Authority : is defined by Max Weber as legitimate power - that is, power considered to be justified or proper, e.g. authority of a teacher, a police officer, etc.

Types of Authority

Rational Legal:

Also known as bureaucratic authority, is when power is legitimized by legally enacted rules and regulations such as governments. Eg. Government officials wield this type of authority in most countries of the world. Bureaucracies are the result of this type of authority.

Charismatic:

Power legitimized by extraordinary personal abilities that inspire devotion and obedience. Examples in this regard can be NT Rama Rao, a matinee idol, who went on to become one of the most powerful Chief Ministers of Andhra Pradesh.

Material culture refers to the physical objects, resources, and spaces that people use to define their culture. These include homes, neighborhoods, cities, schools, churches, synagogues, temples, mosques, offices, factories and plants, tools, means of production, goods and products, stores, and so forth. All of these physical aspects of a culture help to define its members' behaviors and perceptions. For example, technology is a vital aspect of material culture in today's United States. American students must learn to use computers to survive in college and business, in contrast to young adults in the Yanomamo society in the Amazon who must learn to build weapons and hunt.

Altruism: The principle of acting to benefit others without any selfishness or self-interest.

Sociologists understand altruism as a 'principle of unselfish regard for the needs and interests of others'. Durkheim studied some forms of suicide a category of altruistic sacrifice some individuals make for their societies in particular contexts, whether it be due to a strong sense of social cohesion or tradition.

Division of labour refers to the method of organising production where the work required to produce a product is divided into different specialized tasks with different workers specializing in each task.
The four ways in which division of labour will influence production in an economy are as follows:
i. Quality of production improves - Division of labour leads to an increase in the efficiency of labour which further leads not only to an increase in the quantity of output but also to an improvement in the quality of the produced goods and services.
ii. Large scale production - Division of labour makes large scale production possible. Indeed, scale production requires division of labour. If a car manufacturing company, for instance wishes to make 10000 cars in a year but does not introduce division of labour in its factory, it will have to employ so many workers that it will not be an economically viable company. It is by virtue of division of labour that the company can produce 10000 cars per year with a reasonable number of workers.
iii. Reduced average cost - Since division of labour increases total output, even with an unchanged number of labourers, the average cost of producing a commodity falls. This is a social advantage. Society can produce goods by incurring lower average cost of production.
iv. Lower prices of output - The reduced average cost of the products leads to reduced prices of the outputs in the market. As a result, consumers are benefitted.

Divisin of Labour :

1. It means labour will be distributed among the different individuals having different skills of specializations.

2. Division of labour became popular in modern and complex societies after the Industrial Revolution.

3. With the increase of division of labour in modern societies, individuals are more than ever functionally connected by their mutual needs.

4. Due to this process, every labour (usually) is specialised, individuals become more dependent on others to perform separate economic functions, which they are not able to carry out themselves

1. Face-to-face interaction: Primary groups are characterized by close intimate and face to face interaction.
2. Intimacy: Here everyone knows everyone else and there is strong intimacy among the members. They are even known to nick names of their members.
3. Mutual Aid & Help: Mutual aid assistance among the members of the groups always found. They cooperate with each other at the time of help.
4. Consciousness of kind: Consciousness of kind exists. If means they recognize one another and express it whenever needed.
5. We – Feeling: we – feeling (sense of unity and commonality) is found among the members of the group. It means they live together as one body.
6. Small in Size: Primary groups are smaller in size. Large number decreases intimacy and loose the bond of the group.
7. Physical proximity or nearness: face-to-face relation can be found only when members live in a particular area more or less on permanent basis.
8. Frequent Interaction: Interaction among members of the group is frequent and it can be many times in a day.
9. Personal relation: In this, interest of each is centered in others as persons. They interact with each other on the basis of personal relation.
10. Similarity of background: Members must have more or less similar background.

• A society is a group of people who share a common culture, occupy a territorial area and are bound to each other by a common history.
• Societies may be simple, may be complex. It is natural to human beings. We all are social beings. We cannot survive without society. We human beings cannot attain our goals alone, we want society. The society provides us security, relationship, identity and sense of belonging ness.
• Society is mandatory not only for mere survival but also for a good life.
• Society is a continuous process. It is not imposed upon people. It goes on as a natural process. Social relations are the base of social structure. Society can be understood in its abstract as well as concrete form.

• Macro Sociology: The study of large social groups, organisation and social systems.

Industrial capitalism came to villages and cities of modern world so many workers started to work and stay.

Many number of shops also came as a result. In fact, it also increased problem of bad sanitation and overpopulation.

Industrial Revolution have gained wealth across all nature of capitalism aspects across the smaller in scale.

For example:

• Tea drinking can be seen as a means of maintaining good health in the way that one might take daily supplements or vitamins.
• Drinking tea or coffee can be considered a tradition or a ritual, as many people choose to make it in the same way every day at a certain time.
• Drinking tea or coffee can be considered an addiction because they contain caffeine.
• Coffee drinking can be seen as a social activity because “going for coffee” focuses less on the beverage and more on talking with others.

Cultural Change :

1. Norms and values undergo change over time.

2. Certain external conditions in the contemporary society have given impetus to this change. These conditions are industrialisation, urbanisation, global network to television and computer, all of which have expanded enormously in the last few decades.

3. Values related to inter-personal relationships in the family have changed and consequently modes of behaviour of people have also changed.

