Social Structure, Stratification and Social Processes in Society

Why this chapter matters for UPSC: GS1 asks about caste, class and gender as lived inequalities, and about why discrimination survives where the law forbids it. This chapter supplies the frame for such answers. Social structure and stratification decide how people cooperate, compete and come into conflict; and cooperation itself can be enforced, so that a conflict never comes into the open and looks like harmony. The chapter also introduces two thinkers the book returns to in chapter 4, Emile Durkheim and Karl Marx. The 2026-27 reprint keeps the whole argument and drops only two illustrative boxes of the pre-2022 edition (a wedding song and a long newspaper report in the Conclusion). This page teaches the full chapter and adds the present law on two of NCERT's own examples, women's inheritance and reservation.

🧠 First Principles — Read This First

Structure means pattern, and pattern means repetition. The term social structure points to the fact that society is organised or arranged in particular ways: there are "underlying regularities, or patterns" in how people behave and in their relationships. NCERT borrows Anthony Giddens's image of a building, with walls, floor and roof giving it a shape, and then warns that the metaphor misleads if applied too strictly. Social structures are made of human actions and relationships, patterned by their repetition across time and space, so the ideas of social reproduction and social structure go together. A school's admission rules, assemblies and anthem, and a family's marriage practices and duties, outlast the people who pass through them, and yet both change. Human societies are "buildings that are at every moment being reconstructed by the very bricks that compose them".

Constraint and agency. Durkheim argued that society has primacy over the individual and a "firmness" or "solidity" comparable to structures in the material world: like the walls and doors of a room, social structure is "external" to us and limits what we can do. Marx also emphasised the constraints of structure, but stressed human creativity or agency to both reproduce and change it: human beings make history, "but not as they wish to or in conditions of their choice". The chapter's central question follows from the two: how far is an individual constrained by social structure and by her or his place in the stratification system, and how far free of them?

Sociology refuses "human nature" as an answer. Common sense says people cooperate, compete or fight because it is in their nature. Common sense is not necessarily false, but it is "unexamined and taken for granted"; sociology accepts nothing as given and is satisfied with neither psychological nor naturalist explanations. It explains cooperation, competition and conflict "in terms of the actual social structure of society". The chapter tests this on each process, and finds that the three often co-exist, overlap and sometimes hide inside one another.

PART 1 — Quick Reference

Key Terms at a Glance (NCERT's definitions)

Two Ways of Reading the Three Processes

Durkheim and Marx on Cooperation

PART 2 — Concepts & Narrative

Social Structure

Each of us is a member of many overlapping collectivities: a peer group, a family and kin, a class and gender, a country and region. Each individual therefore has a specific location in the social structure and in the stratification system, and so a different level and type of access to social resources. Which school a child attends, or whether she attends at all, the clothes she wears, the food she eats, her leisure and her access to health care depend on her social stratum. Like social structure, stratification constrains individual action. NCERT recalls C. Wright Mills's sociological imagination, which unfolds the interplay between an individual's biography and society's history, and sets out to understand this dialectical relationship through three concepts: structure, stratification and social processes.

Structure is pattern. A school repeats its admission procedures, codes of conduct, annual functions and daily assemblies until they become institutions; a family repeats its marriage practices, notions of relationship, duties and expectations. Members die and new ones arrive, and the institution goes on; yet change does take place within families and schools. Human beings reproduce the structure even while introducing changes. They cooperate at many levels to reproduce it; they also compete, "often viciously and ruthlessly"; and they come into serious conflict. NCERT flags its main theme early: cooperation "can be enforced and thereby serve to conceal conflict".

Social Stratification

Social stratification is "the existence of structured inequalities between groups in society, in terms of their access to material or symbolic rewards". All societies have some form of it, but modern societies are often marked by wide differences in wealth and power. The most evident form in modern societies is class division; race and caste, region and community, tribe and gender "also continue to matter" as bases of stratification.

Just as structure implies a pattern of behaviour, stratification implies a pattern of inequality. Inequality is not randomly distributed between individuals: it is systematically linked to membership of social groups. Members of a group share features, and if they are privileged they usually see to it that their advantage passes to their children. Stratification thus refers to "a patterned structure of unequal groups" that tends to persist across generations (Jayaram 1987: 22).

