Q1 50M 150w Compulsory explain
Answer the following questions in about 150 words each :
(a) In what ways do class and caste intersect and overlap in shaping social structure ? (10 marks)
(b) Critically examine the position of women in the informal economy. (10 marks)
(c) Discuss the role of geographical factors in social change and development. (10 marks)
(d) Although sociology, as a subject of study, overarches all disciplines in social sciences yet it maintains its distinctiveness. Comment. (10 marks)
(e) Explain in brief the relationship between social movement, collective action and revolution in bringing about social and political changes. (10 marks)
हिंदी में पढ़ें
निम्नलिखित प्रश्नों में से प्रत्येक का उत्तर लगभग 150 शब्दों में दीजिए :
(a) किन तरीकों से वर्ग तथा जाति सामाजिक संरचना को आकार देने में एक दूसरे का अंतरानुभाग एवं परस्पर व्याप्त करते हैं ? (10 अंक)
(b) अनौपचारिक अर्थव्यवस्था में महिलाओं की स्थिति का समालोचनात्मक परीक्षण कीजिए । (10 अंक)
(c) सामाजिक परिवर्तन एवं विकास में भौगोलिक कारकों की भूमिका की विवेचना कीजिए । (10 अंक)
(d) यद्यपि समाजशास्त्र, अध्ययन के एक विषय के रूप में, समाजविज्ञानों के सभी विषयों को सर्व समावेशित करता है, तो भी यह अपनी विशिष्टताओं को बनाये हुए है । टिप्पणी कीजिए । (10 अंक)
(e) सामाजिक एवं राजनीतिक परिवर्तन लाने में सामाजिक आन्दोलन, सामूहिक क्रिया एवं क्रान्ति के सम्बन्धों की संक्षिप्त व्याख्या कीजिये । (10 अंक)
Answer approach & key points
(a) 'In what ways' asks for identified mechanisms, not a general essay: the candidate must show the specific points at which class (economic, achieved, open) and caste (ritual, ascribed, closed) intersect and overlap in producing social structure. Both convergence (caste-class correspondence) and divergence (decomposition/dissociation) must appear. (b) 'Critically examine' requires both sides: the concentration of women in informal work and the reasons for it, and an assessment of whether informality is only exploitation or also an opening for agency. The unit of analysis is women's position — segregation, wages, security, recognition and organisation. (c) 'Discuss the role of geographical factors' requires the candidate to state how physical environment, climate, terrain, resources and location act as factors of social change and development, and to weigh determinist against possibilist and political-ecology positions rather than merely listing examples. (d) 'Comment' on a two-part claim: that sociology overarches all the social sciences, and that it nevertheless keeps a distinct identity. Both halves must be argued — the breadth of sociology's subject matter and its relation with economics, political science, history, psychology and anthropology, and the specific perspective, unit of analysis and method that make it distinct. (e) 'Explain in brief the relationship' among three distinct concepts — social movement, collective action and revolution — and their role in producing social and political change. The answer must define each, place them on a continuum of organisation and radicalism, and show how one can become another.
- Max Weber — caste as status group (The Religion of India)
- Karl Marx — class as relation to means of production
- Andre Beteille — Caste, Class and Power (1965), Sripuram
- M.N. Srinivas — dominant caste, Sanskritisation
- Louis Dumont — Homo Hierarchicus (1966), purity and pollution
- B.R. Ambedkar — caste as 'enclosed class', graded inequality
- NCEUS (Arjun Sengupta Committee, 2007) — unorganised sector
- Maria Mies — housewifisation; Narsapur lace makers
- SEWA — Ela Bhatt, 1972
- Guy Standing — feminisation of labour through flexibilisation
- Bina Agarwal — A Field of One's Own (1994)
- Naila Kabeer — agency and empowerment
- Unorganised Workers' Social Security Act, 2008 / Code on Social Security, 2020
- Montesquieu — The Spirit of the Laws (1748), climate theory
- Ellsworth Huntington — Civilization and Climate (1915)
- Karl Wittfogel — Oriental Despotism (1957), hydraulic society
- Vidal de la Blache / Lucien Febvre — possibilism
- Emile Durkheim — social morphology
- Jared Diamond — Guns, Germs and Steel (1997)
- Madhav Gadgil and Ramachandra Guha — This Fissured Land (1992)
- Auguste Comte — coined 'sociology' (1839), hierarchy of sciences
