Terminologies

Ramesh Sigdel
DCMPH, IoM
 Status and Role:

In all societies, even those with the smallest

populations, there is social differentiation in the
form of status, formally defined as the relative
rank of a person in particular group.
The basis for the status from of
differentiation varies with time and with the
society and its structure and role,
designation and specialties. In many
societies the most important status
differentiation are associated with the
division of labour, the separation of a total
work process into inter dependent tasks.
Thus, in a given society the division may
for fisherman, soil markers, and boat
builders and so on.
It can also be seen the role and function of
public health officers, TBA, FCHV, AHW, HA,
ANM, Staff Nurse, Doctors that differ and their
status is determined by profession. The status
are different of the above mentioned health
care providers due to their involvement in the
levels of community and hospital settings. In
this way, status is the rank order position
assigned by a group to a role or to a set of
roles.
The other side of the status coin is called
role. A role is made up of the behaviors
associated with a given status. Thus, in
any society a man who has a status as a
father is traditionally expected to a play a
certain role to provide support for his
children, and to guide and protect them until
they are at an age where they can be
considered as on their own. In this way,
social role is a pattern of behavior expected
or an individual within a certain group or
situations.
 Kinds of Status:

1. Ascribed status:
2. Achieved status:

1. Ascribed status: Ascribed roles has been defined

as those, over which the e individual is made male or
female that he belongs to a certain family, or that he
is a member of a certain race. If the individual is
female she must take on the famine roles prescribed
in her culture. The most important ascribed statues
are usually bestowed at birth, racial status is an
example. Other examples are sex status, age status,
2. Achieved status: Achieved roles are
defined as the roles about which the person has
some choice however much or little are
achieved roles. In our society this includes all
occupational roles. For example: education
status, political party membership, chairman of
any other institutions or associations etc.
 Social Stratification

Social stratification and social differentiation

are the two most important processes found
in most of the societies. Everywhere society
is divided into various class, economic,
political, social and religious the process by
which individuals & groups are ranked in a
more or less enduring hierarchy of status is
known as stratification
According to W. Murray ,'' Social stratification is
a horizontal division of society into “higher” and
“lower” social units.”

According to ogburn and Nimkoff, "by a social

class we mean one or two or more broad
groups of individuals who are ranked by the
members of the community in socially superior
and inferior positions
 Inequality of Stratification:

It means unequal rewards or opportunities for

different individuals within a groups in a
society.

Currently, the existence of inequality its

caused and consequences, particularly as
they related to social class, Gender, ethnicity
and locality continues to occupy the
sociological foreground
Social stratification refers to a
phenomenon that exists in all complex
societies: The hierarchical ranking of
groups of people according to such criteria
as relative economic wealth, political
power and social honour.
Characteristics of Stratification
• Social Stratification is universal process.
• Social Stratification is social.
• It has different form in different time and places.
• Social norms and values govern it.
• Social indicator of inequality.
 Stratification by:
1. Property wealth and income:- Rich class and poor.
2. Birth :- Brahman, Chhetri, Vaishya and Sudra
3. Religion:-Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, Muslim etc.
4. Education:- Educated and uneducated
5. Intelligence:- gifted and slow.
6. Race :- White and Black
7. Political right:- Ruler and Ruled.
8. Nature of Occupation:- Agriculturist, Industrialist
etc.
9. Language: Between the languages
 Norms and Values

Norms: norms are standards of group

behavior. Groups are the products of
interaction among individuals. When a
number of individuals interact, a set of
standards develops that regulate their
relationships and modes of behavior
These standards of group behavior are called
social norms, that brother and sisters should
not have sexual relations, a child should defer
to his parents. Norms are always socially
useful. A society can well progress and
develop only when it accepts certain controls.
Obviously without accepting controls the society
cannot function these can, however, function
and became effective only when social norms
are observed. It is difficult to think of a norm
less society.
Values

In our society there are certain social values.

Values all over are not uniform. The values of
one society may and usually differ from those
of the other. Social values are in fact cultural
standards and essential for an organized
social life
These provide legitimacy for social
arrangements and social behavior, values of a
individual however, different from that of a
society. Where as the former concerns
individual himself, the latter are concerned with
group life.
It has rightly been said that values and
culture are closely lined with each other. In
fact fundamental characteristics of any
culture reflect basic values of that society.
Social values are always linked with
organized social life.
Cultural Relativism

This is a method whereby different

societies or cultures are analysed
objectively without using the values of
one culture to judge the worth of another.
A favoured way of achieving this aim is to
describe the practices of a society from
the point of view of its members.
The term used for the principles which
states that one can not understand,
interpret, or evaluate social and social
psychological phenomena meaningfully
unless the phenomena under study have
been seen with special reference, to the
role they play in the larger social and
cultural system. Franz Boas is the centre
figure of this thought.
Cultural Lag

Cultural lag referes to a situation in which

some parts of a culture alter at a faster
rate than other, related parts, with a
resulting description of the integration and
equilibrium of the culture. This concept
was introduced by William F. Ogburn.
The idea of a cultural lag was developed
by W.F. Ogburn in response to crude
economic determinism in which cultural,
political and social phenomena change in
direct and immediate response to changes
in the economic basic of society. Ogburn
noted that changes in culture were not
always or necessarily congruent with
economic changes. For example, he
argued that economic changes influencing
the division of labour in the family had not
been accompanied by a change in the
ideology that "a women's place is in
home".
A cultural lag exists when two or more
social variables, which were once in some
from of agreement or mutual adjustment,
became dissociated and maladjusted by
their differential rates of change. Although
Ogburn's formulation of the problem of
social change is no longer central to
contemporary sociology, his hypothesis of
cultural lag did anticipate debates in
sociology about the relationship between
the economic base and cultural
superstructure of society. W.F. Ogburn
has explained in 1922 in his book ' social
change'
Ethnocentrism

