(a) Do you think that common sense is the starting point of social research? What are its advantages and limitations? Explain…

(a) Common sense as the starting point of social research

To a large extent, yes. Alfred Schutz described common sense as the taken-for-granted stock of knowledge, the "natural attitude", with which actors make their world meaningful. Weber's Verstehen takes actors' own meanings as the data that sociology must interpret, and Garfinkel's ethnomethodology studies how common-sense reasoning produces order. Fieldwork, as in Srinivas's Rampura, begins with what villagers themselves say and believe.

But there is an opposing tradition. Durkheim asked sociologists to discard "prenotions", and Bourdieu called for an epistemological break from spontaneous sociology. André Béteille held that sociology must critically examine the common sense of its own society, such as beliefs about caste, gender and merit.

Advantages. Common sense gives access to lived meanings, supplies hypotheses and questions, helps build rapport and shows what people consider natural or problematic.

Limitations. It is unsystematic, local and often contradictory ("look before you leap", "he who hesitates is lost"); it rests on tradition, authority and personal experience rather than evidence; and it frequently naturalises inequality, as in the belief that the poor are lazy or that caste reflects ability. It cannot be tested or compared across contexts.

Common sense is therefore the raw material and the starting point, but research begins in earnest when that material is questioned with concepts, evidence and comparison, as in Mills's sociological imagination.

(b) Poverty as a form of social exclusion and its dimensions

Poverty is social exclusion when lack of resources prevents people from participating in the normal economic, social, political and cultural life of their society. Peter Townsend described poverty as relative deprivation, Amartya Sen as capability deprivation, and Hilary Silver and Graham Room showed that exclusion is relational and multidimensional, caused by institutions and processes, not simply by personal lack. In India, Sukhadeo Thorat shows that caste exclusion and poverty reinforce each other.

Dimensions. The economic dimension is exclusion from secure jobs, land, credit and markets, leaving people in informal work. The social dimension is stigma, isolation and loss of networks, with untouchability and the stigma of manual scavenging as extreme cases. The political dimension is weak voice, lack of documents and ineffective access to entitlements; slum dwellers without title are evicted. The cultural dimension is the devaluation of identity and language, as when Adivasis displaced from forests lose customary rights despite PESA 1996 and the Forest Rights Act 2006. Access to health, education and housing is also unequal.

The two are linked by cumulative disadvantage across generations. National MPI estimates (14.96% multidimensionally poor in 2019-21) confirm overlapping deprivation in health, education and living standards. Policy must therefore combine income support, rights and inclusion.

(c) Totemism and animism: similarities and differences

Animism (Tylor, Primitive Culture, 1871) is belief in spiritual beings and souls animating persons, animals, plants and natural objects. Totemism is the special relation between a social group, usually a clan, and a species or object, the totem, from which it claims descent or which it regards as kin and sacred (McLennan; Durkheim, Elementary Forms, 1912).

Similarities. Both attribute spiritual or sacred significance to non-human beings and nature, both involve ritual and taboo, and both are taken by evolutionists as very early religious forms. Indian tribes show both: Santhal and Munda clans carry totemic names, and their sarna groves reflect animistic belief.

Differences. Animism is a general belief in spirits in nature, and Tylor explained it intellectually by dreams and death. Totemism is a specific social relation defining clan identity, exogamy and obligations. For Durkheim the totem symbolises the clan itself, so the group worships society. Lévi-Strauss (1962) later treated totemism as a scheme of classification, not of religion.