Two ways of understanding social processes

Cooperation, competition and conflict are three basic social processes. Common sense often explains them as 'human nature': people just are cooperative, or competitive, or quarrelsome. Common sense is not necessarily false, but it is unexamined. Sociology questions everything, and is not satisfied with psychological or naturalistic explanations. It explains these processes through the actual social structure of a society.

Both Marx (usually linked to the conflict perspective) and Durkheim (usually linked to functionalism) agree that humans must cooperate to meet their basic needs and to produce and reproduce themselves and their world. They see it differently:

• The conflict perspective stresses how forms of cooperation changed through history. In simple societies that produced no surplus, people cooperated without divisions of class, caste or race. Once a surplus is produced, in feudal or capitalist societies, the dominant class appropriates it, and cooperation always carries potential conflict and competition. Groups are placed unequally in the system of production: a factory owner and a factory worker cooperate every day, yet a conflict of interests defines their relationship. Dominant groups keep the unequal order going through cultural norms, and sometimes coercion or violence.
• The functionalist perspective also recognises norms and sanctions, but sees their function in terms of society as a whole, not of dominant groups. It focuses on society's 'system requirements' (functional imperatives, requisites, prerequisites): the broadest conditions a system needs in order to survive, such as socialising new members, a shared system of communication, and methods of assigning people to roles. Cooperation, competition and conflict are seen as universal results of people pursuing their ends; competition and conflict usually resolve themselves without much distress and may even help society.

Cooperation can hide conflict. Norms and socialisation can keep an order going even when it favours one section. Then cooperation may be enforced rather than voluntary. The book's case is a study of women's attitudes to taking a share of property in their natal family: many said they would not claim it, and a woman who does may be called 'hak lene wali' (one who grabs her rights). When such conflicts are not openly expressed, it looks as if there is only cooperation.

• A functionalist would describe such a situation as accommodation: an effort to compromise and co-exist despite conflict.
• Example (new): a junior employee always agrees with the manager in meetings, though he disagrees privately, because speaking up might cost him a promotion. On the surface it is cooperation; underneath there is a conflict he cannot afford to show.