Human Society and

~ tEvolution
s 1.2 SOCIETY : AN INTRODUCTION .

Society is a \imple word whose meaning is well known. But to say this does not
amount to denying that this word has a long history of meanings. Thus, society
is simple and complex; Indian, American, Chinese etc.; agricultural, industrial so
on and so forth. As a discipline, the study of Society acquired definitive meaning
and shape in the 191hcentury. Prior to that we had philosophies debating the
nature of the Society or the travelers writing about societies visited. It is the
famous French sociologist. Emile Durkheim who is given the credit of "treating
socicAy as a reality in its own right". That is to say, it is not only an innocent
'covering term' for "things we do not know about or understand properly".

If we look at the history of meanings of 'Society', we see new emphases in its

meaning appearing for it, especially after the Enlightenment period. Some laid
emphasis on 'order', some on 'rationality', some on 'materialism'. As a result,
Society came to have different meanings over the years. However, a clear
distancing away from a jelly-like and disorderly existence of the humanity has
been found to be a common theme in all these meanings which gave central
importance to values and human co-existence with passage of years. Many
famous thinkers insisted even on using different expressions for Society which was
found to be an inadequate term: Marxists use the word 'social formation' to
spec@ three levels of relationships it, comprises: wonomic. ideological and political.
Sir Anthony Giddens argues against identifying society with the nation-state and
prefers to talk about "social systems".

1.3 HUMAN BEINGS : AT THE CENTRE OF

STUDY OF ALL DISCIPLINES
Society is thus a complex area which, over the years, has been simplified with the
emergence of disciplines like History, Political Science, Sociology etc. around
some specific a\pects of the social reality. But the human beings occupied the
centre of study of all these social sciences. They have therefore their different
academic personality but all of them are moved by a central dynamic of holding
the human society together. In order to facilitate these intellectual pursuits, social
scientists are continuously engaged in renewal of hope for humanity. Our study
of society therefore seldom can be disassociated from pursing various concerns
for values which keep hope of humanity aflame. According to our Upanishads,
knowledge should enable the learner to move from darkness to light.

But knowledge/education may not always help people move forward. It may also
be possible that such knowledge is generated and spread which may throw
people back into the past of superstitions, and religious fears. It may provoke
religious fundamentalism and terrorism which we are witnessing these days. Ms.
Mary Douglas, "probably the United Kingdom's greatest living anthropologist"
has done seminal researches to find answers to questions like why a society like
England has produced 'outsiders' from among her own citizens? For this, she has
trained her sights on "how societies organise themselves and how people seli~te
to each other" and came to some conclusions which are going to prove useful to
make policies to counter the foremost problem of the day viz. terrorism.

Prof. Noam Chomsky is a perceptive American obscrver who has emphasized

8 on the need to keep 'knowledge' from degenerating into 'propaganda'. According
to him, this is a very big danger in thes e days of terrorism all over the world. True Stlldying Human Sociel
Knowledge should never be divorcedLform healthy criticism.
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1.4 SOME TOOLS OIF INQUIRY TO
UNRAVEL MErPNINGS .
Society is not what it looks like. It looks like a mere aggregation or' illdi\!iduals.
But actually it is more than all individuals put together. This is i,ei.;alhc. once the
individuals come together, they add :;o many values to the process oi' social ii ving.
These values concern many irnport;mt issues of I iving to get lie^: To count so~liz
prominent ones: freedom, equality, ]mutual respect, toleration of others. progress,
balancing of moral and material intercssts erc, There are othcr values which influetlce

ethical conduct etc.

berg. A ship w h i ~ hproceeds
The biggest challenge to the policy makers is to prioritize among ~hese\,slues. Is on the :~ssumption that it is
growth more important than distribution of benefits? To answer this qiledion, one ' ~ " ' y 'lake of which is
visi blc. lheii the dangers of
cannot take a view of either-or. Because if we insist 011 distrihu~ivejustice lihat ship-\vl.erl are there.
is equitable distribution), then we need to have goods for that purposc. which is A e,ar,,ple is:
only possible through growth. Therefore mere insistence on growth is not enough. , out stal istical average of
Wise leadership requires how best to reconcile these twin aspects. Those of' us depth in a flooded river. If
who study societies should rememl3er that social phenomena normally occur with the aver"e is less than you
ciun cope with, it doesn't rnean
these type of opposites unfolding fmlm inside them. Among them. what is physically you can ,nea,lycross river.
apparent (i.e. appears true on the surface) need not be true on deeper scrutiny. cause ,,,, point, it may
Let us see some examples. A poptlar example is: a glass half full is ha11'empty; be deeper and the possibiIity
but pause for a moment and ask yourself, is i t always either half empty or half of drow~lingis there. A very
full'? It would actually depend or.[whether you are thirsty or not. : ancient nlythical exainple is of
an elephant being perceived
by five blindfoIded people.
All the above exar~lplesonly show that studying a society vr vrcii11phsnon.lenon ,
w;rs a leg iL
requires first o l all a r ~ c - ) g n i t i othat
~ ~ social reality consists of' scvci-al levels. ,,, like a pillar to him elc.
Secondly, the top visible levcl i?ee:dnot be representative of' the reality .vas a whole. . - . . ~ .. -. - . .

