An institution is not building; it is not a group of people; it is not an organization. Horton and Hunt defines institution as, “an institution is a system of norms to achieve some goal or activity that people feel is important, or, more formally, an organized cluster of folkways and mores centered on a major human activity”. More specifically speaking, institutions are structured processes through which people carry out their activities.

            

            Institutions do not have members, they have followers. For example, a religion is not a group of people; it is a system of ideas, beliefs, practices and relationships. In this context, a church is an association of people who accept the beliefs and follow the practices of particular religion. In a very much broader way, Horton and Hunt explain institution as, “an organized system of social relation relationship which embodies certain common values and procedure and meets certain basic needs of the society.” Here, ‘common values’ refers to shared ideas and goals, the ‘common procedures’ are the standardized behavior patterns followed, and the ‘system of relationships’ is the network of roles and statuses through which people carry out this behavior.

           

           Five important basic institutions in complex societies are: familial, religious, governmental, economic, and educational. In modern societies, the values and procedures are so highly standardized behavior which is called ‘scientific institutions’. 

       

           Important of Institutions:

            Social institutions are such that they help create and develop common values which the people must conform to. This conformity avoids the possible conflict among the group of the people living at the particular society and such that the institutionalization process in the modern society with modern organization system is very much obvious with division of labor more specific. Bureaucratic system, business organizations, and commercial banks are attributed with institutionalization process.

Society

The term society is derived from Latin word “societus” which means cooperation of friendship. In a simple word we can say society as a group of people with “wefeeling”. But when we start to delve into the question “what is society” we will realize that this is indeed a very deep subject. In our daily lives, a society is the place where we live. It is made up of the government, the education system, the health care and the many occupations that people have. Each and every person is an important part of a society because each one has something to contribute. It is a very broad concept that is often broken down into different segments or facets of life. We also can say society as a collective of humanity.

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. Human societies are characterized by patterns of relationships between individuals sharing a distinctive culture and institutions. Without an article, the term refers either to the entirety of humanity or a contextually specific subset.

More broadly, a society is an economic, social or industrial infrastructure, made up of a varied collection of individuals. Members of a society may be from different ethnic groups. A society may be a particular ethnic group, such as a nation state, a broader cultural group, such as a Western society Eastern society. The word society may also refer to an organized voluntary association of people for religious, benevolent, cultural, scientific, political, patriotic, or other purposes. A "society" may even, though more by means of metaphor refer to a social organism.

Although humans have established many types of societies throughout history, sociologists and anthropologists usually refer to six basic types of societies, each defined by its level of technology.

Hunting and gathering societies: The members of hunting and gathering societies primarily survive by hunting animals, fishing, and gathering plants. The vast majority of these societies existed in the past, with only a few (perhaps a million people total) living today on the verge of extinction. Most hunting and gathering societies were nomadic, moving constantly in search of food and water. Labor in hunting and gathering societies was divided equally among members.

Pastoral societies: Members of pastoral societies, which first emerged 12,000 years ago, pasture animals for food and transportation. Pastoral societies still exist today, primarily in the desert lands of North Africa where horticulture and manufacturing are not possible. Domesticating animals allows for a more manageable food supply than do hunting and gathering. Hence, pastoral societies are able to produce a surplus of goods, which makes storing food for future use a possibility.

Horticultural societies: Unlike pastoral societies that rely on domesticating animals, horticultural societies rely on cultivating fruits, vegetables, and plants. These societies first appeared in different parts of the planet about the same time as pastoral societies. Like hunting and gathering societies, horticultural societies had to be mobile. Depletion of the land's resources or dwindling water supplies, for example, forced the people to leave. Horticultural societies occasionally produced a surplus, which permitted storage as well as the emergence of other professions not related to the survival of the society.

Agricultural societies: Agricultural societies use technological advances to cultivate crops (especially grains like wheat, rice, corn, and barley) over a large area. Sociologists use the phrase Agricultural Revolution to refer to the technological changes that occurred as long as 8,500 years ago that led to cultivating crops and raising farm animals. Increases in food supplies then led to larger populations than in earlier communities.

Feudal societies; From the 9th to 15th centuries, feudalism was a form of society based on ownership of land. Unlike today's farmers, vassals under feudalism were bound to cultivating their lord's land. In exchange for military protection, the lords exploited the peasants into providing food, crops, crafts, homage, and other services to the owner of the land. The caste system of feudalism was often multigenerational; the families of peasants may have cultivated their lord's land for generations.

Industrial societies: Industrial societies are based on using machines (particularly fuel-driven ones) to produce goods. Sociologists refer to the period during the 18th century when the production of goods in mechanized factories began as the Industrial Revolution. The Industrial Revolution appeared first in Britain, and then quickly spread to the rest of the world.

Postindustrial societies: Sociologists note that with the advent of the computer microchip, the world is witnessing a technological revolution. This revolution is creating a postindustrial society based on information, knowledge, and the selling of services. That is, rather than being driven by the factory production of goods, society is being shaped by the human mind, aided by computer technology. Although factories will always exist, the key to wealth and power seems to lie in the ability to generate, store, manipulate, and sell information.