One app for all your study abroad needs
The NCERT Class 11 Sociology Chapter 2: Social Change and Social Order in Rural and Urban Society from Understanding Society explores the dynamic processes of social change and how social order is maintained in rural and urban contexts. It explores the causes, types, and impacts of social change, along with the structures that maintain stability, highlighting differences between rural and urban societies. These notes summarise key concepts, clarify social perspectives, and help in revision for Class 11 students.
Table of Contents
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Social Change
- 3 Social Order
- 4 Contestation, Crime, and Violence
- 5 Social Order and Social Change in Rural Areas
- 6 Social Order and Social Change in Urban Areas
- 7 Important Definitions in NCERT Class 11 Sociology Chapter 2: Social Change and Social Order in Rural and Urban Society Notes
- 8 FAQs
Explore Notes of Class 11: Understanding Society
| Chapter 1 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 |
Introduction
This section introduces social change as a defining feature of modern society and contrasts it with social order, which resists or regulates change.
Definition: Social change refers to significant alterations in the underlying structure of society over time, while social order is the tendency within social systems to resist and regulate change to maintain stability.
Characteristics:
- Social change is a recent phenomenon, accelerating in the last 400 years, particularly the last 100 years, with the pace increasing in recent decades.
- Social change must be intensive (profound impact) and extensive (affecting large sections of society) to qualify as significant.
- Social order ensures societal stability by maintaining predictable patterns of behaviour, norms, and institutions.
- Social order and change are interlinked; change is understood against the backdrop of continuity.
Significance: Understanding social change and order helps analyse how societies evolve and maintain stability amidst transformations.
Example: The rapid urbanisation in India (from 11% urban population in 1901 to 37.7% in 2011) reflects significant social change, while caste and traditional norms in villages represent social order.
This section defines social change, its types, and its causes, emphasising its transformative impact on society.
Definition: Social change involves significant changes that alter the underlying structure of society over time, affecting large sections of society.
Characteristics:
- Types of Change:
- By Pace: Evolutionary change (slow, e.g., human evolution) vs. revolutionary change (rapid, e.g., French Revolution, 1789-93).
- By Nature: Structural change (e.g., shift to paper currency) vs. changes in ideas, values, and beliefs (e.g., evolving concepts of childhood).
- By Causes: Internal (endogenous) or external (exogenous), including environmental, technological, economic, political, and cultural factors.
- Sources of Social Change:
- Environmental: Natural disasters (e.g., the 2004 tsunami) or discoveries (e.g., oil in West Asia) transform societies.
- Technological and Economic: Innovations like the steam engine or the industrial revolution reshaped economies and social structures.
- Political: Wars, conquests, or democratic reforms (e.g., universal adult franchise) redistribute power and drive change.
- Cultural: Changes in values, beliefs, or religious norms (e.g., Protestant Ethic and capitalism) influence social systems.
- Changes are often interrelated, with no single factor fully explaining social change.
Significance: Social change reshapes institutions, norms, and social relations, requiring societies to adapt to new realities.
Example: The introduction of paper currency transformed financial markets by decoupling value from precious metals, enabling credit markets.
Also Read:
- NCERT Class 6 History Chapter 8 ‘Villages, Towns and Trades’: Notes and Solutions (Free PDF)
- NCERT Class 8 History Chapter 3 Ruling the Countryside Notes
This section explores social order as the mechanism that maintains stability and resists change, focusing on its methods and challenges.
Definition: Social order refers to the active maintenance and reproduction of social relations, norms, and values that ensure societal stability.
Characteristics:
- Social order is achieved through:
- Spontaneous Consent: Internalised norms via socialisation (e.g., following family traditions).
- Coercion: Use of power, authority, or law to enforce compliance.
- Power and domination sustain order, with dominant groups resisting change to maintain their status.
- Legitimation: Power is accepted as legitimate when seen as just (e.g., authority of a judge in court).
- Authority: Legitimate power, codified in roles like police or teachers, or informal (e.g., religious leaders).
- Law: Explicitly codified norms that bind all citizens, ensuring predictable behaviour.
Significance: Social order balances stability and change, but its enforcement can perpetuate inequalities.
Example: Women’s compliance with patriarchal norms (e.g., forgoing natal property rights) reflects coerced cooperation to maintain social order.
Contestation, Crime, and Violence
This section examines challenges to social order through contestation, crime, and violence, highlighting their societal implications.
Definition: Contestation refers to broad forms of dissent or disagreement, crime is an act violating the law, and violence challenges the state’s monopoly over legitimate force.
Characteristics:
- Contestation: Includes counter-cultures (e.g., youth rebellion), political dissent, or protests against laws, tolerated within limits in democratic societies.
- Crime: Defined strictly as law-breaking, not necessarily immoral (e.g., Gandhi’s salt law violation during Civil Disobedience).
