Terms Concepts and Their Use in Sociology Class 11 Notes

These notes follow the 2026-27 session. This page is your Terms, Concepts and Their Use in Sociology Class 11 notes — Chapter 2 of the NCERT textbook Introducing Sociology, compressed into revision form.

You get every key term defined in plain words, the main contrasts set out in tables, a worked example on status and role, the mistakes students commonly make, and a one-screen recap for quick revision.

The core idea of the chapter is simple: sociology builds a precise vocabulary out of everyday words. If you want to check any detail against the book, the complete chapter text is available as the official NCERT PDF of Chapter 2. Use the jump links below to go straight to any section.

Why sociology needs its own terms

The chapter opens with a puzzle. We use words like status, role and social control in ordinary conversation all the time — so why does sociology need its own versions of them? The answer lies in the gap between common sense and sociological knowledge.

Because sociology’s subject matter is familiar, we assume we already understand it. We all live in families, so we feel we know everything about families — but that feeling is exactly what conflates common sense with sociological knowledge.

Peter Berger’s observation makes the point: we are so well acquainted with the social institutions around us that we cannot see them clearly and precisely (NCERT, p. 24).

The contrast with a subject like nuclear physics helps. Physics needs new terms because no everyday words exist for its objects. Sociology needs precise terms for the opposite reason — everyday words do exist for its subject, and they carry loose, common-sense meanings that need tightening.

Sociological concepts also carry a history. Many were created while early thinkers tried to map the shift from pre-modern to modern societies, which is why so many concepts come in pairs: primary vs secondary groups, community vs society (NCERT, p. 25). Different traditions answered the same question — is society harmonious or conflict-ridden? — differently.

Notice the different starting points. Concepts like status and role begin with the individual — the micro level of face-to-face interaction. Concepts like stratification and social control begin from the larger context — the macro level of class, caste, market and state (NCERT, p. 25).

The chapter’s favourite metaphor for concepts: they are keys to open locks. They are entry points into understanding, not final answers. If a key rusts or no longer fits, we change it — sociologists both use concepts and constantly interrogate them.

Social groups: from aggregates to groups

Humans interact, communicate and build collectivities — that much is obvious. The sociological question is what counts as a group. Any gathering of people is not automatically a social group. The chapter arranges collectivities along a ladder:

• Aggregate — a collection of people in the same place at the same time, with no definite connection among them. Passengers at a railway station, an airport or a bus stop; a cinema audience (NCERT, p. 26).
• Quasi group — an aggregate that lacks structure or organisation, and whose members may be unaware that they form a grouping. Social classes, age groups, gender groups and crowds (NCERT, p. 27).
• Social group — a collection of continuously interacting persons who share common interest, culture, values and norms (NCERT, p. 27).

The interesting movement is from quasi group to social group, and history supplies the examples. Class and caste have over time given rise to political parties. The long anti-colonial struggle gave people of different communities a shared identity as a nation with a common past and future. The women’s movement produced organised women’s groups.

In each case a “we” feeling was built where none existed before (NCERT, p. 27).

A social group is defined by six characteristics:

1. Persistent interaction that provides continuity.
2. A stable pattern of interaction.
3. A sense of belonging — members identify with the group, its rules, rituals and symbols.
4. Shared interest.
5. Acceptance of common norms and values.
6. A definable structure.

Where these hold, interaction becomes regular and repetitive — and that regularity is what sociologists call social structure: the pattern of regular, repetitive interaction between individuals or groups, rather than the people themselves (NCERT, p. 27).

One of the chapter’s activities asks you to find real movements and parties based on caste, class, women, tribe or villagers. The women’s row shows the process clearly: a women’s movement (people acting together) matures into a women’s organisation (a lasting social group) — a quasi group becoming a group in front of your eyes.

Types of social groups

The typologies in this section share one pattern: most contrast the close, intimate, face-to-face interaction of traditional, small-scale societies with the impersonal, detached interaction of modern, large-scale societies. The book itself warns that a complete contrast is not an accurate description of reality (NCERT, p. 28).

You can draw a parallel through the middle of the table: community resembles the primary group, and association resembles the secondary group (NCERT, p. 29).

In-group and out-group boundaries are not fixed. During his census work in Rampura in 1948, M.N. Srinivas noticed villagers distinguishing recent migrants — contemptuously described as nenne monne bandavaru (“came yesterday or the day before”) — from older immigrants, arsheyinda bandavaru (“came long ago”) or “old lineages”. Who counts as “we” changes with time and social context (NCERT, p. 30).

