INTRODUCTION

As a study of the social sphere, sociology is concerned with those empirical systems that involve interactions of a plurality of individuals. These interactions—between two or more individuals (regular or casual), or between individual/s and a group, or between groups—follow a pattern governed by a society’s culture. Individuals interacting with each other in diverse settings constitute a collectivity, whose own boundaries are defined by the membership, thus transforming it into a social system with members who have set positions that give them a ‘status’ and outline their ‘roles’. Thus, a system of rights and obligations is an inherent part of any social organization. The same structure exists in different societies, which are distinct only because of their specific ‘culture’, which provides patterns of meanings in terms of values, norms, organized knowledge and beliefs, and ways of expression—linguistic and symbolic.

To recapitulate: A Social System is

• Made up of a plurality of interacting individuals.
• They operate in a situation that has a physical or environmental aspect.
• They are oriented towards the system, and are motivated ‘in terms of a tendency to the “optimization of gratification”’.
• The situation of interaction is ‘defined and mediated in terms of a system of culturally structured and shared symbols’ (Parsons, 1952: 5–6).

Sociologists make a distinction between social system, personality system and culture system. When we analyse a social system, we deal with an individual not as a personality system, but as an occupant of a particular status that defines his duties and responsibilities towards others operating in the system in question. Personality, on the other hand, consists of the totality of an individual’s statuses in various social groups and the peculiarities of that individual’s behavioural patterns—his likes and dislikes, whether he is introverted or extroverted, his psychological make-up, which itself is developed through participation in various situations of interaction. Similarly, cultural system is different from the social system, although it is also a product of the interactions of a plurality of individuals. However, it is independent of them and outlives the lives of particular individuals. Culture is learned, it is transmitted, and it is shared. ‘Culture … is on the one hand the product of, on the other hand a determinant of, systems of human interaction’ (Parsons, 1952: 15).