Answer the following questions in about 150 words each: (a) Describe various characteristics of a 'social fact'. How is rate of…

(a) Émile Durkheim, in The Rules of Sociological Method (1895), defines a 'social fact' as every way of acting, thinking, and feeling that presents the notable property of existing outside the individual consciousness. Its primary characteristics are externality (it exists independent of individual will), constraint (it exercises coercive power over individual conduct), and generality (it is widespread throughout a given society). In Suicide (1897), Durkheim establishes that while individual suicides appear psychological, the suicide rate is a distinct sui generis social fact. The suicide rate exhibits structural stability across time and distinct variations across social groups. Durkheim demonstrates that suicide rates correlate inversely or excessively with two core social currents: integration and regulation. This yields four ideal types: egoistic (inadequate social integration), altruistic (excessive integration), anomic (insufficient normative regulation during rapid economic change), and fatalistic (oppressive over-regulation). Thus, suicide rates reflect the macro-level health of collective conscience.

(b) George Herbert Mead rejected biological reductionism, conceptualizing the 'self' not as a static, innate structure, but as an emergent social process developed through symbolic interaction. The self comprises two dialectical phases: the 'I' (the impulsive, spontaneous, and unorganized subjective response) and the 'me' (the organized set of attitudes of others that the individual assumes). The ontogenetic evolution of the self proceeds through developmental stages. In the preparatory stage, infants engage in simple imitation. In the play stage, the child assumes the role of a particular significant other (such as a parent). In the game stage, the child must internalize the simultaneous, interconnected roles and rules of all participants. Through this, the child develops the 'generalised other'—the internalized collective norms, values, and expectations of the wider community. The generalized other allows the individual to achieve self-consciousness and engage in self-regulation, ensuring the internalization of social control.

(c) Feudal and capitalist societies structure work around opposing socio-economic principles. Feudal work organization was status-based, ascriptive, and localized. Production was organized around unfree serfdom, where peasants were tied to the land and surrendered agricultural surplus through extra-economic, customary coercion. Work relations operated within an ethos of paternalism and mutual, though unequal, reciprocal obligations. Production prioritized use-values for localized subsistence and the conspicuous consumption of the nobility. Conversely, capitalist work organization is contractual, achievement-oriented, and anchored in market rationalism. It is built on formally 'free' wage labor separated from the means of production, as theorized by Karl Marx. Work is geared entirely toward exchange-value and capital accumulation through the extraction of surplus value. Labor is rationalized via extreme division of labor, scientific management (Taylorism), and assembly-line standardization (Fordism), reducing human labor into a quantifiable commodity while generating structural alienation.

(d) Max Weber distinguishes 'power' (Macht) from 'authority' (Herrschaft). Power is the probability that one actor within a social relationship will carry out their will even against resistance, regardless of the basis on which this probability rests. It is often coercive and unstable. Authority, or legitimate domination, arises when power is accepted as legitimate and binding by those subject to it, transforming obedience into a recognized duty. Weber delineates three ideal types of authority based on the grounds of their legitimacy claims: Traditional authority rests on an established belief in the sanctity of immemorial traditions and the legitimacy of those exercising rule under customary norms, such as feudal lords or patriarchal village heads. Charismatic authority rests on devotion to the exceptional sanctity, heroism, or exemplary character of an individual leader, seen in figures like Mahatma Gandhi. Legal-rational authority is grounded in the legality of enacted rules and the right of those elevated to authority under such rules to issue commands, exemplified by modern state bureaucracies and constitutional legal systems.

(e) Science and technology function as profound drivers of social change, replacing traditional worldviews with instrumental rationality and disenchantment, as noted by Max Weber. However, as Ulrich Beck argues in his Risk Society thesis, technological advancement is not unilinearly emancipatory; it systematically manufactures new ecological and technological hazards.

This duality is evident in the increasing trend of online education. On one hand, digital platforms provide educational democratization, temporal flexibility, and scalable access to pedagogical resources, supported in India through initiatives like SWAYAM and DIKSHA. On the other hand, critical evaluation reveals that unbridled online education deepens structural inequalities. It entrenches the digital divide along class, caste, and gender lines, degrades the pedagogical role of educators through deskilling into standardized content managers, and facilitates corporate data surveillance. Crucially, virtual instruction fails to replicate the physical classroom's function in democratic socialisation, peer learning, and civic dialogue. Therefore, online tools must serve strictly as an auxiliary aid to strengthen, rather than a market-driven replacement for, universal public educational institutions.