Thirdly, a true picture of the sociial phenomenon is pos.sihlt. o~rlyil' we take care
to consider all aspects of that phenomenon. Karl hflarx ha:, \,el-! insightfully
observed that "lf the apparent were real, then 111crc ~ v o t i l ~t >j i rlo 11t'ccih r a
science". Society therefore should be v~cwcclill its depth ii-uni all bides.

Edmund Leach, a famous anthrop~;!ogist once chiclcd his I'el low brothers who
described tribes in terms of their colourtui ilrc:sscs, c!r.narnents. living patterns erc.
He called them a bunch of butterjly c.cltc1zer.s. ik'hy? You may ask. Tribals as
we know are a mass of down-troddicn people whose prohlelns of living have not
drawn as much attention of these colonial anthropologists a.;their external bearings.
But the question of understanding s,ocial reality is a very perplexing one. Mainly
because the complexity of the routi!ne living and doing is endlessly vanzd. From
among this complex matrix, to pick one or one set of options iskot easy. However,
we are always required to make such choices before we take a-decision.

Check Your Progress 1

Note : 1) Use the space _givenbelow tor your answers.
2) Check your ansxers :\,it11 I ! I P . -l;!i,er:
~ ;;t th;: c:nJ i-!f 1112 VI:~:,
1) What do you i:~Jcrsia~-id
Ih-olnthe i'ac; ii!n~rl-ie s x i e t y is up 01'several
levels of reality'?
uman Society and
;Evolution
 Studying Human Society
1.6 SOME DIFFICULT QUESTIONS
At times we come across some social phenomena which occupy the popular mind
because of the publicity effects. Let us take two recent examples which are
extremely controversial.

One such case is the cartoon controversy about which you must have read and
heard from the media. The cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed in wrong
light (as indicated by carrying a bomb on the head) are often considered as an
exercise of freedom of expression. But this liberality doesn't go very far when
we examine this sensitive phenomenon in a broades context. You may not be
knowing that there are eight European countries who have banned denial of
Holocaust (merciless killing of Jews by the Nadfascist forces) through legislations.
This means anybody who questions the anti-Semitic policies and practices of Nazi
Germany would be committing a blasphemy. Mr. 1king, a neo-fascist wrote two
pieces of article in violation of this ban. Fourteen years after publication of this
Article, police put him behind the bars recently while he was traveling in Austria.
One may ask this question: if it applies to the wounded feelings of the Jews, why
should the same not apply to something which wounds the feelings of the Muslims.
On a broader plane, when one looks at such types of sensitive issues, it is
advisable to take recourse to a humanitarian and modem point of view. We are
therefore strongly of the opinion that if the ban on denial of holocaust is right,
reprinting of Prophet Mohammad7scartoons to show him in an adverse light of
terrorism is wrong. Studying Society this way is actually a matter courage which
should enable the student to not only identify and analyze a social problem, but
what is more important, he or she should be able to call a spade a spade and
not by any other name.

Another influential happening around us these days is a new world order in which
violence has become an important tool of social change. You must have heard
about the 9/11 terrorist strike on twin towers (World Trade Centre) of America.
There should be no hesitation to condemn such terrorist acts which have now
spread across the world. It is an important feature of studying of human society
that one should gather the courage to name a criminal engaged in the act of
sabotaging social solidarity and human peace.

However, we come across many difficult questions in the study of society which
are not easy to answer. For instance, it is not difficult to find cases of top elites
subscribing to religious practices based on irrational beliefs. Democracy is a
good thing but is not so when exported to countries like Haiti, Afghanistan and
Iraq as was done recently. This is because few have successfully exposed the
American designs behind occupation of Iraq despite the facf that there were no
weapons of mass destruction for which it had attacked that country in the first
instance. When lies and myths make up such global mis-adventures without
heeding global protests, knowledge in such a situation actually reduces to become
a media-powered propaganda. Knowledge for centuries has grown through
ongoing debates and dialogues and not through imposition by a dominant group
Human Society and
~ tEvolution
s 1.7 TIPS TO KNOW

