(a) Critically examine the relevance of Durkheim's views on religion in contemporary society. (10 marks) (b) Discuss various…

(a) Durkheim on religion: relevance today In The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (1912), Durkheim defined religion as a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things that unites believers in one moral community. Society worships itself through sacred symbols, and collective ritual produces effervescence and solidarity.

Relevance:

• Rituals still bind communities: festivals, pilgrimages such as the Kumbh Mela and national ceremonies (Bellah's civil religion) renew solidarity.
• The sacred-profane distinction explains modern "secular sacreds" such as the flag and national symbols.

Limits:

• His evidence is Australian Aboriginal totemism, and he assumes religion integrates, although it also divides and fuels sectarian conflict.
• He neglects power and inequality (Marx) and meaning and rationalisation (Weber).
• Privatised, individual spirituality (Luckmann's invisible religion) and religious pluralism fit poorly with a single moral community.

(b) Theoretical perspectives on the family

• Functionalist: Murdock (1949) identified sexual, reproductive, economic and educational functions. Parsons held that the isolated nuclear family suits industrial society by performing primary socialisation and stabilising adult personalities. Goode (1963) argued that industrialisation moves family systems towards the conjugal type.
• Marxist: Engels (1884) traced the monogamous family to private property and inheritance, which subordinated women; the family reproduces labour power and capitalist ideology.
• Feminist: the family is a site of patriarchy and unequal domestic labour (Oakley, Delphy).
• Interactionist: families are made through everyday interaction and meanings; Morgan speaks of "family practices".
• Postmodern: Stacey and Giddens stress diversity, chosen kin and "pure relationships" based on mutual satisfaction.
• Indian studies: A. M. Shah (1973) showed that nuclear and joint forms are phases of a household's developmental cycle, not opposites.

(c) Implications of feminization of work in developing societies Feminization of work means a rising share of women in paid employment, often in flexible, low-wage and informal jobs (Standing, 1989), as in garments, electronics, services and care.

Positive implications: earnings, mobility and bargaining power within the household, later marriage, fewer births and greater decision-making.

Negative implications:

• Employers prefer women as cheap, flexible and docile labour, so wages are low, contracts insecure and social security absent.
• Women carry a double burden of paid work and unpaid care, and face harassment and occupational segregation.
• Entry driven by poverty can mean distress work, not empowerment.

India: the female labour force participation rate rose from 23.3% (2017-18) to 41.7% (2023-24) in PLFS, but analysts note that much of the rise is in rural self-employment and unpaid family work, so decent paid work for women remains limited. Care infrastructure, equal pay, safe workplaces and social protection are needed.

(d) Global trends of secularization The classical thesis (Weber, Wilson, early Berger) held that modernisation brings differentiation, rationalisation and declining religious authority.

Trends:

• Western and Northern Europe show falling attendance and affiliation; Norris and Inglehart (2004) link this to existential security.
• Globally, the religiously unaffiliated were 23.3% of the world population in 2010 and 24.2% in 2020 (Pew), with switching out of religion, especially from Christianity, a main driver.
• Counter-trends: Pentecostal growth in Africa and Latin America, and religion's public role in politics (Casanova's deprivatisation; Berger's later "desecularization"). Higher fertility among religious populations sustains their numbers.
• State secularism varies: French laïcité, American separation of church and state, and the Indian model of equal respect for all religions.

Secularization is therefore neither universal nor linear but uneven across regions (multiple modernities, Eisenstadt).

(e) Trajectory of development perspectives on social change

• Modernisation (1950s-60s): Parsons, Lerner, Rostow (1960) and McClelland saw change as linear movement from tradition to modernity through capital, values and diffusion from the West.
• Dependency (1960s-70s): Frank, Cardoso and Faletto, and Amin argued that the periphery's underdevelopment is produced by dependence on the metropolitan core; Wallerstein's world-system (1974) added the semi-periphery.
• Neoliberal (1980s): market reform and structural adjustment, criticised for inequality and social cost.
• Human and sustainable development (1987-99): Brundtland (1987), the UNDP Human Development Report (1990, Mahbub ul Haq) and Sen's capability approach (1999) shifted attention to freedoms, gender and the environment.
• Post-development (1990s): Escobar and Sachs treat "development" as a Western discourse of power and look to local, plural alternatives.

The trajectory runs from linear growth to dependency, to human well-being, to a critique of development itself.