SOCIAL ACTION &

INTERACTION
PREPARED BY:
M.MUNEEB ALAM (BBA183102)
ROHAIL MAHFOOZ (BBA183012)
M.FAIZAN BUTT (BBA183104)
TALAT ABBAS (BBA183105)
CONTENTS

• Social Process
• Cooperation
• Competition
• Conflict and Accommodation
SOCIAL PROCESS

• Social processes are the ways in which individuals and groups

interact, adjust and readjust and establish relationships and pattern of
behavior which are again modified through social interactions.
• As Ginsberg says, “social processes mean the various modes of
interaction between individuals or groups including cooperation and
conflict, social differentiation and integration, development, arrest
and decay”
ELEMENTS OF SOCIAL PROCESS

• Social process has the following essential elements.

• Sequence of events
• Repetition of events
• Relationship between events
• Continuity of events
• Special Social results
CLASSIFICATION OF SOCIAL PROCESS

Social process may be classified in three ways as under

1. By the number of persons involved, i.e., one-with-one; one-with-
group; and its reverse, group-with-one, group-with-group.
2. By the degree of intimacy of the individual and groups in
interaction. For example, primary, secondary and tertiary or
marginal groups.
3. By the nature or types of the processes.
There are, of course, hundreds of social processes
• Political
• Educational
• Industrial
• Economic
• Religious and others

The specific social processes are also numerous. Among those of

More general nature are
• Association
• Cooperation
• Conflict
• Accommodation
• Assimilation
• Domination
• Exploitation
• Differentiation, etc.
COOPERATION

• Cooperation involves individuals or groups working

together for the achievement of their individual or
collective goals.
• Cooperation may involve only two people who work
together towards a common goal.
• Man can't associate without cooperating, without
working together in the pursuit of like to common
interests.
• It can be divided into five principal types.
FIVE PRINCIPAL TYPES

• Direct Cooperation
• Indirect Cooperation
• Primary Cooperation
• Secondary Cooperation
• Tertiary Cooperation
DIRECT COOPERATION

• Those activities in which people do like things together play together,

worship together, labor together in myriad ways.
• The essential character is that people do in company, the things which they
can also do separately or in isolation
• The essential character is that people do in company, the things which they
can also do separately or in isolation
INDIRECT COOPERATION

• Those activities in which people do definitely unlike tasks toward a

single end.
• The famous principle of the 'division of labor' is introduced, a principle
that is imbedded in the nature of social revealed wherever people
combine their difference for mutual satisfaction or for a common end.
PRIMARY COOPERATION

• It is found in primary groups such as family, neighborhood, friends and

so on.
• Here, there is an identity end.
• The rewards for which everyone works are shared or meant to be
shared, with every other member in the group.
• Means and goals become one, for cooperation itself is a highly prized
value.
SECONDARY COOPERATION

• It is the characteristic feature of the modern civilized

society and is found mainly in social groups.
• It is highly formalized and specialized.
• Each performs his/her task, and thus helps others to
perform their tasks, so that he/she can separately enjoy the
fruits of his/her cooperation.
TERTIARY COOPERATION

• It may be found between 2 or more political parties, castes, tribes, religions groups etc.
• It is often called accommodation. The two groups may cooperate and work together for
antagonistic goals.
Cooperation is important in the life of an
individual that it is difficult for man to survive
without it. C.H. Cooley says that
Cooperation arises only when men
realize that they have a common
interest. They have sufficient theme,
intelligence and self control, to seek this
interest through united action.
COMPETITION

• Competition is the most fundamental form of

social struggle. According to Sutherland,
Woodward and Maxwell “Competition is an
impersonal, unconscious, continuous struggle
between individuals or groups for satisfaction
which, because of their limited supply, all may
not have.” In the words of Biemans “competition
is the striving of two or more persons for the same
goal which is limited so that all cannot share it.”
COMPETITION

• According to Anderson and Parker, “Competition is that form of

social action in which we strive against each other for the
possession of or use of so limited material or non-material
good.” It is one aspect of struggle which is universal not only in
human society but also in the plant and animal worlds.
COMPETITION

• According to Bogardus, “Competition is a contest

to obtain something which does not exist in a
quantity sufficient to meet the
demand.” Majumdar defines competition as the
“impersonalized struggle among resembling
creatures for goods and service which are scare or
limited in quantity.”
COMPETITION

• It is a force which compels people to act against one another. It is a natural result of the
universal struggle for existence. It occurs whenever there is an insufficient supply of anything
that human beings desire—insufficient in the sense that all cannot have as much of it as they
wish. In any society, for example, there are normally more people who want jobs than there are
jobs available: hence there is competition for available places.
• Among those who are already employed, there is likewise competition for better jobs. Since
scarcity is in a sense an inevitable condition of social life, consequently, competition of some
sort or the other is found in all the societies. There is no competition for sunshine and air which
are unlimited.
CHARACTERISTICS OF COMPETITION