- Emile Durkheim — The Rules of Sociological Method (1895), social facts sui generis
- Max Weber — verstehen, ideal type, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904-05)
- C. Wright Mills — The Sociological Imagination (1959)
- A.R. Radcliffe-Brown — social anthropology as comparative sociology
- Karl Polanyi / Mark Granovetter — embeddedness of economic action
- Neil Smelser — Theory of Collective Behavior (1962), value-added theory
- Mancur Olson — The Logic of Collective Action (1965), free-rider problem
- McCarthy and Zald — resource mobilisation theory (1977)
- Charles Tilly — repertoires of contention, From Mobilization to Revolution (1978)
- Theda Skocpol — States and Social Revolutions (1979)
- Ted Gurr — Why Men Rebel (1970) / James Davies — J-curve
- M.S.A. Rao or Ghanshyam Shah — social movements in India
(a) Describe the impact of capitalist mode of production on society. (20 marks)
(b) Differentiate between social hierarchy and social exclusion and substantiate your answer with reference to the caste system. (20 marks)
(c) ‘Data without theory is blind and theory without data is empty.’ Comment. (10 marks)
हिंदी में पढ़ें
(a) समाज पर उत्पादन के पूँजीवादी तरीके के प्रभाव का वर्णन कीजिए । (20 अंक)
(b) सामाजिक संस्तरण एवं सामाजिक अपवर्जन में विभेद कीजिए तथा जाति व्यवस्था के संदर्भ में, अपने उत्तर की पुष्टि कीजिए । (20 अंक)
(c) ‘आँकड़े बिना सिद्धान्त के अंधे (दिशाहीन) होते हैं एवं सिद्धान्त बिना आँकड़ों के निष्फल (रिक्त) होता है ।’ टिप्पणी कीजिये । (10 अंक)
Answer approach & key points
(a) describe: define > structure or process in order > labelled diagram > significance | (b) compare: paired headings or table > key differences > significance > conclusion | (c) comment: context > arguments both sides > judgment > close Full marks: Precise definitions, clear structural analysis, and specific Indian examples.
- Define capitalist mode of production (private ownership, wage labor).
- Describe impact on social stratification (bourgeoisie/proletariat).
- Describe impact on social relations (commodification, alienation).
- Describe impact on culture or institutions (consumerism, state role).
- Define social hierarchy (rank/stratification).
- Define social exclusion (denial of access/rights).
- Apply hierarchy to caste (varna/jati ranking).
- Apply exclusion to caste (untouchability, discrimination).
- Explain 'data without theory is blind' (lack of interpretation).
- Explain 'theory without data is empty' (lack of empirical grounding).
- Provide a brief example of their interplay.
(a) Discuss the relationship between religion and science in modern society. Do they necessarily remain in conflict ? (20 marks)
(b) Is ‘interpretativism’ more effective than ‘positivism’ in analysing social reality ? Discuss. (20 marks)
(c) How does Emile Durkheim conceptualize religion as a 'social fact' ? Explain. (10 marks)
हिंदी में पढ़ें
(a) आधुनिक समाज में धर्म तथा विज्ञान के सम्बन्धों की विवेचना कीजिए । क्या वे अनिवार्य रूप से द्वन्द्व में रहते हैं ? (20 अंक)
(b) क्या सामाजिक वास्तविकता के विश्लेषण में ‘प्रत्यक्षवाद’ के सापेक्ष ‘निर्वचन वाद’ अधिक प्रभावशाली है ? विवेचना कीजिए । (20 अंक)
(c) इमाइल डरखाइम किस प्रकार से धर्म को एक 'सामाजिक तथ्य' के रूप में अवधारणीकृत करता है ? व्याख्या कीजिये । (10 अंक)
Answer approach & key points
(a) Two tasks: discuss the relationship between religion and science in modern society, and then answer the direct question of whether conflict between them is necessary. A verdict on the second part is compulsory, supported by the secularisation debate and by evidence of coexistence and of conflict. (b) A direct comparative question requiring a judgement: the candidate must set out positivism and interpretativism as methodological positions (ontology, epistemology, methods), assess the claim that interpretativism is more effective in analysing social reality, and take a defended position — most safely that effectiveness depends on the research problem and that the two are complementary. (c) 'Explain' how Durkheim conceptualises religion as a social fact. The answer must connect his criteria of a social fact from The Rules of Sociological Method (1895) — externality, constraint, generality, sui generis — to his substantive theory of religion in The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912).
