SOC101
ASSIGNMENT
Solution
Part I
Family is the most fundamental social
institution that affects each and every aspect of our social life. Extended
family system and Nuclear family system are the two main family structures
observed around the globe. Answer following questions logically in the context
of Pakistan based on your personal experiences and observations.
1.1 Briefly describe any three social
problems that you think are directly caused by one of the two main family
structures (Nuclear/ Extended).
1.2 Briefly describe any three positive
aspects (social factors) of anyone of the family structures, which you consider
supportive for yourself.
Part II
“Typical gender roles as a result of
socialization are the biggest hurdle in achieving equality for women with the
men at workplace in Pakistan”. Explain and discuss this claim.
Answer
Women with the men at workplace in Pakistan:-
Gender is also a social construction:
Male and female is a biological distinction
but there are different role expectations attached to these two categories of
human beings in different societies.
Societies give them different work and different family
responsibilities. The advantages and
opportunities available to us differ by gender. Not going into the rationale of
such differences, for the present one could simply say that it is the society
that determines the image of a gender.
Further to the societal variations in gender outlooks, one could see
gender differences by social class in the same society.
Society affects what we do:
To see the power of society to shape
individual choices, consider the number of children women have. In the US the average woman has slightly
fewer than two children during her lifetime.
In Pakistan it is four, in India about three, in South Africa about
four, in Saudi Arabia about six, and in Niger about seven. Why these striking differences? Society has much to do with decisions women
and men make about childbearing.
Another illustration of power of society to
shape even our most private choices comes from the study of suicide. What could be a more personal choice than
taking one’s own life? Emile Durkheim
showed that social forces are at work even in the apparently isolated case of
self-destruction. One has to look into
such individual decisions in social context.
You may look at the social forces that are at work for the suicide cases
in Pakistan.
Applying the sociological perspective:
People should develop the ability to
understand their own lives in terms of larger social forces. This is called
sociological imagination, a concept given by C. Wright Mills. Sociological imagination is the strategies
that can help you sort out the multiple circumstances that could be responsible
for your social experiences, your life choices, and your life chances.
Therefore, think sociologically, which implies to cultivating the sociological
imagination.
It is easy to apply sociological perspective
when we encounter people who differ from us because they remind us that society
shapes individual lives. Also an
introduction to sociology is an invitation to learn a new way of looking at
familiar patterns of social life.
Benefits of Sociological Perspective:-
Applying the sociological perspectives to our
daily lives benefits us in four ways:
1. The sociological perspective helps us to
assess the truth of community held assumptions (call it “common sense”).
We all take many things for granted, but that
does not make them true. A sociological
approach encourages us to ask whether commonly held beliefs are actually true
and, to the extent they are not, why they are so widely held. Consider for yourself: gender differences;
ethnic differences; racial differences; and social class differences. Where do these differences come from?
2. The sociological perspective prompts us to
assess both the opportunities and the
constraints that characterize our lives.
What we are likely and unlikely to accomplish
for ourselves and how can we pursue our our goals effectively?
3. The sociological perspective empowers us to
participate actively in our society.
If we
do not know how the society operates, we are likely to accept the status
quo. But the greater our understanding, the
more we can take an active hand in shaping our social life.
Evaluating any aspect of social life – whatever your goal – requires
identifying social forces at
work and assessing their consequences.
4. The sociological perspective helps us
recognize human variety and confront the challenges of living in a diverse
world.
There is a diversity of people’s life styles,
still we may consider our way of life as superior, right, and natural. All others are no good. The sociological perspective encourages us to
think critically about the relative strengths and weaknesses of all ways of
life, including our own.
Family structures:-
Structural-Functionalists suggest that family
performs several vital functions. In fact in this perspective family has been
considered as “The backbone of society”. At the same time the social conflict
paradigm considers the family central to the operations of society, but rather
than focusing on societal benefits, conflict theorists investigate how the
family perpetuates social inequality. The important functions are:
1.
Regulation of sexual activity.
Every
culture regulates sexual activity in the interest of maintaining kinship
organization and property rights. One universal regulation is the incest taboo,
a cultural norm forbidding sexual relations or marriage between certain kin.