Reference groups are groups we do not belong to but identify with; they supply models of culture, lifestyle and aspiration. The chapter’s colonial-India example is pointedly gendered: middle-class Indian men wanted to dress and dine like Englishmen, yet wanted Indian women to stay “Indian” in their ways (NCERT, p. 30).

A peer group is a kind of primary group of similar age or shared profession, and peer pressure is the social pressure it exerts on what one ought to do or not do (NCERT, p. 30).

You can watch these concepts working in school life. A clique with its own dress code and slang is an in-group; students outside it carry the out-group label. The “popular” set that others admire but do not belong to acts as a reference group.

On social media, influencers play the same reference-group role for lifestyle and aspiration, while the pressure to post, follow and react a certain way is literal peer pressure.

Social stratification: structured inequality

Social stratification is the existence of structured inequalities between groups in society, in terms of their access to material or symbolic rewards (NCERT, p. 31). The geological image explains the name: like layers of rock, society consists of “strata” in a hierarchy — the more favoured at the top, the less privileged near the bottom.

Stratification is not a side issue. Every aspect of an individual’s or household’s life is touched by it: opportunities for health, longevity, security, educational success, fulfillment in work and political influence are all distributed unequally in systematic ways (NCERT, p. 31).

Historically, human societies have known four basic systems of stratification:

• Slavery — the extreme form in which some individuals are literally owned by others. The two great historical examples are ancient Greece and Rome, and the Southern states of the USA in the 18th–19th centuries. As a formal institution it has been eradicated, but bonded labour, often of children, survives.
• Caste — position depends totally on attributes ascribed by birth.
• Estate — the system that characterised feudal Europe.
• Class — the formally open, achievement-based system.

In a caste system, an individual’s position rests completely on status ascribed by birth, not achieved during life. Traditional India’s castes formed a hierarchy of social precedence defined by purity and pollution: the Brahmin priestly castes were considered most pure and superior to all others, while the Panchamas — sometimes called “outcastes” — were rated inferior to all.

The classic textual picture is the four-fold varna of Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas and Shudras, but the lived reality is the innumerable occupation-based caste groups called jatis (NCERT, p. 31).

Caste has changed under pressure. For the upper castes, endogamy (marrying within the caste) and ritual avoidance of contact with “lower” castes were the critical ways of maintaining purity. Urbanisation inevitably challenged these practices. A.R.

Desai observed how modern cities, with their cosmopolitan hotels, restaurants and shared transport, brought all castes and creeds together — but he added pointedly that this should not lead anyone to suppose that caste had vanished (NCERT, p. 32).

A Dalit mill worker’s narrative confirms the point: the mill may show no open discrimination of the village kind, but in private interaction, “they will not even drink water from our hands” (NCERT, p. 32). Discrimination persists; at the same time, a working democracy has strengthened castes as interest groups, and discriminated castes now assert their democratic rights (NCERT, p. 32).

Class has been explained differently by different thinkers:

The classic contrast follows: a traditional caste system is fixed, rigid and transmitted across generations, while a modern class system is open and achievement-based — legally nothing stops a person from the most deprived class or caste from reaching the highest position (NCERT, p. 33). Yet the contrast is not complete.

Sociological studies of social mobility, even in western societies, are far from the ideal of perfect mobility, and those at the lower levels are disadvantaged not just socially but economically (NCERT, p. 33).

One bookmark worth keeping: the book says that class, caste and gender as bases of social stratification are developed in greater detail in the companion volume Understanding Society — so this chapter is the foundation for that later study (NCERT, p. 31).

Status and role: occupying and playing positions

Status and role are twin concepts. A status is a position in society or in a group, with defined rights and duties attached to it — a mother, for instance, occupies a status carrying norms of conduct, responsibilities and prerogatives. A role is the dynamic, behavioural side of that position.

The chapter’s formula is memorable: status is occupied, but roles are played (NCERT, p. 33). A status is, in effect, an institutionalised role — one that has become regularised, standardised and formalised.

Worth a second glance: status is occupied while role is played — and ascribed means assigned at birth, achieved means attained by effort. This one line answers most of the chapter’s definition questions.

In a modern, complex society everyone holds many positions at once — you are simultaneously a student to your teacher, a customer to the grocer, a passenger on the bus, a sibling at home and a patient at the clinic. All of these together form your status set.