NCERT distinguishes three basic forms of advantage that privileged groups may enjoy:

1. Life chances: all the material advantages that improve the quality of life, not only wealth and income but also health, job security and recreation.
2. Social status: prestige or high standing in the eyes of other members of society.
3. Political influence: the ability of one group to dominate others, to have preponderant influence over decision-making, or to benefit from decisions.

These bases of stratification, gender or class for instance, shape the opportunities and resources that individuals and groups bring to cooperation, competition or conflict. At the same time, people act to modify the structure and the system of stratification they live in.

Two Ways of Understanding Social Processes

Both perspectives that Introducing Sociology introduced, functionalist and conflict, read the three processes differently. Both Marx (usually associated with the conflict perspective) and Durkheim (usually identified with functionalism) begin from the same point: human beings have to cooperate to meet their basic needs and to produce and reproduce themselves and their world.

The conflict perspective emphasises how forms of cooperation changed from one historical society to another. In simple societies that produced no surplus, people cooperated without being divided on class, caste or race lines. Where a surplus is produced, feudal or capitalist, the dominant class appropriates it, and cooperation necessarily involves potential conflict and competition. The factory owner and the factory worker cooperate every day, but a conflict of interests defines their relationship. In societies divided by caste, class or patriarchy, some groups are disadvantaged, and dominant groups sustain the unequal order through cultural norms and often coercion or even violence.

The functionalist perspective also appreciates norms and sanctions, but understands their function for society as a whole, not for the dominant sections. It is concerned with the "system requirements" of society, the broadest conditions necessary for a system's existence: the socialisation of new members, a shared system of communication, and methods of assigning individuals to roles. From this angle the three processes are universal features of all societies, the inevitable result of humans living together and pursuing their ends, and since the focus is on keeping the system going, competition and conflict are seen as usually resolving themselves "without too much distress", and even helping society.

Sociological studies have also shown how norms and patterns of socialisation keep a social order in place even when it is skewed in favour of one section. The three processes are "often complex and not easily separable", and NCERT's main case shows why.

Cooperation That Hides Conflict: Women and Natal Property

To show how cooperation may entail conflict, and to separate "enforced" from "voluntary" cooperation, NCERT takes the "very contentious issue" of women's right to property in their natal family. A study among different sections of society found that a significant number of women (41.7 per cent) spoke of a daughter's love and love for a daughter when discussing their rights. But they stressed apprehension rather than affection: they would not claim a full share, or any share, of natal property because they feared it would sour relations with their brothers or make their brothers' wives hate them, and they would no longer be welcome in their natal homes. A woman who demands her share is "the greedy shrew or 'hak lene wali'". Closely tied to these fears was a desire to stay part of the natal family by contributing to its prosperity or being available in its crises.

Apparently cooperative behaviour can thus be the product of deep conflict. When the conflict is not expressed or challenged, the impression remains that there is no conflict, only cooperation. A functionalist reading uses the term accommodation for such situations: an effort to compromise and co-exist despite conflict. NCERT's activities ask whether women are cooperating, or refusing to engage in conflict or competition, because of normative compulsions such as the fear of losing a brother's affection, and for other behaviour that looks cooperative but conceals deeper conflict.

Cooperation and the Division of Labour

The idea of cooperation rests on assumptions about human behaviour: without cooperation human life could hardly survive, and even ants, bees and mammals cooperate. NCERT warns that comparison with the animal world must be made carefully, and contrasts two theoretical traditions.

Durkheim. Sociology for the most part did not accept that human nature is "necessarily nasty and brutish". Durkheim argued against a vision of "primitive humanity whose hunger and thirst, always badly satisfied, were their only passions", insisting on "the moderating influence that society exercises over its members, which tempers and neutralises the brutal action of the struggle for existence and selection. Wherever there are societies, there is altruism, because there is solidarity" (Durkheim 1933). For Durkheim solidarity, the moral force of society, is fundamental to understanding cooperation and the functioning of society. The division of labour, which implies cooperation, fulfils needs of society: it is "at the same time a law of nature and also a moral rule of human conduct".

Durkheim distinguished mechanical and organic solidarity, which characterised pre-industrial and complex industrial societies respectively; both are forms of cooperation. Mechanical solidarity is cohesion "based fundamentally on sameness": most members live similar lives, with little specialisation beyond that of age and sex, bonded by shared beliefs and sentiments, their common conscience and consciousness. Organic solidarity is cohesion based on the division of labour and the resulting interdependence: as people specialise, they depend more on each other. A family engaged in subsistence farming may survive with little help from similar homesteaders; specialised workers in a garment or car factory cannot survive without a host of other specialised workers supplying their needs. As the division of labour grows complex, "relationships of economic reciprocity and mutual dependency come to replace shared beliefs in creating social consensus".