Precisely which kin fall within the incest taboo varies from one culture to
another. Mostly marriage with close relatives like parents, grandparents,
aunts, uncles, siblings, is prohibited.
The incest taboo may have medical
explanations as reproduction between close relatives of any species can
mentally and physically impair off springs. Yet it has social reasons. First
the incest taboo minimizes sexual competition within families by restricting
legitimate sexuality to spouses. Second incest taboo forces people to marry
themselves outside their immediate families, which serve the purpose of
integrating the larger society. Third, since kinship defines people’s rights
and obligations towards each other, reproduction among close relatives would
hopelessly confuse kinship ties and threaten social order.
2.
Reproduction.
Perhaps the only function that seems to have
been left to a great extent untouched is reproduction. Without reproduction the
continuation of society is at stake and the legitimate births take place only
within the wedlock. Yet even this vital and inviolable function has not gone
unchallenged. A prime example is the number of single women in the Western
society who have children (about one third of all births in US).
3.
Socialization of children.
The family is the first and most influential
setting for socialization. Ideally the parents teach children to be
well-integrated and participating members of society. In fact, family
socialization continues throughout life cycle. Adults change within marriage,
and, as any parent knows, mothers and fathers learn as much from raising their
children as their children learn from them.
The conflict sociologists try to find fault
with the outcome of this socialization through which there is likely to be the
transmission of cultural values. There is the continuity of patriarchy, which
subordinates women to men. Families therefore transform women into the sexual
and economic property of men. Most wives’ earnings belong to their husbands.
4.
Social placement.
Parents confer their own social identity – in
terms of race, ethnicity, religion, and social class – on children at birth.
This fact explains the long-standing preference for birth to married parents.
This is more like ascription of social status to the children,
Nevertheless, racial and ethnic categories
shall persist over generations only to the degree that people marry others like
themselves. Thus endogamous marriage shores up the racial and ethnic hierarchy
of a society. Conflict sociologists traced the origin of the family to the need
to identify heirs so that men (especially in the higher classes) could transmit
property to their sons. Families thus support the concentration of wealth and
reproduce the class structure in each succeeding generation. Therefore family
plays an important function in maintaining social inequality; hence it is a
part and parcel of capitalism.
5.
Care of the sick and elderly.
Family has been a big insurance against the
old age as well as during sickness. As the society moves towards the
industrialization this function is likely to be taken over by institutionalized
medicine and medical specialists. Care of the aged is likely to change from a
family concern to a government obligation. In Pakistani society, by and large, it
remains to be an important function of the family.
6.
Protective function.
Family provides some degree of physical,
economic, and psychological security to its members. Attack on a person is
considered to be an attack on the family. Similarly guilt and shame are equally
shared by the family. People view the family as a “haven in the heartless
world”, looking to kin for physical protection, emotional support, and
financial assistance. People living in families tend to be healthier than
living alone.
7.
Economic production.
Prior to industrialization, the family
constituted an economic team. Family members cooperated in producing what they
needed to survive. When industrialization moved production from home to
factory, it disrupted this family team and weakened the bonds that tied family
members together. In Pakistan family still performs an important function at
least in helping its members in establishing their careers and obtaining jobs.
Positive aspects (social factors):-
Traditional societies are governed by
homogeneity in the cultural values.
There is similarity in the cultural values which are considered as
sacred and people would like to preserve them. There is low tolerance of
differences in values. Compared with
traditional societies, the modern societies demonstrate heterogeneity. In the modern society there is a variety of
cultures. Modern society is an urban
society which consists of people belonging to different religions, variety of
occupations, variety of ethnicity, and hence different cultural patterns. Within the broad cultures one comes across
variety of subcultures and sometimes countercultures as well.
The social norms are of high moral
significance and the traditional society does not tolerate the divergence in
social norms. In the modern society
there is variation in the norms and the people in the urban/modern society are
highly tolerant of the diversity in social norms.
In the traditional societies the present is
linked with past. For the present
problems people try to look for solutions in the past i.e. how did the
forefathers solve similar problem in the past?