Over a lifetime the positions follow one another — a son becomes a father, then a grandfather — which is called a status sequence (NCERT, p. 34).

The two ways of acquiring status sit on opposite sides of effort:

• Ascribed status — a position you occupy because of birth, or assume involuntarily. The most common bases are age, caste, race and kinship. Simple and traditional societies are marked by ascribed status.
• Achieved status — a position you occupy voluntarily, through personal ability, achievements, virtues and choices. The common bases are educational qualifications, income and professional expertise. Modern societies are marked by achievement — hence the phrase “you have to prove yourself” (NCERT, p. 34).

But modern, achievement-based societies are not free of ascription: the chapter stresses that even here, ascribed status still matters (NCERT, p. 34).

Prestige is the value attached to a position or office — not to the person occupying it. A doctor may rank high in prestige compared with a shopkeeper even when the doctor earns less, and ideas of which occupations are prestigious vary across societies and periods (NCERT, p. 34).

Role conflict arises when contrary expectations come from two or more roles. The book’s familiar example is the middle-class working woman who has to balance her role as mother and wife at home with her professional role at work (NCERT, p. 34).

Sociology’s comparative eye shows that men face it too: in the matrilineal Khasi family structure described by Nongbri, men are torn between responsibilities to their natal (birth) house and to their wife and children, and feel they lack the freedom to pass on even their self-acquired property to their children (NCERT, p. 35).

Role stereotyping is different: it is the process of reinforcing a specific role for some members of society — men as breadwinner, women as homemaker (NCERT, p. 35). And the section ends with a correction of a common assumption. If socialisation simply programmed individuals to perform fixed roles, there would be no room for change.

In fact socialisation is a process in which humans exercise agency: they are not passive subjects waiting to be instructed, and they create or negotiate roles through ongoing interaction. Roles and statuses are not given and fixed forever; people fight against discrimination based on them (NCERT, p. 35).

Society and social control

Social control means the various means a society uses to bring its recalcitrant, unruly members back into line (NCERT, p. 35). Like every concept in this chapter, it looks different from different theoretical viewpoints.

Peter Berger’s account of the ultimate means is worth knowing in your own words: physical violence is the oldest and ultimate form of social control. In any functioning society, however, violence is used economically and as a last resort — the mere threat of it usually suffices for day-to-day control.

And within primary groups, where people know each other personally, the mechanisms of control are potent but subtle — a look, a joke, the child who claims a big brother will beat up any opponent (NCERT, p. 36).

The same concept divides into two practical kinds:

• Formal social control — codified, systematic and formal. Its agencies are law and the state, and modern societies emphasise it.
• Informal social control — personal, unofficial and uncodified. Smiles, frowns, body language, criticism, ridicule and laughter all do this work; its agencies include the family, religion and kinship (NCERT, p. 37).

Both kinds work through sanctions — “a mode of reward or punishment that reinforces socially expected forms of behaviour”. Sanctions may be positive (rewards for good, expected behaviour) or negative (punishments that enforce rules and restrain deviance) (NCERT, p. 37).

Deviance is non-conformity to the norms or values held by most members of a group or society. Notice what follows: deviance is as variable as the norms themselves.

It differs across cultures and subcultures, and it changes over time within the same society — a woman choosing to become an astronaut could be judged deviant in one period and applauded in another, even in the same society (NCERT, p. 38).

The chapter’s newspaper case — an “honour killing” in which a brother killed his sister for marrying outside her caste — is an exercise in spotting the agencies of social control. The family opposed the couple, the panchayat pressured them, and the state entered through the police and the law.

That is informal control (family, panchayat) meeting formal control (state, law) over one act (NCERT, p. 37).

Key definitions and concepts at a glance

Every term the chapter introduces, in one table — meaning first, example second. Use it as a rapid-fire self-test: cover the example column and try to recall it from the meaning.

Concept pairs that work like formulas

This chapter has no equations, but it has something that does the same job: paired contrasts. Learn one side of a pair and the other side writes itself.

One warning: the caste vs class contrast looks like another clean pair, but the chapter explicitly cautions that the contrast is not complete — ascription constrains achievement even in class societies, and perfect mobility remains an ideal. Treat it as a tendency, not a formula (NCERT, p. 33).

Applying the concepts: Priya’s status set

The chapter gives you definitions; this worked example shows how to use them on a person. Method: sort every position a person holds into status set, ascribed status, achieved status and status sequence, then look for incompatible expectations to find role conflict.

