Social interaction usually takes place in the form of cooperation, competition, conflict, accommodate and assimilation. These forms of social interaction are also designated as social processes.
These social processes may, therefore, be establishing relationship. They refer to the repetitive forms of behavior which are commonly found in social life.
Maclver observes, “Social process is the manner in which relations of the members of a group, once brought together, acquire a certain distinctive character explains that it also implies down, forward or backward, and hence leading towards integrate or disintegration. Social interaction and social process are interrelated.
The one cannot be without the other. Interaction refers to an action done in response to another action, but when the interaction through repetition leads to a result, it is called a social process. Thus, when the and wife are led to help each other out of sympathy or love and this mutual help assumes the forming cooperation it becomes a social process.
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The essential elements of social process are (i) sequence of events, (ii) repetition of events, (iii relationship between the events (iv) continuity of events and (v) social result.
Society is an Expression of Different Social Processes:
Social processes are so fundamental to the life of a community that understanding of human society is not possible without their study.
Indeed some Sociologists conceive of society as the expression of different social processes or forms of interaction and hold that sociology should concern itself almost exclusively with study of these forms.
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Simmel, for instance, remarks that society exists wherever several individuals are in reciprocal relationships and that which constitutes an aggregation of individuals into a society is not their life content, but their reciprocal influences.
Other sociologists who analysed society mainly in terms of social processes were Ratzenhofer. Tonnies, Vikrant and Von Wiese in Germany and Park, Burgess and Ross in America
Ratzenhofer had maintained that society should be viewed as a social process i.e., in terms of totality of social relationship. Society, in his view, exists in the form of reciprocal human relationships within a group.
Similarly, Simmel viewed society as essentially a social process and Sociology as the discipline concerned with the study of that process. It is thus obvious that it is essential for a student of sociology that be should study the various forms of social processes and their nature, in order to understand social phenomena.
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Forms of Social Processes:
Social processes have been, classified numerously by Sociologists. According to some sociologists, there are only two forms of social inter-action-conjunctive and disjunctive.
Ross in 1905 formulated a list of thirty eight social processes, ten years later Blackmar and Gillin while adopting Ross’ outline divided social processes into six categories.
Later, Park and Burgess reduced the list to four fundament types of interaction viz., competition, conflict, accommodation and assimilation, l. Von Wiese and H. Buker presented a detailed and thoughtful list of social processes classifying them into 650 types.
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One reason for the multiplicity of classification of social processes is the variety of view-points from which the classifications have been made. Thus some classifications classify social behaviour upon the basis of (1) their intrinsic nature; ethers upon the basis of (2) the ; inherent drives, instincts, interests, desires or purpose of the actor; and still others upon the basis of (3) the observable behaviours upon which observers can agree.
It may, however be understood that interaction is a subtle, complex and dynamic thing. It can never be totally identified with one social process to the exclusion of all others. Any concrete situation always contains more than one process.
There is no co-operating group which will not contain conflict. There is no conflict which will not have some hidden basis of compromise. There is no competition which cannot claim some contribution to a large co-operative cause.