For modern societies, the present is linked to the future i.e. present
problems are to be solved with what is going to happen in the future.
Traditional societies use pre-industrial
technology and mostly people depend upon human and animal energy. Compared with that the industrial societies
use advanced sources of energy.
Social Structure:
In the traditional societies people have few
statuses and most of these statuses are ascribed. Everybody performs multiple roles; in fact
there is little specialization of roles.
In the modern society there is a variety of
occupations as well as variety of statuses and the corresponding roles to be
performed. Most of the statuses as well
as roles are achieved ones. There is
variety of specialized roles and people perform such roles. Most of the
relationships in the traditional society are of “primary” type. There is little anonymity and privacy of the
families from each other. In the modern
societies, people are more concerned about their own affairs. They have
secondary relations and don’t know much about what is happening in the
neighborhood
Most of the communication in the traditional
societies is face to face but in the modern societies it is supplemented by
mass media. We use telephone, internet,
radio, television, and print media for communication with others. People have little time to visit somebody and
talk personally.
Social control through gossip or social
pressure has been replaced by formal agencies like police and legal system in
the modern societies. Due to the
diversities of culture in the modern society, the cultural norms may conflict
with each other. Therefore, the whole system gets formalized and enforced by
agencies authorized by the law of the country.
Traditional societies experience rigid
patterns of inequality and there is limited social mobility. Modern societies
exhibit fluid patterns of social inequality.
Status of a person is an achieved one and there are plenty of
opportunities to move from one occupation to another. In modern industrial societies there is lot
of social mobility.
In the traditional societies patriarchy is
highly pronounced. Women are subordinate
to men and most of their lives are centered in the home. As we move toward modern societies,
patriarchy starts declining. Societies
move toward universal education and women start participating in the labor
force. As a result they become
financially independent and fight for their rights. Hence the decision making
becomes fluid, moving away from authoritarian pattern to egalitarian pattern.
All this change, amounts to women empowerment.
In the small scale, pre-industrial societies,
governments amounted to little more than a local noble. A royal family formally reigned over an
entire nation, but without efficient transportation or communication, the power
of even absolute monarchs fell far short of the power wielded by today’s
political leaders. As technological
innovation allowed government to expand, the centralized state grew in size and
importance. Governments have entered
more and more areas of social life: schooling the population, regulating wages
and working conditions, establishing standards for products of all sorts, and
offering financial assistance to ill and the unemployed. To pay such expenses, taxes have soared. In modern society, power resides in large
bureaucracies’ leaving people in local communities little control over their
lives.
In the traditional societies extended family
is the important institution for the socialization of children. Also family is the primary unit of economic
production. In modern societies extended
families are replaced by nuclear families.
It does retain some socialization function but by and large becomes a
consumption unit rather than a production unit.
Religion permeates the lives of people in the
traditional societies. Pluralism is
little tolerated. But in the modern
societies, religion weakens with the rise of science. People look for the solution of their
problems in science rather than in religion.
Even in the society the plurality of religions is tolerated Formal schooling in the traditional
societies is limited to the elites. In
the modern society basic schooling becomes universal, with growing proportion
of population receiving advanced education
In the traditional society there is high
birth rate and high death rate. Because
of low standard of living and simple medical technology, generally there is low
life expectancy. Comparatively in the modern societies there is low birth rate
and low death rate. Due to high standard
of living and sophisticated technology people usually enjoy longer life
expectancy.
Settlement patterns in the modern societies
are large. Population is typically
concentrated in large cities.
Social change in the traditional societies is
slow and it takes many generations to visibly notice the actual change that has
taken place. In the modern societies
change is very rapid and it is evident within a single generation.
Post-modernity:
If modernity was the product of the
Industrial Revolution, is the Information Revolution creating a postmodern
era? A number of scholars think so and
use the term post-modernity to refer to social patterns characteristic of
postindustrial societies. Postindustrial
society is based on information, services, and high technology, rather than on
raw materials and manufacturing.
Post-modern society is another term for postindustrial society; its
chief characteristic is the use of tools that extend the human abilities to
gather and analyze information, to communicate, and to travel.
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