Answer the following questions in about 150 words each: (a) What is the distinctiveness of the feminist method of social…

(a) Distinctiveness of the Feminist Method of Social Research

The distinctiveness of the feminist method lies primarily in its epistemological critique of conventional, positivist "malestream" sociology. Feminist methodology rejects the positivist ideal of value neutrality, arguing that conventional research reflects an androcentric bias masquerading as universal objectivity. Drawing on Sandra Harding’s feminist standpoint epistemology and Donna Haraway’s concept of situated knowledge, this approach asserts that marginalized social locations, specifically women’s lived experiences, provide a more complete and less distorted understanding of social reality.

Methodologically, it prioritizes reflexivity, breaking the hierarchical divide between the researcher and the researched by fostering non-exploitative, intersubjective relationships. Techniques such as oral histories and qualitative interviews are favoured to uncover unvoiced domestic and emotional realities. However, critics like Martyn Hammersley contend that feminism provides a distinctive epistemological stance and political agenda rather than entirely unique empirical methods. Ultimately, feminist methodology fundamentally redefines the research process by linking knowledge production directly with emancipatory social change.

(b) Relationship between Sociology and Political Science

Sociology and political science share an enduring, symbiotic relationship centered on the study of power, authority, and social order. Traditionally, political science focused narrowly on the formal state, constitutional frameworks, and institutional mechanisms of governance. In contrast, sociology examined informal power structures, social stratification, and the broader societal roots of collective behaviour.

The convergence of both disciplines gave rise to political sociology, pioneered by Max Weber and Seymour Martin Lipset, which examines how political processes are embedded within social matrices. In the Indian context, this interdisciplinary synergy is evident in the study of caste-politics dynamics (Rajni Kothari’s politicisation of caste) and democratic deepening (Christophe Jaffrelot). While political science increasingly adopts sociological perspectives on social movements, identities, and voting behaviour, sociology maintains a wider purview that spans non-political institutions such as family, religion, and deviance. Thus, while political science studies the architecture of the state, sociology illuminates the social foundations that sustain or challenge it.

(c) The Dramaturgical Perspective in Everyday Life

Erving Goffman’s dramaturgical perspective, articulated in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, utilizes the metaphor of the theatre to analyse the micro-dynamics of everyday interaction. Goffman conceptualises social life as a continuous performance wherein actors engage in "impression management" to guide and control how others perceive them, thereby establishing a shared "definition of the situation."

Everyday interaction is structured across distinct spatial domains. The "front stage" is where individuals perform formal social roles using institutionalized scripts, props, and expressive manners that conform to normative expectations. The "back stage" provides a private sphere where performers step out of character, drop their social masks, and manage emotional strain or rehearse future performances. By framing everyday encounters as ritualistic performances directed at saving face and avoiding embarrassment, dramaturgy reveals that social order is not merely an external macro-structure, but a precarious reality actively sustained through continuous, situated interpersonal interactions.

(d) Universality of Reference Group Theory

Robert K. Merton developed reference group theory to elucidate how individuals orient their attitudes and behaviour toward non-membership groups, driven by mechanisms of relative deprivation and anticipatory socialization. While the theory provides powerful insights into social mobility within open, achievement-oriented, and individualistic Western class structures, its cross-cultural applicability is bounded.

In collectivist and rigidly stratified societies, the scope for selecting reference groups is structurally restricted. In the traditional Indian caste system, ascription strictly circumscribes social mobility. As M.N. Srinivas demonstrated through the concept of Sanskritization, lower castes attempting anticipatory socialization by adopting upper-caste cultural motifs frequently met severe punitive sanctions from dominant castes rather than legitimized upward mobility. Furthermore, in close-knit, collectivist communities, individual comparisons are subordinated to group norms, limiting autonomous reference group selection. Therefore, while Merton’s model universally explains the cognitive process of comparison, its empirical realization remains contingent upon the degree of institutional openness and structural fluidity within a society.

(e) Blurring Boundaries: Race and Ethnicity

Analytically, race and ethnicity have distinct conceptual origins: race historically referred to categories based on perceived, unchangeable biological and phenotypical traits, whereas ethnicity signified collective identity rooted in shared cultural heritage, language, religion, or historical memories.

However, constructivist sociologists such as Fredrik Barth and Richard Jenkins argue that this boundary line is profoundly blurred because both are socially constructed, relational, and historically mutable modes of group identification. Physical markers acquire social meaning only through cultural interpretation, while cultural differences are frequently essentialized and treated as immutable biological facts. In India, this fluidity emerged in colonial anthropometry (Herbert Risley) attempting to racialise caste, a premise contested by G.S. Ghurye and B.R. Ambedkar, who demonstrated that caste operates as an endogamous, socio-cultural hierarchy rather than a distinct racial division. Modern census politics, ethnic mobilizations, and state categorizations continue to demonstrate that race and ethnicity operate along an overlapping continuum of socially constructed identities rather than as discrete, fixed categories.