4. Change in culture is a slow but a continuous process. But this process is accelerated by two conditions. These are :

Sub-culture: A group of people within a large culture represents sub-culture. They borrow from or often distant, exaggerate or invent the symbols, values and beliefs of the people.

• Social change is inevitable in social life and relationship.
• Evolutionary theories views society as moving in a definite direction and cause changes.
• Social changes may occur in the internal or external aspects of the structure of society.

External change refers to changes in forms of family, marriage, class, caste and kinship etc.

• Internal changes refer to changes in the norms and values of the society.
• The rate of change of internal aspects is always slow because the social norms, values and belief gradually become part of the core of personality.

• External change refers to changes in forms of family, marriage, class, caste and kinship etc.
• Internal changes refer to changes in the norms and values of the society.
• The rate of change of internal aspects is always slow because the social norms, values and belief gradually become part of the core of personality.

G.S. Ghurye can be considered the founder of institutionalised sociology in India. He headed India’s very first post-graduate teaching department of Sociology at Bombay University for thirty-five years. He guided a large number of research scholars, many of whom went on to occupy prominent positions in the discipline. He also founded the Indian Sociological Society as well as its journal Sociological Bulletin. His academic writings were not only prolific, but very wide-ranging in the subjects they covered. At a time when financial and institutional support for university research was very limited, Ghurye managed to nurture sociology as an increasingly Indian discipline. Ghurye’s Bombay University department was the first to successfully implement two of the features which were later enthusiastically endorsed by his successors in the discipline. These were the active combining of teaching and research within the same institution, and the merger of social anthropology and sociology into a composite discipline.

Society is a continuous process. It functions in a natural way. Society is not imposed upon people rather it is accepted by the members. The most important part in the functioning of society is negotiations. Due to social interaction society gets constituted and reconstituted.

Durkheim's perspective on religion: • He has defined it as a 'unified system of beliefs and practices related to sacred things that is things set apart and forbidden beliefs and practices which unite one single moral community called a church. • According to Durkheim in every religion a distinction is made between sacred and profane • Sacred things include an element of supernatural. • Profane things are kept at distance from sacred and are considered away from religion

Max Weber's perspective on religion: • He started his theory of religion in his book entitled " The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism” • Calvinism (protestants) exerted an important influence on the emergence and growth of capitalism characterized to earn money and to re-invest profit as a mode of economic organization. • The Calvinist believed that the world was created for the glory of god that any work in this world has to be done for his glory, making even mundane work's acts of glory. • Calvinist also believed in the concept of pre destination which meant whether one will go to heaven or hell was pre ordained. • The money earned was not to be used for worldly consumption rather the ethics of calvinism was to live frugally.

Durkheim's perspective on religion: • He has defined it as a 'unified system of beliefs and practices related to sacred things that is things set apart and forbidden beliefs and practices which unite one single moral community called a church. • According to Durkheim in every religion a distinction is made between sacred and profane • Sacred things include an element of supernatural. • Profane things are kept at distance from sacred and are considered away from religion

Max Weber's perspective on religion: • He started his theory of religion in his book entitled " The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism” • Calvinism (protestants) exerted an important influence on the emergence and growth of capitalism characterized to earn money and to re-invest profit as a mode of economic organization. • The Calvinist believed that the world was created for the glory of god that any work in this world has to be done for his glory, making even mundane work's acts of glory. • Calvinist also believed in the concept of pre destination which meant whether one will go to heaven or hell was pre ordained. • The money earned was not to be used for worldly consumption rather the ethics of calvinism was to live frugally.

An institution is something that works according to rules established or at least acknowledged by law or by custom. Thus, “an established and structured pattern of behaviour or of relationships that is accepted as a fundamental part of a culture” can be referred to as social institutions. There are social institutions that constrain and control, punish and reward. Social institutions can be macro like the state or micro like the family.

A caste is a form of social stratification determined by one single factor i.e. ritualistic legitimation of authority. 

• A welfare state is a positive state. This means that, unlike the ‘laissez faire’ of classical liberal political theory, the welfare state does not seek to do only the minimum necessary to maintain law and order.
• The welfare state is a democratic state. Democracy was considered an essential condition for the emergence of the welfare state.
• A welfare state follows a ‘mixed economy’ means an economy where both private capitalist enterprises and state or publicly owned enterprises co-exist. A welfare state does not seek to eliminate the capitalist market, nor does it prevent public investment in industry and other fields.

• A welfare state is a positive state. This means that, unlike the ‘laissez faire’ of classical liberal political theory, the welfare state does not seek to do only the minimum necessary to maintain law and order.
• The welfare state is a democratic state. Democracy was considered an essential condition for the emergence of the welfare state.
• A welfare state follows a ‘mixed economy’ means an economy where both private capitalist enterprises and state or publicly owned enterprises co-exist. A welfare state does not seek to eliminate the capitalist market, nor does it prevent public investment in industry and other fields.

• Change is the most permanent feature of any society. Social change can be defined as transformation in the methods of thinking and working of people.
• It is basically changes in social structures and social relationships of a society.
• At the most basic level, social change refers to changes that are significant and which alter the underlying structure of an object or situation over a period of time.
• Social change does not include any and all changes, but only big ones, changes which transform things fundamentally.
• Social change occurs due to physical, social, demographic, cultural and technological factors.
• Population growth influences adversely on the usage of natural resources which also causes social change.
• Changes that take place slowly over a long period of time are referred to as evolutionary changes.
• Changes that occur comparatively quickly, even suddenly, are referred to as ‘revolutionary changes’.