Social Structure, Stratification and Social Processes: Caste, Class, Gender, Mobility, Cooperation and Conflict
What the exam tests
This domain asks you to distinguish caste, class and gender stratification, explain types of mobility, and analyse cooperation and conflict as social processes. Questions often use Indian examples of caste and class mobility.
Core rules and concepts
- Social structure refers to patterned relationships and institutions that shape action.
- Stratification ranks groups unequally; caste is ascribed, closed and endogamous, historically linked to purity and pollution.
- Class is achieved, open and economically based; gender is socially constructed through roles and patriarchy.
- Mobility is vertical or horizontal, intergenerational or intragenerational.
- Cooperation is joint action for shared goals; conflict is struggle over scarce resources or values; competition and accommodation are related processes.
Worked example
A Dalit student from a rural family becomes a civil servant. This is intergenerational upward mobility through education and reservation. Yet caste may still shape marriage and social acceptance, showing that class mobility and caste persistence can coexist.
Traps that cost marks
- Treating caste as merely class.
- Calling class closed or caste completely open.
- Confusing sex with gender.
- Assuming mobility automatically means equality.