BCS Written Sociology cheat sheet

Definition: sociology is the systematic, empirical study of human society, social interaction, groups, and institutions; coined by Auguste Comte in 1838 in Cours de philosophie positive.

Nature: a social science, not a natural science; empirical, comparative, generalizing (nomothetic), and value-referential though it aims at value-neutral analysis.

Scope ranges from micro (self, dyad, interaction) through meso (organizations, communities) to macro (stratification, states, global systems).

Emergence: Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution (urbanization, factory labour, political upheaval) created the conditions for a science of society.

Founding sequence: Comte (positivism, social statics/dynamics), Spencer (social Darwinism, organic analogy), Marx (class conflict, historical materialism), Durkheim (social facts, division of labour), Weber (interpretive verstehen, rationalization).

Durkheim's rule: treat social facts as things, explaining one social fact by another social fact, not by individual psychology.

Weber's definition of sociology: the science attempting interpretative understanding of social action to explain its course and effects causally.

Mills' sociological imagination links personal troubles to public issues; Wright's public sociology extends the discipline's audience beyond the academy.

Academic institutionalization: first sociology department at the University of Chicago (1892); British Sociological Association founded 1951; Bangladesh Sociological Society founded 1976.

Society: the widest web of social relationships; Tonnies distinguishes Gemeinschaft (personal, communal) from Gesellschaft (impersonal, associational).

Community: a territorially or relationally bounded group sharing identity and interaction; differs from society by scale and from association by affective ties.

Association: a deliberately formed group with explicit aims, rules and membership (e.g., a trade union); MacIver and Page treat it as a specific kind of social organization.

Institution: an established, normative pattern of behaviour (family, education, religion) rather than a building; institutions are the stable 'rules of the game'.

Culture: learned, shared, transmitted symbolic and material repertoire; includes norms, values, beliefs, symbols, language, technology; material vs non-material culture.

Cultural universals vs cultural relativism: judging a culture by its own standards; ethnocentrism judges by one's own; xenocentrism overvalues the foreign.

Socialization: lifelong process of internalizing norms and roles; primary (family, early childhood) and secondary (school, peers, media, workplace) socialization; re-socialization in total institutions.

Mead: the self develops through play, game and the generalized other; Cooley: the looking-glass self (imagination of appearance, judgment, self-feeling); Freud: id, ego, superego.

Status is a position in a social structure (ascribed vs achieved); role is the expected behaviour attached to a status; role conflict arises between statuses, role strain within one status.

Social structure: patterned, enduring relations and positions (statuses, roles, groups, institutions) that constrain and enable action; distinction between structure and agency.

Stratification: hierarchical ranking of categories with unequal access to valued resources; three classic dimensions - class (economic), status (social honour), party/power (political) in Weber.

Marx: class defined by relation to means of production (bourgeoisie/proletariat); class-in-itself vs class-for-itself; surplus value and exploitation.

Functionalist view (Davis and Moore): stratification is necessary because some positions require scarce talent and must be differentially rewarded; conflict theorists dispute this.

Class schemes: Wright's neo-Marxist exploitation typology; Goldthorpe/Erikson class schema; Registrar General's social classes; occupational class as proxy for class.

Social mobility types: vertical (up/down), horizontal (lateral), intergenerational (parent-child), intragenerational (career), structural (from occupational change), exchange/circulation.

Open vs closed systems: caste is a closed, ascriptive system historically linked to ritual purity; class is comparatively open and achievement-based.

Social exclusion and poverty: absolute vs relative poverty; Sen's capability approach; multidimensional poverty index measures health, education, living standards.

Gini coefficient ranges 0 (perfect equality) to 1 (perfect inequality); higher value means more unequal distribution of income or consumption.

Family functions: reproduction, socialization, economic support, emotional security, regulation of sexuality; Murdock's universal functions and the nuclear family.

Family forms: nuclear/extended, patrilocal/matrilocal/neolocal residence, patrilineal/matrilineal/bilateral descent, matrifocal households; conjugal vs consanguineal.

Marriage rules: endogamy (marry within own group) vs exogamy (marry outside); monogamy, polygyny, polyandry; bride-price vs dowry; levirate and sororate.

Kinship: relations by blood (consanguineal) and marriage (affinal); terms classified by generation, gender, lineality, and relative age; descent groups and lineages.

