CHSE Odisha Elective Sociology key terms

The systematic study of human society, social groups, and social behaviour, focusing on how social structures, institutions, and interactions shape individual lives and collective outcomes.

C. Wright Mills's idea that personal troubles must be understood as connected to larger public issues and historical social forces beyond individual control.

The relatively stable pattern of relationships, roles, and institutions that organise a society and constrain or enable the actions of its members.

A group of people living together in an ordered, enduring way, sharing territory, interaction, and common institutions that regulate their collective life.

A collectivity whose members share a locality, common interests, and a sense of belonging, often characterised by close, face-to-face relationships rather than formal rules.

A formally organised group formed deliberately to pursue specific shared interests or goals, with defined membership and rules, such as a trade union or club.

An established, enduring pattern of norms, roles, and procedures organised around a basic social need, such as family, education, religion, economy, or polity.

Two or more people who interact, share expectations, and recognise themselves as a distinct unit, ranging from small intimate groups to large formal organisations.

A small, intimate group marked by face-to-face interaction, emotional bonds, and diffuse relationships, such as family or close friends; secondary groups by contrast are formal and goal-oriented.

Concepts describing how people classify their own group as an in-group deserving loyalty, while treating outsiders as an out-group, often generating ethnocentrism and rivalry.

The total learned way of life of a society, including knowledge, beliefs, values, norms, language, customs, and material objects transmitted across generations.

The tendency to judge other cultures by the standards of one's own, treating one's own way of life as normal and superior and others as inferior or strange.

The methodological stance that a culture's practices and beliefs should be understood in terms of its own context rather than judged by external standards.

Values are shared ideas about what is desirable; norms are specific rules of conduct derived from them, enforced through sanctions ranging from informal disapproval to legal punishment.

The social position a person occupies within a group or society, carrying certain rights, duties, and expectations; statuses may be ascribed at birth or achieved through effort.

The set of expected behaviours, obligations, and privileges attached to a particular status, which guides how its occupant is expected to act.

The lifelong process through which individuals learn the norms, values, skills, and identities of their society, beginning in childhood and continuing through adult life.

A kinship-based institution of socially recognised relationships, typically involving marriage and parenthood, that organises reproduction, care, and economic cooperation.

A socially approved and usually legally recognised union between partners that establishes rights and obligations, legitimises offspring, and links wider kin groups.

The network of relationships based on descent, marriage, and adoption that defines social obligations, inheritance, residence, and support among relatives.

A system of beliefs, rituals, and symbols concerning the sacred that binds adherents into a moral community and provides meaning, identity, and social cohesion.

The hierarchical arrangement of social groups into ranked layers with unequal access to valued resources such as wealth, power, and prestige.

A hereditary, endogamous, hierarchically ranked social group in South Asia, traditionally linked to occupation and ritual purity, with membership fixed by birth.

A broad stratum of people sharing similar economic position, occupation, and life chances, whose membership is relatively open compared with caste.

A social group sharing common descent, territory, language, and culture, often with distinct political organisation and closer ties to land and forest resources.

The movement of individuals or groups between social positions or strata, either upward or downward, within one generation or across generations.

Significant alteration over time in the structures, institutions, norms, and behaviour patterns of a society, occurring gradually or through rapid transformation.

M. N. Srinivas's term for the process by which a lower caste adopts the rituals, customs, and lifestyle of a higher caste in an effort to raise its status.

Sustained, organised collective action by a group seeking to promote, resist, or reverse social change, often through mobilisation, protest, and advocacy.

The process by which societies adopt industrial, scientific, urban, and rational-legal institutions, altering values, occupations, and social relationships.

The growth in the proportion of a population living in towns and cities, accompanied by shifts in employment, lifestyle, and rural-urban relationships.

The flows of people, goods, money, remittances, and ideas connecting villages and cities, showing that rural and urban life are interdependent rather than separate.

The idea that Indian society holds together despite wide regional, linguistic, religious, and cultural differences, through shared institutions and accommodative traditions.

Behaviour that violates significant social norms and attracts disapproval or sanction; what counts as deviant depends on context, culture, and social reaction.

A form of deviance that breaks legal codes and is punishable by the state through formal sanctions such as fines, imprisonment, or other penalties.

The means by which a society enforces conformity to its norms, ranging from informal mechanisms like gossip, ridicule, and family pressure to formal agencies like police and courts.

A perspective treating society as an integrated system of interdependent parts, each contributing to stability and the survival of the whole.

A perspective emphasising that society is marked by unequal distribution of power and resources, and that social order rests on domination and struggle between groups.

A perspective focusing on small-scale face-to-face interaction and on how people construct meaning through symbols, language, and interpretation of situations.

Émile Durkheim's concept for the bonds that unite members of a society, distinguishing mechanical solidarity in small similar communities from organic solidarity based on interdependence and division of labour.