• Competition is impersonal struggle

• Competition is an unconscious activity
• Competition is universal
COMPETITION IS IMPERSONAL STRUGGLE

• Park and Burgess have defined competition as “interaction without social contact.” It is,
in other words, an inter-individual struggle that is impersonal. It is usually not directed
against any individual or group in particular; the competitors are not in contact and do not
know one another.
• Competition is for the most part not personalized. When the individuals compete with
each other, not on personal level but as members of groups, such as business, social or
cultural organizations, tribes, nations, political parties etc. the competition is called
impersonal.
COMPETITION IS AN UNCONSCIOUS ACTIVITY

• Competition takes place on the unconscious level. Students,

for example, do not conceive of their classmates as
competitors even though it is true that there are only a certain
number of honors available and if certain members of the
class get them, the honors are automatically denied to others.
COMPETITION IS UNIVERSAL

• Competition is found in every society and in every age. It is found in every group. As the things people wish
to secure are limited in supply, there is competition all-round to secure them.
• To quote from the monograph prepared by May and Doob “On a social level, individuals compete with one
another when:
• (i) they are striving to achieve the same goal that is scarce;
• (ii) they are prevented by the roles of the situation from achieving this goal in equal amounts;
• (iii) they perform better when the goal can be achieved in unequal terms; and
• (iv) they have relatively few psychologically affiliative contacts with one another.
Competition can be seen at five levels: economic, cultural, social, political and racial.
VALUE OF COMPETITION

• Competition, like co-operation, is

indispensable in social life. It arises
from the fact that individuals are
capable of independent locomotion
and have the capacity for gaining an
individual experience as a result of
independent action. Some sociologists
are of the view that it is even more
basic process than co-operation.
Competition performs many useful functions in society. It is extremely dynamic. According to
H. T. Mazumdar, it performs five positive functions.
• First, it helps determine the status and location of individual members in a system of
hierarchy,
• Second, it tends to stimulate economy, efficiency and invectiveness,
• third, it tends to enhance one’s ego-
• fourth, it prevents undue concentration of power in an individual or group of individuals
• fifth, it creates respect for the rules of the game.
CONFLICT

• Conflict is one of the dissociative or disintegrative social processes.

• Conflict arises only when the attention of the competitors is diverted from the object of competition to
themselves.
• As a process, it is the anti-thesis of cooperation. It is a process of seeking to obtain rewards by eliminating or
weakening the competitors.
• Conflict is also goal oriented. But unlike cooperation and competition, it seeks to capture its goal by making
ineffective the others who also seek them.
• According to J.H. Fitcher, “Conflict is the social process in which individual or groups seek their ends by directly
challenging the antagonist by violence or threat of violence”. As K. Davis defines, “Conflict is u codified form of
struggle”.
COMPETITION MAY LEAD TO CONFLICT

• Competition, if it is uncontrolled, may lead to conflicts which are

considered inimical to group solidarity or cohesion. Sometimes it
may become violent involving unethical and unfair means to divert
the competitors’ attention from sportsmanship which is outcome of
fair competition.
• Therefore, competition should always be healthy and fair.
CAUSES OF CONFLICT

• Malthus an eminent economist and mathematician says that conflict arises only when
there is shortage of food or means of subsistence. According to him, the increase of
population in geometrical progression is the main cause of conflict between the people.
• According to C. Darwin, an eminent biologist, the principle of struggle for existence and
survival of the fittest are the main causes of conflict.
•  According to Frued and some other psychologists, the cause of conflict lies in man’s
inmate or inborn aggressive tendency.
TYPE OF CONFLICT

• Direct Conflict
When a person or a group injures, thwarts or destroys the opponent in order to secure a goal or
reward, direct conflict occurs; such as litigation, revolution and war.

• Indirect Conflict
In indirect conflict, attempts are made by individuals or groups to frustrate the efforts of their
opponents in an indirect manner. For example, when two manufacturers go on lowering the prices of
their commodities till both of them are declared insolvent, indirect conflict in that case take place.
ACCOMMODATION

• Accommodation is the achievement of adjustment between people

that permits harmonious acting together in social situation. It is
achieved by an individual through the acquisition of behavior
patterns, habits and attitudes which are transmitted to him socially.
• It is the termination of competing or conflicting relations between
individuals, groups and other human relationship structures. It is a
way of inventing social arrangement which enable people to work
together whether they like it or not. This led Sumner to refer to
accommodation as ‘antagonistic cooperation’.