Education functions: transmission of knowledge, socialization, credentialing and sorting, social reproduction (Bowles and Gintis' correspondence principle), cultural reproduction (Bourdieu's cultural capital).

Religion: Durkheim's sacred/profane distinction, totemism, collective effervescence; Weber's Protestant ethic thesis linking ascetic Protestantism to capitalist rationalization.

Religion types: animism, totemism, polytheism, monotheism; church, sect, denomination, cult typology (Troeltsch, Niebuhr, Wallis); secularization debate.

Economy: production, distribution, exchange, consumption; modes of production (tribal, ancient, feudal, capitalist, socialist per Marx); informal economy and subsistence sector.

Division of labour: Durkheim's mechanical (similar, punitive law) vs organic (interdependent, restitutive law) solidarity; anomie as pathological form.

Social change: alteration in social structure, institutions or culture over time; sources include technology, demography, ideology, conflict, diffusion and environmental shocks.

Evolutionary theories (Comte, Spencer, Morgan) posit unilinear stages; cyclical theories (Spengler, Sorokin, Toynbee) posit rise and decline; conflict theories stress contradiction and struggle.

Ogburn's cultural lag: material culture changes faster than non-material culture, producing maladjustment; innovation, invention and diffusion are mechanisms of change.

Modernization theory (Rostow's stages, Parsons' pattern variables, Lerner, Inkeles): development as movement from tradition to modernity along a single path, with diffusion from the West.

Dependency theory (Prebisch, Frank, Dos Santos, Amin): core-periphery surplus extraction, development of underdevelopment; import substitution and structuralist critiques.

World-systems theory (Wallerstein): core, semi-periphery and periphery in a single capitalist world economy; Arrighi and Wallerstein on hegemonic cycles.

Alternative development: basic needs approach, sustainable development (Brundtland 1987), human development index (Sen and Haq, 1990), capability approach, post-development critique (Escobar).

Pattern variables (Parsons): affectivity vs affective neutrality, diffuseness vs specificity, particularism vs universalism, ascription vs achievement, collectivity vs self-orientation.

Social change indicators: urbanization rate, literacy, life expectancy, fertility transition (demographic transition theory), occupational shift from agriculture to industry and services.

Social problem: a condition widely perceived as harmful and amenable to collective action; objective condition plus subjective definition (Blumer's stages: emergence, legitimation, mobilization, official plan).

Deviance: violation of normative expectations; not identical with crime - crime is legally defined, deviance is socially defined and includes non-legal violations.

Biological and psychological theories: Lombroso's atavism, Sheldon's somatotypes, Freudian and personality explanations; largely rejected as monocausal.

Strain theory (Merton): modes of adaptation - conformity, innovation, ritualism, retreatism, rebellion - from disjunction between goals and legitimate means.

Cultural transmission and differential association (Sutherland, Cressey): criminal behaviour learned through interaction; differential reinforcement (Burgess and Akers).

Control theories: Hirschi's social bond (attachment, commitment, involvement, belief); Sykes and Matza's techniques of neutralization; Gottfredson and Hirschi's self-control.

Labelling theory (Becker, Lemert, Tannenbaum): deviance as a product of societal reaction, primary vs secondary deviation, master status, moral entrepreneurs.

Conflict and critical criminology: law as an instrument of ruling-class interests, selective enforcement, white-collar and corporate crime (Sutherland, Braithwaite).

Social control: formal (police, courts, prisons) and informal (family, school, peer, public opinion, gossip); sanctions positive/negative and formal/informal; Durkheim on crime as normal and boundary-maintaining.

Functionalism: society as a system of interdependent parts contributing to stability; manifest vs latent functions (Merton), dysfunctions, and the critique of teleology.

Conflict theory: society as arena of inequality and struggle; Marx on class and ideology; Dahrendorf on authority relations; Mills on power elite.

Symbolic interactionism: meaning arises in interaction and is negotiated through symbols; Blumer's three premises; Goffman's dramaturgy (front stage, back stage, impression management).

Exchange theory (Homans, Blau): social behaviour as exchange of rewards and costs; rational choice theory (Coleman) extends this to collective outcomes.

Phenomenology and ethnomethodology: Schutz's lifeworld and typifications; Garfinkel's breaching experiments; the social construction of reality (Berger and Luckmann).

Feminist theory: liberal, radical, socialist/Marxist, black and postcolonial strands; patriarchy, gendered division of labour, intersectionality (Crenshaw).