- Violence: An extreme form of contestation, illegal unless by the state, indicating social tensions and challenging state authority.
- Contestation and crime highlight boundaries between legitimate and illegitimate actions.
Significance: These phenomena reveal tensions in social order, reflecting inequalities and struggles for change.
Example: The Civil Disobedience Movement involved deliberate law-breaking (crime) to contest British authority, aiming for social and political change.
This section analyses the unique features of social order and change in rural societies, shaped by their social and economic structures.
Definition: Rural areas are settlements with lower population density and a higher proportion of agriculture-related activities, influencing their social order and change.
Characteristics:
- Social Order:
- Villages have personalised relationships due to small size, with strong traditional institutions (e.g., caste, religion).
- Dominant groups (e.g., landowning castes) maintain order, limiting dissent due to lack of anonymity and alternative resources.
- Social order is resilient, making power shifts slow.
- Social Change:
- Change is slower due to traditional structures and weaker connectivity (though improved by communication like TV and phones).
- Agricultural changes (e.g., land reforms, new technology) have significant impacts, altering power dynamics.
- Land reforms empowered intermediate castes (“dominant castes”), increasing their political and economic influence.
- Recent assertions by lower castes challenge dominant castes, causing upheavals in states like Bihar and Tamil Nadu.
- Economic fluctuations (e.g., droughts) or policies (e.g., MGNREGA) drive change.
Significance: Rural social order resists rapid change, but agricultural and economic transformations can disrupt entrenched power structures.
Example: Land reforms post-independence shifted power to intermediate castes, reshaping rural social and political structures.
This section explores the complexities of social order and change in urban areas, driven by high population density and modern institutions.
Definition: Urban areas are densely populated settlements with diverse economic activities, where social order and change revolve around space and modernity.
Characteristics:
- Social Order:
- Urban order focuses on managing space, including housing, transport, and public services (e.g., sanitation, policing).
- High density intensifies group identities (e.g., caste, class, religion), complicating social cohesion.
- Housing shortages lead to slums and homelessness, fostering informal power structures (e.g., slum “dadas”).
- Gated communities reflect class-based segregation, with parallel civic facilities.
- Social Change:
- Urban change is tied to space, including neighbourhood transformations (e.g., gentrification, city centre decline/revival).
- Transport innovations (e.g., Delhi Metro) reshape social and economic life.
- Rapid urbanisation (37.7% urban population in India, 2011) strains resources, driven by migration and natural growth.
- Cities foster individuality but are constrained by class, caste, and other inequalities.
Significance: Urban areas are dynamic, with rapid change driven by population growth and spatial challenges, but social order struggles to maintain equity.
Example: Gentrification transforms lower-class urban neighbourhoods into affluent ones, altering social and economic dynamics.
Also Read:
- NCERT Solutions Class 8 Civics Chapter 3 Parliament and the Making of Laws (Free PDF)
- NCERT CBSE Class 9 History Chapter 4 Forest Society and Colonialism (Free PDF)
This section lists key definitions for clarity and revision. You will understand the important concepts and key terms of Chapter 2: Social Change and Social Order in Rural and Urban Society.
- Social Change: Significant alterations in the underlying structure of society over time, affecting large sections.
- Social Order: The maintenance and reproduction of social relations, norms, and values to ensure stability.
- Evolutionary Change: Slow, gradual change over long periods (e.g., human evolution).
- Revolutionary Change: Rapid, sudden transformations (e.g., French Revolution).
- Structural Change: Transformations in societal institutions or rules (e.g., paper currency).
- Legitimation: The degree of acceptance of power as just and proper.
- Authority: Legitimate power, codified or informal, eliciting consent (e.g., judge, teacher).
- Contestation: Broad forms of dissent or disagreement challenging social norms.
- Crime: An act that violates existing law, regardless of moral worth.
- Violence: Illegal use of force, challenging the state’s monopoly over legitimate violence.
- Urbanisation: The process of an increasing proportion of the population living in urban areas.
- Dominant Castes: Intermediate castes that gained power post-land reforms, influencing rural politics.
Explore Notes of Class 11: Understanding Society
| Chapter 1 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 |
Download the Solutions of Other Chapters of Class 11 Sociology: Understanding Society
| Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 |
Related Reads
Explore Notes of Other Subjects of NCERT Class 11
FAQs
Social change involves significant transformations in societal structures, while social order maintains stability through norms, authority, and coercion.
Environmental (e.g., natural disasters), technological (e.g., steam engine), economic (e.g., market changes), political (e.g., universal franchise), and cultural (e.g., religious reforms) factors drive social change.
Rural areas have personalised relationships, strong traditional institutions (e.g., caste), and dominant groups controlling resources, making dissent difficult.
For NCERT study material, follow NCERT Notes and Solutions Class 11 Sociology by Leverage Edu now.