Studying society essentially means knowing that society. We study a society and
create more knowledge. Correct knowing of a society would require what to
knou: what is true knowledge and what are its ingredients. Thus, studying society
will contribute 1 - 1 healthy generation and growth of knowledge and the student
becomes a creative and responsible knowledge seeker. But how is true knowledge
after all learnt and created? As said before, knowledge has to be distinguished
from propaganda which is normally dished out by powerful people. Such
propaganda, one should be aware, actually cotne in mixed packages: some right
but some are sensational. Recent researches have shown that it was mostly due
to the media impact corning from the most po~;ilrfu!nation that people accepted
the invasion of Iraq as real. But same weight o f rnedia impact was not given to
the true information (revealed later namely) that Iraq aztually did not posses
weapons of mass destruction. As a result though the world has gradually come
to hnow about these true information?the Amcrican public does not believe so.
According to Hanis poll conducted in early 2006. the nurnber of these Americans
who still believe that Iraq wiis punished in 2001 for possessing weapons of mass
destruction is surprisingly on the rise. Such undersrandiiig of Iraq problem is
propaganda and not knowledge whose domain has come under a h e ~ v yinfluence
of media everywhere in the world with the nations-state using them to propagate
their version of truth.

1.7.2 Many-sided Nature of Social Reality

Anothe~dimension to knowledge szzki~~g colmsists in :ec~gnizi~mg
t11a; a pheriornenon
under study is actually many-sided though it looks like a siiuple occurrence. This
can be explained with the help of an ilnalogy from Nai1a.c. We have seen the
phenomenon of snow melting. But what we overlook at the same time are certain
other phenomena occurring at the same time in association with it: snow is moving,
water is t i m i n g erc. All social phenomena are similady many-sided; though we
accept one 4ide ti)r action at a time. A balanced study would at least recognize
that there are tnany sides to the phenomenon under study.

All these sides to a phenomenon, especially the important ones. present themselves
to a student as two or more horns of a dilemma. We are also frequently solving
these dilemmas. When you go to a market to buy some goods, you have solved
this problem because you have decided what to buy over what not to, with the
limited money you have. But in other areas, we are usually not keen on resolving
these dilemmas which make choice>difficult. In such a situation, one unfailing
advice has come from our Father of the Nation. In the course of doing things
when you are in a dilemma, apply Gandhiji's talisman: "safely take the next step
if by doing so you are contributing to the efforts aiming at wiping out the last drop
of tear of the last man".

1.7.3 Two Essential Ingredients

.fi~ow!zdgecreation i- based OK d : :tnd ~ information we gather through use of
sensory percepcionh. But hou :I<: we process them and what are essential
ingrcdicnts requirccl li!r th;~t'! 'T'IJ,;~2ssentiul ingredients for processing for true
knowledge consist in (a) objectivity i.e., remaining i e c fimn biases and (bj Studying Human Society
uniformity i.e., remaining fair and equal in app1ic:~tion.

But these ingredients for knowledge creation are rnore -ideal' ~ h a n'real'. The
only way out of this impasse lies in the stated hone.;ty (>I' the student. This will
help prepare a level-playing field for all the players in the world of knowledge to
play their games equally and with a sense oFju.itice. Otherwise. staying away
from biases has been mired in phlosophical deba~es.Gi\ en the real world which
has been essentially ridden by inequities and hierarchy: ~t is always desirable that
one states one's own position and choose a partisan line (with Gandhi,ji for
example) than leave it at sheer academic plane. All academic exercises should
have relevance to the society we live in.

1.7.4 Gandhiji's Advice

We may conclude with Gandhiji's advice on the most important goal for a student
in her pursuit of knowledge:

The real difficulty is that people have no idea of what education truly is. We
assess the value of education in the same rnanner as we assess the value of land
or of shares in the stock-exchange market. We want to provide only such
education as would enable the student to earn Inore. We hardly give any thought
to the improvement of the character of the educated. The girls, we say. donot
have to earn; so why should they be educated'? As long as such ideas persist,
there is no hope of our ever knowing the true value of education".

Check Your Progress 2

Note: i) Use the space giver1 below for your answers.

ii) Check your answers with those given at the end of the Unit.

1) Describe more than one side of a difficult ~ i t ~t i i~" i~yii . ! may

~ ~ have faced.

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2) [n study of society, what sort of safeguards one should maintain ?

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1.8 LET US SUM UP

This Unit thus is an exercise in ~nethodologywhich attl.r~?ptc~l ti, help the students
(i) how to unravel meaning from a given social pheaornencr~~ ~1;hicl-iis (ii) invilriably
many-sided and multi-layered in nature. With the ht:lp of ex~unplesfrom history
and the current events. it has been shown that fumi-isticstuclics have not s~~cceeded 13
Human Society and
Its Evolution