Structuralism and post-structuralism: Saussure, Levi-Strauss, Althusser, Foucault on discourse, power/knowledge and discipline; Derrida's deconstruction.

Contemporary theory: Giddens' structuration and late modernity, Bourdieu's habitus and field, Habermas' communicative action, Beck's risk society, Bauman's liquid modernity.

Key distinctions: structure vs agency, consensus vs conflict, macro vs micro, positivism vs interpretivism, modernity vs postmodernity.

Methodology vs method: methodology is the logic and justification of inquiry; method is the technique of data collection and analysis.

Quantitative designs: survey, experiment, structured observation, secondary analysis of statistics; produce numerical, generalizable, replicable data.

Qualitative designs: participant observation, in-depth interview, focus group, case study, life history, content and discourse analysis.

Sampling: probability (simple random, systematic, stratified, cluster, multistage) allows inference; non-probability (purposive, quota, snowball, convenience) does not.

Measurement: nominal, ordinal, interval, ratio levels; validity (construct, internal, external) vs reliability; operationalization of concepts into indicators.

Positivism (Durkheim) seeks causal laws through quantification; interpretivism (Weber, Blumer) seeks verstehen and meaning; critical realism (Bhaskar) posits generative mechanisms.

Ethics: informed consent, anonymity and confidentiality, voluntary participation, no harm, right to withdraw; special care with vulnerable populations.

Triangulation (Denzin): data, investigator, theory and methodological triangulation to strengthen validity; mixed-methods designs combine both traditions.

Causality and error: spurious correlation, ecological fallacy, reactivity and Hawthorne effect, interviewer bias, response rate and non-response bias.

Bangladesh rural structure: agrarian economy, small peasant holdings, landlessness, sharecropping (bargadar), patrilineal inheritance, and the bari-brotherhood-kinship settlement pattern.

Village institutions: samaj, jamaat, mosque, school, bazaar, cooperative and NGO; patron-client ties and local power exercised through union parishad and informal arbitration (shalish).

Rural stratification: landownership as the main axis, producing jotedar/rich peasant, middle peasant, marginal and landless categories; bhadralok and local elite influence.

Urbanization: rapid growth of Dhaka and Chattogram, rural-urban migration driven by push (landlessness, river erosion, disaster) and pull (employment, education, services) factors.

Urban problems: housing shortage and slums (bustee), traffic congestion, air and water pollution, inadequate drainage, informal sector employment, crime and drug use.

Development institutions: Bangladesh Bank, Planning Commission, five-year plans, Poverty Reduction Strategy, Vision 2041; NGO model (BRAC, Grameen) and microcredit; remittance economy.

Rural development programmes: Green Revolution and irrigation, rural electrification, community clinics, social safety nets (VGD, VGF, allowance schemes), women's employment in garments and microfinance.

Key indicators: agriculture's falling share of GDP and employment, rising remittance inflows, declining fertility and poverty headcount, persistent income inequality (Gini).

Land and water conflicts: khas land disputes, river erosion and char settlement, shrimp farming and salinity, waterlogging, and displacement by climate change.

Gender: persistent gaps in labour force participation, wage, asset ownership and decision-making; child marriage, dowry and gender-based violence; women's concentration in export garment work.

Legal and policy framework: Women and Children Repression Prevention Act, Domestic Violence (Prevention and Protection) Act 2010, National Women Development Policy, CEDAW ratification.

Environment: climate vulnerability from sea-level rise, cyclones, floods, riverbank erosion, salinity intrusion; deforestation, air pollution, plastic waste, groundwater depletion and arsenic contamination.

Environmental governance: Department of Environment, Environment Conservation Act 1995 and Rules 1997, climate change trust fund, adaptation and mitigation programmes, COP participation.

Migration: internal rural-urban and overseas labour migration; remittances as a major source of foreign exchange; risks of trafficking, irregular migration and recruitment exploitation.

Refugee and displacement issues: Rohingya influx in Cox's Bazar, climate displacement, landlessness-driven migration, and urban informal settlement.

Globalization: trade liberalization, garments and remittance dependence, foreign aid and loans, cultural globalization via media and consumerism, digital economy and outsourcing.

Inequality: income and wealth concentration, regional disparity (east-west), education and health access gaps, digital divide, and informal-sector precarity.

Social responses: civil society, NGOs, social movements, media and youth activism; social protection programmes and inclusive growth debates.