B.A. Social Notes

                                                 Iron Age After a century so people came to know of iron,the hardest metal in comparison with copper and bronze,and began to use it as a substitute for copper.It is estimate that iron was first of all used by Aryans in India.Iron age immediately succeeded the Stone Age in South India. Men during this age up making tools and weapons with copper and bronze and started the use of iron for making different implements,such as swords,ploughshares,axes,daggers,etc.With the passage of time there happened to be great  improvements in the quality of food and dress during this period.The people had not only started to adorn themselves by wearing various ornaments and fine cloths but also made their life happier with recreation and amusement.They had also improved their dwellings and means of communications. The politic...

                                          Copper and Bronze Age Immediately after the New Stone Age men came to learn of the use of metals.In the beginning , they were greatly attracted by the lustre of gold but later on it was given up in favour of hard metals such as copper and bronze.But they were still not acquainted with iron.But historians hold divergent opinions regarding the use of metals as to which metal was used first of all.In Northern India stone was replaced by copper,and articles made of copper have been found all over Northern India. People of this age started making tools and implements with copper and bronze in place of stone.These tools of Metal Age were sharper and more beautiful than the tools of Stone Age.As metal is harder than stone,tools of metal proved to be more durable.During this period the clay pots were replaced by the utensils made of metal.Men had ...

                                            Neolithic Age The man of Palaeolithic Age had considerably advanced towards civilization in the Neolithic Age.The capacity for progress is an inherent ingredient in man's personality.Though the tools and the weapons were also made of stone,and people did not know the use of metals,these tools of the New stone age were clean,beautiful and bright.The remains of this age have been found in India in Tamil Nadu,Orissa,Nagpur,Karnataka,Kashmir,and Bengal. This age belong to 10,000-3,000 B.C.Man had progressed rapidly during this period.He had left the nomadic life and begun to live a settled life.He practised agriculture and grew fruits.The chief occupation of the people during this period was hunting,fishing,rearing of goats and sheep.They produced barley, wheat,maize and vegetables. The man during the Neolithic age had made a great pro...

                                                Mesolithic Age During this period man made some improvements in his stone weapons made of bones of animals.Besides quartzite stone the primitive man had started making weapons with jasper,chert and blood stone.The weapons of this age were extremely small.They were therefore,known as microliths or pygmy tools.They were used by wooden handle on their one side.The chief occupation of this age was hunting and people were still ignorant of agriculture and construction of dwellings.But during this period,the man had started giving a decent burial to the dead ones.The dog had become their tamed animal and in the later Mesolithic age man had started to make clay pots. 

                                             Pre-Historic Age                    The life of the primitive man was not better than that of savages.But gradually,he began to progress and learnt much by experience.These different stages of man's progress towards civilization are chiefly known as: 1-Palaeolithic Age  2-Mesolithic Age 3-Neolithic Age 4-Copper and Bronze Age 5-Iron Age 1- Palaeolithic Age- Historians hold divergent opinions the origin of man.Some scholars mention ,first of all,the existence of man traced in south India.The early man originated ,first of all between Sindhu (Indus) and Jhelum river in the province of Punjab at Jammu. Punjab, Rajputana,Gujarat ,  Madhya Pradesh , Karnataka,Mysore,Bihar, Assam, Bengal and South India are specilly regarded the centres of early stone age. Men bel...

                                                The Renaissance The world 'Renaissance' has been used both in extensive and narrow form.In extensive form it implies all those important movements of 15th and 16th centuries which changed the medieval outlooks into the modern one, but in narrow sense it means a new spirit in learning. Ferguisson Bruun has thus described Renaissance. Renaissance denotes revival or rebirth but in history it has been referred to as rebirth of culture and civilization.Hence Scheville, a prominant scholar of history writes,"The Renaissance was not a sharp break with the Middle Ages.It was worldly movement and included all the intellectual changes that were visible at the close of the middle european period and at the commencement of the Modern times." The Renaissance invoked the spirit of enquiry and knowledge among the mankind.So far,peo...

