Society, sociology and common sense

We belong to many 'societies' at once. One person can be, at the same time, a member of a family, a caste or community, a language group, a profession, a religion, a state and a nation. Modern society is complex: each of us is part of several groups, and these identities are plural.

• Societies are also unequal. As the economist Amartya Sen put it, some Indians are rich and most are not; some are highly educated and others cannot read; some live easy lives and others toil hard. People differ in wealth, education, power, opportunity and respect.
• The book sets the film-maker Satyajit Ray's question (would you film the village where cows graze and a shepherd plays the flute?) beside a sociologist's account of Muli, a Dalit man who had to wait silently by the road with his own glass for a shopkeeper to pour him tea. A romantic picture and a sociological account of the same village can look very different.

Sociology is not philosophy. Philosophy and religion often ask what ought to be: what is good, moral or right. Sociology studies how society's norms and values actually work in people's lives. A sociologist may find a social fact painful, but the job is to describe and explain it accurately, not to preach.

• Peter Berger compared the sociologist to a spy: the job is to report as accurately as possible about a terrain, whatever one's own feelings or prejudices. A biased report is useless.
• Example (new): in a class, boys answer most of the teacher's questions. A quick conclusion is that boys know more. A sociologist asks instead: are girls taught to stay quiet in public? Are they called on less? The answer comes from evidence, not from what one already believes.

Sociology versus common sense:

• Common sense explanations are usually naturalistic (it is just 'natural') or individualistic (it is the person's own fault). They are unreflective: they do not ask where the belief came from or whether it is true.
• Sociology asks 'is this really so?' It follows rules of evidence and procedures that others can check. Sociological knowledge grows slowly, through theory, observation and field research, much as a science does.
• Sociology also traces unexpected links. After the Kargil War, the government gave compensation to soldiers' widows so that they would be provided for. It did not foresee an unintended consequence: in a patrilineal society, where property passes from father to son, many widows were pressured into forced marriages with a brother-in-law so the money stayed in the family.