(a) What is science? Do you think that the methods used in natural sciences can be applied to sociology? Give reasons for your…

(a)

What is science?

• science is systematic, empirical knowledge reached by a method: observation, hypothesis, testing, and generalisation into theories that can be checked by others;
• Karl Pearson (The Grammar of Science, 1892) held that the unity of science lies in its method, not its subject matter;
• its features are empiricism, objectivity, verifiability or falsifiability (Popper), generalisation, prediction and cumulation;
• Merton described its norms (CUDOS: communism, universalism, disinterestedness, organised scepticism), and Kuhn showed science working within paradigms.

Arguments that natural-science methods can be applied:

• Comte's "social physics" and positivism;
• Durkheim treated social facts as things, and his Suicide (1897) used statistics and comparison like a natural science;
• George Lundberg and survey research carried this into quantification and measurement;
• experiments and quasi-experiments are used today:
• field and natural experiments: Chattopadhyay and Duflo's (2004) study of women-reserved panchayats used random rotation of reservation;
• audit or correspondence studies of job discrimination (Thorat and Attewell, 2007);
• randomised trials in development;
• statistical modelling, sampling and comparative method give reliable, generalisable findings.

Arguments for limits:

• Meaning: human action is meaningful, so it needs Verstehen (Weber), not only external observation. Peter Winch (1958) argued that social life is rule-following, not causal regularity;
• Reflexivity: Giddens's double hermeneutic, Merton's self-fulfilling and self-defeating prophecies, and the Hawthorne effect show that subjects change when studied;
• Open, complex systems: many causes interact, and controlled laboratory experiments on whole societies are impossible and often unethical;
• Values: complete value-neutrality is elusive (Gouldner, Myrdal);
• Prediction: social laws are probabilistic and historically specific.

• Middle position: Roy Bhaskar's critical realism (The Possibility of Naturalism, 1979) argues for a qualified naturalism: sociology can be scientific in seeking real causal mechanisms, but its objects depend on meaning and change over time.
• Answer: the methods of natural science can be applied partly. Sociology is scientific in attitude and rigour, but must adapt its methods to a meaningful, reflexive subject matter by combining quantitative and interpretive approaches.

(b)

Meaning:

• the gender-based domestic division of labour is the socially constructed allocation of unpaid housework, childcare, eldercare and emotional labour mainly to women, and of paid "breadwinning" to men;
• it is justified as "natural" but produced by patriarchal norms.

Theories:

• Parsons: complementary instrumental (male) and expressive (female) roles in the nuclear family;
• Ann Oakley (The Sociology of Housework, 1974): housework is real, alienating and unrecognised work;
• Marxist feminists (the domestic labour debate; the "wages for housework" campaign): unpaid work reproduces labour power for capital;
• Young and Willmott (The Symmetrical Family, 1973) claimed that roles were converging, but Oakley and others disputed this.

Is it changing with women's formal employment?

• Some change:
• dual-earner urban couples share some tasks; men increasingly do shopping, school runs and childcare, especially among the young and educated;
• women's earnings give them bargaining power (Bina Agarwal; Amartya Sen's "cooperative conflicts");
• the outsourcing of care to domestic workers and crèches, app-based services, and 26 weeks' maternity leave all ease the load.
• Much continuity:
• Arlie Hochschild's "second shift" (1989): employed women come home to a second job;
• India's Time Use Survey 2019 found women spending about 299 minutes a day on unpaid domestic services against 97 minutes for men; the 2024 survey found the gap still large;
• women bear the "mental load" of planning and managing, even when physical tasks are outsourced;
• outsourcing shifts care to poorer, often Dalit or migrant women, creating a class and caste chain of care;
• many women leave jobs after marriage or childbirth, which helps explain low female labour force participation;
• COVID-19 lockdowns increased women's unpaid work.

Illustrations:

• an IT professional in Bengaluru who manages her home after work;
• a teacher in a small town who is expected to cook for the joint family;
• women gig workers who fit tasks around childcare, facing "time poverty".

• Conclusion: formal employment has loosened but not transformed the domestic division of labour. Change needs men's participation, paternity and parental leave, public childcare and changes in norms.

(c)

Features of digital-era movements:

• Manuel Castells's network society and "networks of outrage and hope" (2012);
• Bennett and Segerberg's connective action (2012): personalised, platform-based participation;
• hashtag activism: #MeToo (2018), #JusticeForRohith (2016), #DalitLivesMatter;
• hybrid mobilisation: India Against Corruption (2011), the Nirbhaya protests (2012), the anti-CAA protests (2019–20), and the farmers' protest (2020–21), whose Kisan Ekta Morcha handles bypassed mainstream media.

How to assess their significance:

• Reach and speed: cheap, rapid mobilisation beyond geography, and diaspora solidarity;
• Voice: counter-publics for Dalit, feminist, queer and Adivasi groups that mainstream media ignored;
• Agenda-setting and framing: #MeToo shifted discussion of workplace harassment, and online evidence drives accountability;
• Outcomes: the Nirbhaya protests led to the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, 2013, and the farmers' protest to the repeal of the farm laws (2021). In both, digital and physical action worked together;
• Durability: Zeynep Tufekci (Twitter and Tear Gas, 2017) shows that quick digital mobilisation creates fragile movements without organisational depth.

Downsides:

• slacktivism: low-cost clicks and short attention cycles;
• echo chambers and filter bubbles (Eli Pariser, 2011) polarise; misinformation and trolling are used by counter-movements;
• surveillance, takedowns and internet shutdowns; Anuradha Bhasin (2020) required shutdowns to be proportionate;
• the digital divide: NFHS-5 found about a third of women, against over half of men, had used the internet;
• platforms and algorithms, not movements, control visibility.

• Conclusion: the significance of digital-era movements should be judged by whether online visibility is converted into organisation, sustained action and institutional change. At their best they are hybrid, not merely virtual.