Marx. Marx too distinguished human from animal life, but where Durkheim stressed altruism and solidarity, Marx stressed consciousness: "Men can be distinguished from animals by consciousness, by religion or anything else you like. They themselves begin to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce their means of subsistence... By producing their means of subsistence men are indirectly producing their material life" (Marx 1972: 37). Humans do not merely adjust and accommodate to cooperate; they alter society, and even nature, in the process. NCERT's example: Indians had to adjust to and cooperate with the English language because of colonialism, and in the process Hinglish emerged as "a living social entity".

Both Durkheim and Marx emphasise cooperation, but they differ. For Marx, cooperation is not voluntary in a society where classes exist: "The social power, i.e., the multiplied productive force, which arises through the cooperation of different individuals as it is caused by the division of labour, appears to these individuals, since their cooperation is not voluntary but has come about naturally, not as their own united power, but as an alien force existing outside them" (Marx 1972: 53). Marx's term alienation names the workers' loss of control over the concrete content of their labour and over its products: they lose control over how to organise their work and over its fruits. Compare the fulfilment and creativity of a weaver, potter or ironsmith with a factory worker whose sole task is to pull a lever or press a button all day. "Cooperation in such a situation would be enforced."

Competition as an Idea and a Practice

Discussions of competition, like those of cooperation, often assume it is universal and natural. NCERT insists that competition is "a social entity that emerges and becomes dominant in society at a particular historical point of time". Its anecdote: a schoolteacher in a remote area of Africa proposed a race with a chocolate for the winner, expecting delight, and met anxiety and distress instead. The children disliked a game with "winners" and "losers"; fun, for them, was a cooperative and collective experience, not one whose rewards exclude some and reward one or a few.

In the contemporary world, however, competition is the dominant norm and practice. Classical sociologists noted the growth of individualism (Durkheim) and of competition (Marx) in modern societies, both intrinsic to modern capitalism, which stresses greater efficiency and profit maximisation. NCERT lists the underlying assumptions of capitalism: (i) expansion of trade; (ii) division of labour; (iii) specialisation; and hence (iv) rising productivity, all fuelled by its central theme of "rational individuals in free competition in the marketplace, each striving to maximise profits". The ideology of competition is the dominant ideology of capitalism: the market is held to ensure the greatest efficiency, so that the most efficient firm survives and the students with the best marks enter prestigious colleges and then get the best jobs, where "best" means the greatest material rewards.

NCERT adds two extracts. T.B. Bottomore (1975) grants that competition and 19th century laissez-faire may have promoted growth, and that America's rapid development may owe something to it, but finds no exact correlation between the intensity of competition and the rate of growth, and grounds to suppose it has "less welcome effects". The liberal J.S. Mill felt competition's effects were generally harmful, yet saw modern competition as "the fight of all against all, but at the same time ... the fight for all", directed at maximum output at minimum cost, and as a force that keeps alive interests that hold a large, individualistic society together.

The ideology's weak point is its assumption that individuals compete on an equal basis for education, jobs or resources. Stratification places them unequally. If most children in India do not go to school, or drop out early, they remain out of the competition entirely. NCERT's activities ask students to collect arguments on the 27 per cent reservation for OBCs and the 10 per cent reservation for economically weaker sections, to find school drop-out figures, and to debate whether competition is a necessary good: given that mostly lower-caste students drop out while higher education is dominated by upper castes, what do cooperation, competition and conflict mean here?

Conflict and Cooperation

"The term conflict implies clash of interests." Conflict theorists hold that scarcity of resources produces conflict as groups struggle for access to and control over them. The bases vary: class or caste, tribe or gender, ethnicity or religious community; so do the scale and nature of conflicts, from wars between nations and blocs to conflicts within nations.

