Importance of Social Values in Society!
Social values are an important part of the culture of a society. Social values, norms and institutions explain the way in which social processes operate in a given society.
They are the social sources of patterned interaction. Values account for the stability of a social order. They provide general guidelines for conduct.
In doing so, they facilitate social control. Values are the criteria people use in assessing their daily lives, arranging their priorities, measuring their pleasures and pains, choosing between alternative courses of action. In simple words, values may be defined as measure of goodness or desirability.
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According to Peter Worsley, “values are general conceptions of “the good”, ideas about the kind of ends that people should pursue throughout their lives and throughout the many different activities in which they engage.”
It is clear that values represent wide range of ideas about the ends that men should pursue in their life. The values of a society provide goals or ends for its members to aim for. These goals or ends are to be pursued in different, contexts and situations.
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If the dominant value is “Success”, then it expects all the individuals to became successful at school, in work, at sports and in life, in general. Values provide t e general guidelines for the behaviour of the people. Thus, values such as respect for human dignity, fundamental rights, private property, patriotism, fidelity to wife or to the husband, religiosity, sacrifice, helpfulness, co-operation, individual enterprise, free marital selection, individuality, social equality, privacy, democracy, etc., guide our behaviour in various ways.