- Auguste Comte — law of three stages
- Max Weber — disenchantment (Entzauberung), 'Science as a Vocation' (1917)
- Peter Berger — The Sacred Canopy (1967) and later desecularisation
- Bryan Wilson / Steve Bruce — secularisation
- Jose Casanova — Public Religions in the Modern World (1994)
- Robert K. Merton — Science, Technology and Society in Seventeenth Century England (1938); CUDOS norms
- Thomas Kuhn — paradigms
- T.N. Madan / Ashis Nandy — secularism in India; Article 51A(h) scientific temper
- Auguste Comte — positivism
- Emile Durkheim — The Rules of Sociological Method (1895), Suicide (1897)
- Wilhelm Dilthey — Verstehen, Geisteswissenschaften
- Max Weber — interpretive understanding of social action, ideal type
- Alfred Schutz — The Phenomenology of the Social World (1932)
- Herbert Blumer — symbolic interactionism
- Harold Garfinkel — Studies in Ethnomethodology (1967)
- Jack Douglas — The Social Meanings of Suicide (1967)
- Norman Denzin — triangulation / Roy Bhaskar — critical realism
- The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912)
- The Rules of Sociological Method (1895) — social fact: external, constraining, general, sui generis
- sacred and profane
- totemism, Arunta/Aranda, Australian Aborigines (Spencer and Gillen)
- collective conscience and collective effervescence
- 'society worshipping itself' / god as society
- E.E. Evans-Pritchard — critique
(a) Elaborate major sociological theories of power. How do power elite shape the political process in modern societies ? (20 marks)
(b) Evaluate the socio-economic impacts of migration on rural households. (20 marks)
(c) 'The methods of sociology are inadequate in understanding the complex social phenomena'. Discuss. (10 marks)
हिंदी में पढ़ें
(a) शक्ति के प्रमुख सिद्धान्तों की विस्तार से व्याख्या कीजिये । आधुनिक समाज में शक्ति अभिजन किस तरह राजनैतिक प्रक्रिया को आकार (स्वरूप) प्रदान करता है ? (20 अंक)
(b) ग्रामीण गृहस्थी पर प्रवास के सामाजिक-आर्थिक प्रभावों का मूल्यांकन कीजिये । (20 अंक)
(c) 'जटिल सामाजिक घटनाओं को समझने में समाजशास्त्र की पद्धतियां अपर्याप्त हैं' । विवेचना कीजिये । (10 अंक)
Answer approach & key points
(a) Two connected tasks: elaborate the major sociological theories of power — Weberian, Marxist-Gramscian, functionalist, elite, pluralist and Foucauldian — and then answer specifically how the power elite shapes the political process in modern societies, which requires Mills's formulation and its critics. (b) 'Evaluate' demands a balanced assessment, not a list: the socio-economic consequences of out-migration for the rural household as the unit of analysis — income and remittances, land and labour, family structure and gender roles, caste and status, education and health of those left behind — with both gains and costs weighed. (c) 'Discuss' a contentious claim: the candidate must state the genuine methodological limitations sociology faces with complex social phenomena, then defend the discipline's methodological resources, and reach a reasoned verdict — normally that methods are limited but not inadequate, given pluralism and triangulation.
- Max Weber — power vs authority; traditional, charismatic, legal-rational
- Karl Marx — power based on ownership of means of production; the state
- Antonio Gramsci — hegemony
- Talcott Parsons — power as a generalised medium, non-zero-sum
- Vilfredo Pareto — circulation of elites; Gaetano Mosca — ruling class; Robert Michels — iron law of oligarchy (Political Parties, 1911)
- Robert Dahl — Who Governs? (1961), pluralism
- Steven Lukes — Power: A Radical View (1974), three dimensions
- C. Wright Mills — The Power Elite (1956)
- Michel Foucault — power/knowledge, Discipline and Punish (1975)
- E.G. Ravenstein — laws of migration (1885); Everett Lee — push-pull model (1966)
- Oded Stark — New Economics of Labour Migration
- Jan Breman — footloose labour, circular migration
- remittances; Kerala Migration Survey — K.C. Zachariah and S. Irudaya Rajan (CDS)
- feminisation of agriculture / left-behind households
- Peggy Levitt — social remittances
- Filippo Osella and Caroline Osella — Gulf migration, status and consumption in Kerala
- COVID-19 reverse migration, 2020
- Anthony Giddens — double hermeneutic
- C. Wright Mills — abstracted empiricism / grand theory
- Norman Denzin — triangulation
- Glaser and Strauss — grounded theory (1967)
- Robert K. Merton — middle-range theory
- Jack Douglas — socially produced suicide statistics
- Pierre Bourdieu — reflexivity
- Max Weber — value-neutrality / verstehen