A common perception is that conflicts in society are new. Sociologists point out that conflicts change in form at different stages of development, but have always been part of every society. Social change and the greater assertion of democratic rights by disadvantaged and discriminated groups make conflict more visible; the causes existed earlier. NCERT quotes M.N. Srinivas (Social Change in Modern India, 1972 printing, pp. 159-60): developing countries are "arenas for conflict between the old and the new"; it is tempting to look back to "the good old peaceful days" in nostalgia, "but a moment's reflection should convince him that the old order was not conflict-free and that it perpetrated inhuman cruelties on vast sections of the population". An approach that regards conflict as abnormal, or invests equilibrium with special value "in the name of science", can be a handicap in studying developing societies.

Conflict appears as discord or an overt clash only when it is openly expressed. A peasant movement is an overt expression of a deep-rooted conflict over land; but "the absence of a movement does not imply the absence of a conflict". Hence the chapter's emphasis on the relationship between conflict, involuntary cooperation and resistance. NCERT takes two instances.

The family and household. Families and households were traditionally seen as harmonious units where cooperation dominated and altruism drove behaviour. Over the last three decades feminist analysis has questioned this. Amartya Sen noted the possibility of enforced cooperation: family members' activities "have to take the form of being overtly cooperative, even when substantial conflicts exist", with conflicts "treated as aberrations or deviant behaviour" (Sen 1990: 147). Subordinate sections, women in households or peasants in agrarian societies, develop strategies to cope with conflict while ensuring cooperation; "covert conflict and overt cooperation is common". NCERT's extract from Naila Kabeer (1996: 129) describes a hierarchy of decision-making, needs and priorities by age, gender and life cycle, to which both men and women appear to subscribe. Denied access to resources outside the household, women acquiesce in, and even perpetuate, discriminatory distribution and son-preference to secure their long-term security, investing "selfless" devotion to win their sons as allies: "maternal altruism" in the northern Indian plain "can be seen as women's response to patriarchal risk". Their resistance is covert: trusted relatives or neighbours run small businesses for them, money is secretly lent and borrowed, the meanings of purdah and motherhood are negotiated. That it is clandestine reflects their lack of options outside household cooperation and the high risk of open conflict.

Land. NCERT's second case comes from T.K. Oommen's study of the Bhoodan-Gramdan movement (1972). Harbaksh, a Rajput, borrowed Rs 100 from Nathu Ahir, the Patel, in 1956 by informally mortgaging 2 acres. Harbaksh died that year; in 1958 his successor Ganpat offered Rs 200 for the land, and Nathu refused. Because the exchange was not in the revenue records, Ganpat could not go to court; he forcibly cultivated the land in 1959, one year after Gramdan. Being a police constable, he could influence the police officials: when the Patel went to the police station at Phulera he was forced to agree to return the land, and at a village meeting the money was paid and Ganpat got his land back. NCERT asks students to identify the social groups involved and the role of power and access to resources.

Oommen also shows how technology alters the need for cooperation. Working a charas, an indigenous device for well irrigation, takes two pairs of bullocks and four men, more than an ordinary peasant household has, so households borrow bullocks and men from kin, neighbours and friends and promise the same in return. A rehat (Persian wheel) needs heavier capital investment but only one pair of bullocks and one person: "the level of technology in a system may determine the need for cooperation between men and groups".

Conclusion

The chapter relates structure and stratification to the three social processes. The processes are different, "yet they often co-exist, overlap and sometimes exist in a concealed fashion", as forced cooperation shows. None of them is natural: each is shaped by where people stand in the social structure, and each can be read in a functionalist or a conflict light.

PART 3 — UPSC Integration

Applying the Chapter

Exam Strategy

For Prelims: be exact on NCERT's wording. Stratification persists across generations (Jayaram); the three advantages are life chances, social status and political influence. Mechanical solidarity rests on sameness and organic on interdependence (Durkheim, Division of Labour, 1893); alienation is Marx's term; accommodation is the functionalist term for compromise despite conflict; anomie is normlessness (Durkheim). The functionalist "system requirements" are socialisation, a shared system of communication and role assignment. Know the 103rd Amendment's articles (15(6), 16(6)) and its date of effect (14 January 2019).

For Mains: the chapter's exercises ask whether cooperation is voluntary or enforced, for Indian examples of conflict and how conflicts get resolved, whether a society without competition is possible, and whether modern society is more competitive or conflict-ridden than before. Build answers on NCERT's cases: the natal-property study, Sen and Kabeer on the household, Oommen's land dispute and the charas-to-rehat shift, the African race anecdote. Read each process both ways, functionalist and conflict, and end on the chapter's point that the three processes overlap and can be concealed.

