(a) What is the distinctiveness of the feminist method of social research? Comment. (10 marks) (b) Discuss the relationship…

(a) Feminist method of social research

Feminist research is distinct less in its techniques than in its epistemology and ethics. It rejects the claim of value-neutral "malestream" sociology, arguing that knowledge produced from men's standpoint passes itself off as universal. Sandra Harding's standpoint epistemology holds that women's lived positions give a less distorted view of social reality; Donna Haraway's "situated knowledge" adds that all knowing is partial and located. Research is therefore reflexive and non-hierarchical: Ann Oakley (1981) argued that the detached interview is "a contradiction in terms" when studying women, so the researcher discloses her own position and builds reciprocal relations with respondents. Oral histories, life stories and in-depth interviews bring out unrecorded domestic and emotional labour, and findings are tied to emancipatory change ("the personal is political"). Martyn Hammersley cautions that this is a distinct stance and politics rather than wholly new methods. On balance, the distinctiveness is real in standpoint, ethics and purpose.

(b) Sociology and political science

Both study power, authority and order, but from different starting points. Political science concentrates on the state, government, constitutions, parties and public policy; sociology begins with society, its groups, stratification and institutions, including family, religion and deviance that lie beyond politics. The overlap is political sociology: Weber on authority and bureaucracy, Marx on class and the state, Lipset on the social bases of democracy (Political Man, 1960). Each corrects the other. Sociology shows that votes and policies rest on caste, class, gender and religion, while political science shows how state structures shape social life. Indian examples include Rajni Kothari's Caste in Indian Politics (1970), which showed parties mobilising caste and thereby politicising it; Srinivas's dominant caste in electoral mobilisation; and Jaffrelot's account of the rise of OBC politics in India's Silent Revolution (2003). Political science studies the architecture of the state; sociology explains the social ground on which it stands.

(c) Dramaturgical perspective on everyday life

Erving Goffman (The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, 1959) treats social life as theatre in which individuals are actors performing before audiences. Through impression management they try to control how others define the situation. Interaction has a front stage, where the performer uses setting, appearance and manner to fit the role (a doctor's coat and clinic, a teacher in class), and a back stage, where the mask is dropped and the performance is prepared. Teams cooperate to sustain a show, and a slip or embarrassment threatens it, which is why people practise face-work, tact and civil inattention. A waiter courteous in the dining hall but grumbling in the kitchen shows the two regions. The perspective reveals everyday order as a continuing achievement of interaction, and it extends to social-media profiles as managed front stages. Critics say it reduces sincerity to strategy and neglects structural power.

(d) Reference group theory and its universality

A reference group is a group whose standards a person uses to evaluate himself, whether or not he belongs to it (Hyman, 1942; Merton and Kitt, 1950). Merton distinguished its normative function (source of values) from its comparative function (yardstick), and positive from negative (dissociative) groups. The theory explains relative deprivation and anticipatory socialisation, as in Stouffer's study of American soldiers. The mechanism of comparison is general, but the range of groups a person can choose is not. In closed, ascriptive systems such as caste, birth and endogamy restrict it. Srinivas's Sanskritisation shows lower castes taking the dominant castes as reference, yet their claims were often resisted rather than accepted. Education, reservations, media and Ambedkarite identity have since widened reference groups for Dalits. Reference group theory is thus a widely applicable frame, but who counts as a reference group is shaped by culture and structure, so it is not universally applicable in its Western, open-class form.

(e) Ethnicity and race

Yes, the boundary is blurred. Conceptually, race refers to supposedly biological, visible traits such as skin colour, while ethnicity refers to shared culture, language, religion and ancestry. But human genetic variation is continuous and scientists reject biological races, so race is a social classification that attaches rank to physical differences (Omi and Winant's racial formation). Ethnicity is also constructed: Fredrik Barth (1969) showed that boundaries, not cultural content, define groups. In practice the two merge when cultural traits are treated as fixed and inherited (racialisation of Jews or Muslims), and census categories such as "Hispanic" or "mixed" overlap both. In India, Herbert Risley used the nasal index to racialise caste, a view rejected by Ambedkar (Castes in India, 1916) and by André Béteille. Still, race stresses imposed, ascribed classification and ethnicity often self-chosen identity. So the line is blurred, not erased.