Write short answers of the following questions in about 150 words each:
(a) Critically examine the relevance of Durkheim's views on religion in contemporary society. (10 marks)
(b) Discuss various theoretical perspectives on the family. (10 marks)
(c

Question

Write short answers of the following questions in about 150 words each:
(a) Critically examine the relevance of Durkheim's views on religion in contemporary society. (10 marks)
(b) Discuss various theoretical perspectives on the family. (10 marks)
(c) Explain the implications of feminization of work in the developing societies. (10 marks)
(d) Write a note on global trends of secularization. (10 marks)
(e) Trace the trajectory of development perspectives on social change. (10 marks)

UPSC Answer Check · Accepted Answer

(a) Relevance of Durkheim's Views on Religion in Contemporary Society

Emile Durkheim conceptualised religion as an eminently social phenomenon, wherein society worships its own collective conscience through the totemic principle, producing functional integration and social solidarity. While this explains how communal rituals reinforce social cohesion—evident in contemporary mass rituals and India’s burgeoning temple economies—it inadequately addresses religious fragmentation and conflict. Rational choice theorists such as Rodney Stark argue that religious vitality flourishes through pluralistic competition rather than unified collective representations. Furthermore, Meredith McGuire’s concept of "lived religion" demonstrates that modern spirituality is fluid, individualized, and detached from rigid institutional totems. The post-9/11 resurgence of religious fundamentalism and the use of religion for competitive electoral mobilization in India show that religion often acts as a source of violent polarization rather than normative consensus. Therefore, while Durkheim correctly identified the enduring need for collective effervescence, his assumption of religion as an unproblematic agent of social integration is outdated in plural, conflict-ridden modern societies.

(b) Theoretical Perspectives on the Family

Sociological conceptualizations of the family span diverse paradigms. Talcott Parsons offered a structural-functionalist view, arguing that industrialization creates a "functional fit" for the isolated nuclear family with structurally segregated instrumental and expressive roles. William J. Goode extended this through modernization convergence theory, positing that global industrial development inexorably moves extended kin systems toward Western-style conjugal units. In sharp contrast, conflict and Marxist-feminist theorists reject functional harmony. Friedrich Engels linked the monogamous nuclear family to private property transmission, while Christine Delphy showed that the family is an economic system where women’s domestic labour is systematically appropriated by patriarchal heads. Postmodern theorists, notably Judith Stacey and Jeffrey Weeks, reject universalistic models altogether, highlighting the emergence of "postmodern family diversity," fluid kinship forms, and chosen families. Thus, family theory has transitioned from viewing the institution as a stable, functional universal to analyzing it as a contested, dynamic site of power, economic negotiation, and lived diversity.

(c) Implications of Feminization of Work in Developing Societies

The feminization of work in developing societies reflects dual, contradictory trajectories. On the one hand, globalization has integrated women into global care chains (Arlie Hochschild) and export-oriented manufacturing, but this is characterized by structural precarity, informalization, wage suppression, and deskilling. In India, data from the Self Employed Women's Association (SEWA) indicates that over 90% of working women remain in informal, unprotected sectors lacking social security, enduring an intensified "double burden" of wage work and unremunerated care work. On the other hand, feminization has fractured patriarchal domestic monopolies by enhancing women's economic agency and intra-household bargaining power. Grassroots institutional models, such as Kerala’s Kudumbashree mission, demonstrate how collective economic participation and state-supported microcredit foster civic leadership, capability expansion, and structural empowerment. Consequently, while the feminization of work often signifies the informalization and exploitation of female labour, collective institutional frameworks can convert economic participation into substantive gender empowerment.

(d) Global Trends of Secularization

The trajectory of global secularization reveals profound divergence across regions. The classic secularization thesis, formulated by Bryan Wilson and early Peter Berger, equated modernization with institutional differentiation, rationalization, and the inevitable decline of religious authority in the public sphere. However, the supply-side model of Rodney Stark and Laurence Iannaccone challenged this Eurocentric model, demonstrating that in unregulated religious markets like the United States, religious pluralism stimulates religious vitality. Furthermore, José Casanova documented the global "deprivatization" of religion, where religious traditions actively re-enter political and civil spheres. In the Global South, particularly India, secularization did not follow the Western trajectory of strict church-state separation. Scholars like T.N. Madan and Ashis Nandy emphasize Indian exceptionalism, where secularism was conceived as sarva dharma sambhava (equal respect for all religions), though it remains perpetually contested by majoritarian resurgence. Global trends thus indicate desecularization and public religion rather than universal secular convergence.

(e) Trajectory of Development Perspectives on Social Change

The sociology of development has shifted from teleological universalism to critical pluralism. Early modernization theories, epitomised by W.W. Rostow’s stages of economic growth and Daniel Lerner’s urbanization-media empathy nexus, viewed social change as an evolutionary, linear transition from traditional stagnation to Western-style modernity. In the 1960s–70s, Dependency theorists like Andre Gunder Frank challenged this paradigm, demonstrating that metropolitan capitalism systematically produces the "development of underdevelopment" in the periphery, a structural asymmetry refined by Immanuel Wallerstein’s World-Systems analysis into core, semi-periphery, and periphery dynamics. By the 1990s, ecological crises compelled the mainstreaming of sustainable development, balancing industrial expansion with inter-generational equity. Most recently, post-development theorists such as Arturo Escobar deconstructed "development" as an imperial discourse of Western cultural hegemony, paving the way for decolonial alternatives based on indigenous epistemologies, the pluriverse, and Buen Vivir. Development is thus no longer theorized as linear modernization, but as a contested arena of social and ecological transformation.

Write short answers of the following questions in about 150 words each: (a) Critically examine the relevance of Durkheim's views…

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