Avoid: explaining competition or conflict by "human nature"; treating the absence of protest as the absence of conflict; calling the 10 per cent quota a caste quota without the constitutional wording.

Practice Questions

Practice (UPSC-pattern, not past papers). Mains items 1 to 6 are NCERT's own exercises.

Prelims:

1. According to Durkheim, mechanical solidarity is based on:
   (a) the division of labour and the interdependence it creates
   (b) the sameness of members' lives and their shared beliefs and sentiments
   (c) contracts between rational individuals in the market
   (d) restitutive law that repairs wrongs

2. Which one of the following is NOT among the three basic forms of advantage that NCERT says privileged groups may enjoy?
   (a) Life chances (b) Social status (c) Political influence (d) Ritual purity

3. Consider the following statements about Karl Marx as presented by NCERT:
   

   1. Alienation refers to workers' loss of control over the content and products of their labour.
      
   2. In a society where classes exist, cooperation is voluntary.
      
   3. Humans distinguish themselves from animals when they begin to produce their means of subsistence.
      Which of the statements given above are correct?
      (a) 1 and 2 only (b) 1 and 3 only (c) 2 and 3 only (d) 1, 2 and 3

4. In NCERT's account, the functionalist term for situations of compromise and co-existence despite conflict, such as women not claiming natal property, is:
   (a) anomie (b) accommodation (c) alienation (d) assimilation

5. In T.K. Oommen's study cited by NCERT, replacing the charas with the rehat (Persian wheel) for irrigation:
   (a) increased the need for cooperation between households
   (b) reduced the need for cooperation, through heavier capital investment and a more efficient technology
   (c) ended the use of bullocks in irrigation
   (d) led to the Bhoodan-Gramdan movement

6. With reference to the reservation for economically weaker sections inserted by the Constitution (One Hundred and Third Amendment) Act, 2019, consider the following statements:
   

   1. It inserted clause (6) in both Article 15 and Article 16.
      
   2. It covers economically weaker sections other than the classes already covered by Articles 15(4), 15(5) and 16(4).
      
   3. It is subject to a maximum of ten per cent, in addition to the existing reservation.
      Which of the statements given above are correct?
      (a) 1 and 2 only (b) 2 and 3 only (c) 1 and 3 only (d) 1, 2 and 3

Answers: 1 (b); 2 (d); 3 (b), since for Marx cooperation in class society "is not voluntary"; 4 (b); 5 (b); 6 (d).

Mains:

1. Discuss the different tasks that demand cooperation with reference to agricultural or industrial operations. (150 words)
2. Is cooperation always voluntary or is it enforced? If enforced, is it sanctions or the strength of norms that ensure cooperation? Discuss with examples. (250 words)
3. Can you find illustrative examples of conflict drawn from Indian society? Discuss the causes that led to conflict in each instance. (250 words)
4. Write an essay based on examples to show how conflicts get resolved. (250 words)
5. Imagine a society where there is no competition. Is it possible? If not, why not? (150 words)
6. Is modern society really more competitive or conflict-ridden than it used to be? If you think it is, how would you explain this sociologically? (250 words)
7. "Cooperation can be enforced and thereby serve to conceal conflict." Examine with reference to women's property rights in India. (250 words)

📦 Revision Capsule

Sources

• NCERT, Understanding Society (Class XI), ch. 1 "Social Structure, Stratification and Social Processes in Society", Reprint 2026-27: ncert.nic.in PDF; pre-2022 text in the book archive, Wayback copy of November 2020.
• NCERT, Understanding Society (Class XI), ch. 4 "Introducing Western Sociologists" (repressive and restitutive law), Reprint 2026-27: kesy204 PDF.
• NCERT, Introducing Sociology (Class XI), ch. 2 "Terms, Concepts and their Use in Sociology" (Weber on life chances, prestige and political power), Reprint 2026-27: kesy102 PDF.
• Constitution of India, Articles 15 and 16 with amendment footnotes: Legislative Department, Constitution of India.
• Supreme Court of India, Vineeta Sharma v. Rakesh Sharma, 11 August 2020 (Arun Mishra, S. Abdul Nazeer, M.R. Shah JJ.): Indian Kanoon.
• National Commission for Backward Classes, Annual Report 2012-13, introduction (Mandal Commission dates and the 1990 Office Memorandum): ncbc.nic.in PDF.