                                              What is Role? The concept of role is by no means a new one . It originally comes from the theatrical setting, referring to the parts which actors play in a stage production.Shakespeare uses the theatre as an analogy for the world as a whole and for the human experience. Actors obviously take on roles but so do the rest of us. In every society individuals play a number of different roles,according to varying contexts of their activities. Modern sociologist E.Goffman 1959 has proposed  dramaturgical  approach *(social life as like a theatre drama) in sociology.He sees social life as through played out by actors on a stage-or on many stages,because how we act depends on the roles we are playing at a particular time. Role is sociologically important because it demonstrates how individual  activity is socially inf...

Types of Status- Linton 1936 has noted two types of status: 1- Ascribed Status- Status which are given to us at birth (age,sex,kinship,race,caste )are known as ascribed status. These are 'assigned' to a person by society without regard for the person's unique talents or characteristics.Such ascribed characteristics cannot be changed by individual efforts.These are more or less determined by the cultural situation over which he has no control initially, For example,position or status of a boy or girl in a family is ascribed status in term both of sex and age.Likewise Negro and Harijan are ascribed status. Generally,ascribed statuses are determined on four bases- 1-Sex dichotomy (male-female) 2-Age difference (child,youth,adult) 3-Kinship (son,brother,sister) 4-Social factors (divorce,widow etc) In traditional societies most statuses are ascribed,with one's occupation and general social standing determined at birth. 2- Achieved Status- "Any social position...

                                    Status and Role S ince the influential writing of Ralph Linton 1936, status and role  have become the key concepts of sociology. By status , Linton meant a position in a social system involving designated rights and obligation , where as by role he meant the behaviour oriented to the patterned expectations of others. Social status and role are analytic terms; they have a more general quality than the concrete descriptive terms to choose such analytic terms rather than descriptive terms like bus conductor , customer , father or mother etc.After Linton, these two terms have become the basic feature of structural-functional theory. According to Merton, each social involves not a single associated role, but an array of roles to which he calls 'role set'. The concept of status and role are basic building blocks of social structure or social systems.Accordin...

                      Origin and Development of Sociology Sociology is the newest of the social sciences to establish itself in the western universities of the English-speaking world (in 1876 Yale University , US in 1889 France and England).In Asia the formal teaching of sociology began in 1893 in Tokyo University and in India in 1919 in Bombay University. Men have always reflected upon the societies in which they lived, yet sociology as a modern science developed only in 19th century. Historically, the word sociology  was invented by Auguste Comte, although a concern with the nature of society can be found throughout the western and eastern thoughts. However , it was not until the middle of the 19th century , in the aftermath of industrial revolution and the consequent upheavals , that we find a concern with society and thus the need for a "science of society" was recognized. These conditions gave impetus to French Philo...

                                    What is Sociology At the time of the World Congress of Sociology 1976,the Mayoress of Uppsala (Sweden) while welcoming the delegates commented on the printed programme that "Sociology is everything and everything is Sociology".Common man understands sociology right in this way. Generally , sociology is defined as the study of society (more specifically,human society or societies ).But this definition does not tell us much about sociology.We learn about man and society or about human behaviour in psychology ,anthropology ,economics ,political science and many other disciplines.Then why we study sociology?We study sociology because the perspective of all social sciences that study society is different from one another.For instance ,poverty a problem of society,is a cultural ,political,economic,psychological ,historical as well as a sociological problem. Sociol...

                                                      FOREIGN SOURCES Foreign Sources,the Roman and the Greek writers have written much about India and her People.These sources may be classified into three groups:1-Classical Sources                             2-Chinese Sources                             3-Muslim Sources 1-Classical Sources- Herodotus,Skylex and Ctesias were the early writers who wrote about India.Among these ,Herodotus and Ctesias got there knowledge about India through Persian,while Skylex was a navigator who was sent to India by the emperor Darius.Herodotus has vividly described the political condition of the north-west of India in his famous book Histories. After these early Greek...