Scenario. Priya is a 17-year-old Class 11 student in Delhi. She is a daughter, an elder sister to a younger brother, captain of her school’s quiz team, a part-time tutor who teaches two younger children from her apartment block every Saturday, and an asthma patient who needs regular treatment.

Step 1 — List her status set. All the positions Priya holds at this one time: student (Class 11), daughter, elder sister, quiz captain, tutor and asthma patient. The full list is her status set (NCERT, p. 34).

Step 2 — Pick two ascribed statuses. Daughter (assigned by kinship) and elder sister (fixed by birth order) are both ascribed — occupied because of birth or assumed involuntarily. Age is a third base: at 17 she is still a minor.

Step 3 — Pick two achieved statuses. Quiz captain (won through selection and performance) and tutor (earned through knowledge and the trust of two families) are achieved — attained voluntarily through ability and effort.

Step 4 — Write a likely status sequence. Following the chapter’s example of son → father → grandfather, a probable sequence for Priya is daughter → wife → mother → grandmother: statuses acquired in succession at different stages of life (NCERT, p. 34).

Step 5 — Identify one role conflict. Priya’s Saturday tutoring consumes the time her quiz team wants for practice before an inter-school final. Two roles — tutor and team captain — carry incompatible expectations, so Priya faces role conflict (NCERT, p. 34). A second plausible conflict: helping at home as a daughter versus the study hours her student role demands.

Interpretation. The example shows why status set matters: Priya is not “a student” — she is many positions at once, each carrying rights and duties. And if her neighbourhood ranks academic achievement highly, her tutor status carries prestige — but that prestige attaches to the position of tutor, not to Priya as a person (NCERT, p. 34).

Common mistakes students make in this chapter

Most errors in answers on this chapter come from treating a contrast as absolute or a definition as loose. Fix the six below and the rest of the chapter falls into place.

How to write complete answers to the chapter exercises

The five questions at the end of the chapter (NCERT, p. 39) each test one cluster of concepts. Use the table to start each answer and to keep it complete.

For more chapter-by-chapter help, browse the Class 11 Sociology notes hub, which collects Chapter 1 and the rest of Introducing Sociology in this same revision format. You can also explore the Class 11 notes index for other subjects, or start from the main CBSE Notes page.

Revision recap

One table to revise the whole chapter in a single pass.

FAQs about terms and concepts in sociology

Why does sociology need special terms and concepts when we already use words like status and role in daily life?

Because daily words carry common-sense assumptions. Sociology’s subject matter is so familiar — families, schools, markets — that we assume we already understand it. Specialised terms force precision so that a status, a role or deviance means the same thing to every sociologist.

Example: in daily speech “status” often means prestige (a “status symbol”), but sociologically it means any position with defined rights and duties — a teacher, a passenger, a patient — with or without prestige.

Is a crowd a social group in sociology?

No — a crowd is a quasi group. It is a collection of people lacking structure or organisation, and its members may not even be aware they form a grouping.

A social group requires persistent interaction, a stable pattern of interaction, a sense of belonging, shared interest, common norms and values, and a definable structure — none of which a momentary crowd has.

What is the difference between ascribed status and achieved status?

Ascribed status is assigned at birth or assumed involuntarily — its bases are age, caste, race and kinship. Achieved status is attained voluntarily through ability, effort and choice — through education, income or professional expertise. In Priya’s example, daughter is ascribed and quiz captain is achieved. Even modern achievement-based societies still have ascribed status at work.

What is the difference between role conflict and role stereotyping?

Role conflict is incompatible expectations arising from two or more roles — a working woman pulled between her home roles and her professional role. Role stereotyping is the process of reinforcing a fixed role for a category of people — men as breadwinners, women as homemakers. Conflict is about clashing demands; stereotyping is about imposed labels.

How do functionalist and conflict perspectives see social control differently?

Functionalists see social control as necessary to keep order — it restrains deviance and eases tensions so society stays cohesive. Conflict theorists see it as a tool by which dominant classes control everyone else: what looks like “stability” is one section’s writ over another, and law is the formal writ of the powerful.

What are status set and status sequence? Give one example.

Status set is all the statuses a person holds at the same time; status sequence is the succession of statuses acquired over a lifetime. Priya’s status set includes student, daughter, elder sister, quiz captain, tutor and patient. A typical status sequence is daughter → wife → mother → grandmother.

Reference: NCERT Class 11 Introducing Sociology textbook, chapter Terms, Concepts and Their Use in Sociology.