These are the Slides for MA (Final year) Students of the Department of Social Work, University of Peshawar. Course Title: Social Institutions and Social System of Pakistani Society Dr. Imran Ahmad Sajid

1. SOCIETY
DR. IMRAN AHMAD SAJID

2. Ibn-e-Khaldun
• Man is Gregarious by Nature
• Mankind can not survive without living
together
1. By nature, man can not live without food
– Man can not fulfill his food necessities all by
himself

3. Protection
• Man can not protect himself without the help of
others.
– By nature, man is physically weaker than majority of
other animals
• All other animals have been given an organ for
protection or defense
– Man has been given mind and hands
– Man invented weapons for his protection
– Individually, man can not protect himself even from a
single animal—especially predators

4. Concluding,
• without cooperation with each other, man
cannot survive.
– Man can not fulfill his food necessities.
– Man can not fulfill his needs for protection.

5. What is a Society?
• Does it refer to your village?
• your District?
• Peshawar?
• Khyber Pakhtunkhwa?
• Do you think Police, Courts, Hospitals, Mosques, Parks,
Roads, Dams, Airports, Bus Stands, Schools, Markets, and
other such places constitute society?
• Do you think Pakhtun are a society or Chitral is a Society?
• Does it refer to an NGO? e.g SPARC? (Society for the
Protection of the Rights of the Child)
• People on Facebook? Facebook Society?

6. You are not completely wrong

7. Taureg of Northern Africa

8. Definition
• A.W. Green
– Society is the largest group in which people have
relationships
• MacIver and Page
– Society is the web of social relationships which is ever
changing
• John J. Macionis
– Society refers to people who interact in a defined territory
and share a culture
• The Urban Dictionary
– A group of people that set a standard and everyone that is
affected by that standard is part of it.

9. • Linton
– Any group of people who have lived and worked together long
enough to get themselves organized and to think of themselves
as a social unit with well defined limits.
• Theodorson & Theodorson (Modern Dictionary of
Sociology)
– Society is a group of people with a common, at least somewhat
distinct culture who occupy a particular territorial area, have a
feeling of unity and regard themselves as a distinguishable
entity.
• Wikipedia
– Society [is a] group of people sharing the same geographical or
virtual territory and therefore subject to the same political
authority and dominant cultural expectations.

10. • What makes the way of life of people such as
Tuareg of the Sahara so different from your
life as a University student in Peshawar?
• How and why do all societies change over
time?
• What forces divide a society?
• What forces hold a society together?

11. The Answer: Technology
• Gerhard Lenski provided an insight into how
technology changed societies

12. Elements of Society
1. Aggregate of People
2. Interaction
3. Having a common culture*
4. Geographical / virtual boundaries
*Culture is the ways of thinking, the ways of acting, and the material objects that
together form a people’s way of life (Macionis, 2012.p.54).

13. Aspects of Society
1. Communities
2. Culture– Shared culture can create sub communities of
people within a society due to their shared attitudes, values,
goals and practices.
– Cultural heritage
3. Economy : - a system of producing and distributing goods and
services
4. Education System
5. Government
6. Identity – Interaction with others within our society helps
shape our identity, (along with our gender, class & cultural
origins), and a shared society can promote a sense of shared
identity.
7. Infrastructure

14. 8. Institutions
9. Land
10. Law
– Law enforcement (e.g. Police etc)
11. Military
12. Natural resources
13. People
14. Politics and Political System
15. Social structure: the way in which the major social
institutions distribute fundamental rights and duties and
determine the division of advantages from social
cooperation.
– Social order
– Social stratification

15. Types of Society
1. Static Society
2. Folk Society
3. Gemeinschaft
4. Close Society
5. Primitive Society
6. Urban Society
7. Rural Society
8. Industrial Society
9. Secular Society
10. Sacred Society
11. Nomadic vs Sedentary Society
12. Traditional vs Modern Society
(Iqbal Ch.pp40-45)
Remember: these are ideal types of societies or ideal concepts of societies.
One society may show characteristics of more than one type.

16. 1. Static Society
• a society that experience very little or no
change from one generation to another
generation or at least two generations.
• In a static society, each generation’s life is a
replica of its predecessor’s.
• Although there is evolutionary change but not
deliberate-rational-innovative change.
• Static society is unaware of change but is
caught in it.
Rural and Tribal societies may b referred to as static societies.

17. 2. Folk Society
• a folk society is small, isolated, non-literate, and
homogeneous with a strong sense of group solidarity.
It is completely cohesive.
– Behaviour: Spontaneous, traditional, uncritical, and
personal
– No formal legal system
– Intellectual pursuit for knowledge almost non- existent
– Informal social control
– No police
– Frequent and intense interaction
– Unit of action is family
Concept developed by
U.S. anthropologist Robert Redfield,

18. Static + Folk
• Manchar Lake Jamshoro - 350 to 520 SqKm
• Largest freshwater lake in Pakistan and one
of Asia's largest.
• fisherfolk, near village Kot Lashari Bobak
depended on the freshwater fish they caught
in the lake

19. 3. Gemeinschaft
• German Sociologist Ferdinand Tonnis
• Refers to rural society
– Moderate division of labour
– Close association and kinship
– Strong family system
– Close cooperation and intimate interaction
– Collective sense of loyalty
– Racial and ethnic homogeneity

20. 4. Close Society
• A form of society in which social class is based
primarily on family status rather than personal
abilities and achievements.
– It’s a variation of caste based society
– Person is known by family, class and caste

21. 5. Primitive Society
• A non-literate society.
• Simple technology, homogeneity, isolation
– lack of a written language,
– small population
– slow rate of socio-cultural change.
– History and beliefs are passed on through an oral
tradition

22. Aboriginals
of Australia

23. 6. Urban Society
• Large heterogeneous population,
• Complex division of labour
• Impersonal social relations
• Formal system for social control
– Existence of police, courts, and prisons
• High availability of government services
• Regular reward for work in cash

24. Peshawar

25. 7. Rural Society
• It is usually agricultural society. It is a society
where people live immediately on agriculture.
• Dwight Sanderson: Form of society maintained
between people and their institutions in a local
area in which they lived on dispersed farmstead
and in a village which usually forms the center of
their activities.

26. 8. Industrial Society
• a society that uses advanced sources of
energy to derive large scale machinery for
producing goods

27. • A considerable portion of its economy is tied
to jobs that involve mechanized labor.
• Rapid means of transport and a wide network
of communications has been developed.
• disappearance of the joint family system
• A system of nuclear families has emerged.

28. 9. Secular Society
• A society where there is no state religion.
• Non-religious society.
• Former USSR
• Highly unstable.
• Heterogenous

29. 10. Sacred Society
• A Sacred Society is a society where people share
a common religion, dream or a common ideals or
even a common heritage.
• Primarily homogeneous, integrated and stable.
• Human relationship and value systems are
regarded as absolute, natural, rigid, and fixed.
• Examples
– Makka, Madina, Vatican State
– Tibet `

30. 11. Nomadic vs Sedentary Society
• Nomadic: a nomadic society has no permanent
place of settlement. People roam from place to
place with their luggage on the backs of camels,
horses and donkeys in search of food and water.
• Sedentary: a society that has a permanent
settlement in rural or/and urban areas.

31. 12. Traditional vs Modern Society
• TRADITIONAL
• Society with simple culture and few social
institutions,
• simple and slow means of communication,
• very little urban life
• Minimum social change
• Homogeneous population

32. • MODERN
• Society based on education, technology,
industry and urban life.
• Complex culture,
• Faster social change
• Heterogeneous population