This term, first coined by W.G. Sumner

(1906), is used to describe prejudicial
attitudes between in groups and out
groups by which our attitudes, customs
and behaviour are unquestionably and or
critically, treated as superior to their social
arrangements. The term is also used to
criticize sociologists and anthropologists
who, often unwittingly, import narrow,
parochial assumptions drawn from their
own society into their research.
• Means an attitude of regarding one's own
cultural or group as inherently superior.
The ethnocentric attitude is able to judge
the worth of other cultures in terms of its
own cultural standards, and as other
cultures are, of course, different, they are
held to be inferior.
Ethno-medicines

Ethno-medicine is a branch of medical

anthropology which termed as "those
beliefs and practices relating to disease
which are the products of indigenous
cultural development and are not explicitly
derived from the conceptual framework of
modern medicine.
• It is that the traditional study of non-
western medicine and a part of the
speciality along with the anthropological
work in the health fields is recaptured
giving a formal name ethno-medicine.
We find that the traditional indigenous
medicines have been very helpful in the
health care system of Nepal and India in the
past as well as in the present time, with
specific reference to the Ayurveda and other
formal and non-formal medical system.
Thus, the Ayurvedic medicines, what we
call the great traditional medicine, have a
very closed continuum with the folk
medicine as being practised by the tribal
people and the anthropologists are
studying them for wider understanding and
the relations between the two types of
medicines, the folk medicines and the
great traditional medicines.
Social process

Social process refers to any identifiable

repetitive pattern of social interaction. The
traditional listing of major social processes
includes conflict, competition, assimilation,
acculturation, accommodation, consensus,
cooperation, specialization, differentiation
and stratification.
 Social interaction usually takes place in the
form of cooperation, competition, conflict,
accommodation and assimilation. These
forms of social interaction are also
designated as social processes. These social
processes may therefore be described as the
fundamental ways in which men interact and
establish relationship.
They refer to the repetitive forms of
behaviour, which are commonly found in
social life. MacIver observes, "Social
process is the manner in which the
relations of the members of a group, once
brought together, acquire a certain
distinctive character".
 He further explains that it also implies
changes from one state of relationship to
another, directed up and down, forward or
backward, and hence leading towards
integration or disintegration. According to
Ginsberg
"social processes mean the various modes of
interaction between individuals or groups
including cooperation and conflict, social
differentiation and integration development
arrest and decay. Social interaction and social
process are interrelated.
The one cannot be understood without the
other. Interaction refers to an action done
in response to another action, but when
this interaction through repatriation leads
to a result, it is called a social process.
Elements of social process

a. Sequence of events
b. Repletion of events
c. Relationship between the events
d. Continuity of events
e. Special result
Society is an expression of different social
processes. Social processes are so
fundamental to the life of a community that
understanding of human society is no
possible without their study.
 Similarly, society as essentially as
social process and sociology as the
discipline concerned with the study of that
process. It is thus obvious that it is
essential for a student of society that he
should study the various forms of social
processes and their natural, in order to
understand social phenomena.
Forms of social processes

1. Cooperation
2. Competition
3. Conflict
4. Accommodation
5. Assimilation
6. Integration
7. Acculturation
8. Enculturation
Interaction usually occurs in the forms of
above-mentioned social processes.
Customs and Traditions

We are rich in culture and tradition. We

learn in the family how to respect our
elders. There are specific words in our
language to address the elders, equals
and the younger ones. Our culture
teaches us to warship our parents,
teachers and elders like god.
We celebrate mother's day, Father's day
and Teacher's day as respectfully, on such
days, we give them sweets and fruits, how
before them touching their feet with our
forehead and ask far their blessings.
Similarly, some of us worship different
Gods and Goddesses. We visit temples;
offer flowers, sweets and fruits to the
images of god and goddesses. We give
alms to the poor and disables people.
These are our norms and values.
Customs represent a kind of informal
social control. Many of our daily activities
are regulated by customs our ways of
dressing, speaking, eating, working,
worshipping, training the young,
celebrating festivals etc. are all controlled
by customs. They are self-accepted rules
of social life. Individuals can hardly escape
their hold.
In this way, customs represent the group
behavior. It is the totally of the behavior
pattern carried by traditions. Habit is a
personality trait whereas the custom is a
group trait. So, repeated patterns of
behavior are known as customs. Customs
will mostly be based on beliefs, attitudes,
values and also past experience. It goes
without saving that customs are dynamic
and chaining, also passing from
generation to generation.
Customs of one group may differ from the
customs of other groups. There are,
however, possibilities of acculturation and
the borrowing and assimilation of customs.
For example, system of marriage,
medication pattern, different festivals etc...
What is conflict ?
Disruption of harmony in relationship

• Within individuals
• Between individuals
• Between groups/ communities
• Between countries
• Between regionals
 Sources of conflict
• Power relations
• Intolerance to differences
• Miscommunication
• prejudice
 Actors of conflict
• Health workers
• Opinion leaders
• Alternatives healers
• Community members
• Neighbors
• Group members
• Teachers
• Anybody
Conflict management
• Conflict prevention
• Conflict resolution
• Conflict transformation
Conflict management
• Set yourself free from prejudice
• Study the environment where conflict
happens
• Analyze the sources of conflict
• Analyze your own contribution to the
conflict
• Assess the damage caused by the conflict
• Find ways to repair them
 Conflict management
• There will be always compromise

• There will be always a learning