CHSE Odisha Elective Sociology cheat sheet

Sociology was named by Auguste Comte in 1838 in his Cours de philosophie positive; he proposed a hierarchy of sciences with sociology at the apex as the most complex and particular.

Nature: sociology is a social science, not a natural science; it is empirical, general (studies forms of social relationships rather than unique events), categorical rather than normative, and both pure and applied.

Scope debates: the formal school (Simmel, Small, von Wiese) restricts sociology to forms of social relationships; the synthetic school (Durkheim, Hobhouse, Sorokin) treats it as a general science of society coordinating other social sciences.

Durkheim's rule: treat social facts as things, explain one social fact by another social fact, and distinguish the normal from the pathological by reference to the average type of the society.

Weber's definition: sociology is the science attempting interpretative understanding of social action in order to arrive at a causal explanation of its course and effects; action is social when oriented to the behaviour of others.

Relation to psychology: psychology studies individual mental processes, sociology studies group and collective phenomena; social psychology is the overlap zone (attitudes, crowd behaviour, socialisation of the self).

Relation to history: history reconstructs unique past events chronologically, sociology seeks general patterns and comparisons; history supplies data, sociology supplies generalisation (the 'past of sociology is history').

Relation to economics, political science and anthropology: economics analyses production and exchange, political science power and the state, anthropology mainly small-scale and tribal societies; sociology draws on all three and studies their social bases.

Significance: sociology supplies evidence-based understanding of social problems, informs policy and welfare planning, builds critical awareness (the sociological imagination linking personal troubles to public issues), and supports professional practice.

Society: the web of social relationships; MacIver and Page call it a system of usages and procedures, of authority and mutual aid, of many groupings and divisions, of controls and liberties - a process rather than a thing.

Community vs association: community is a territorially or emotionally bounded group with shared life (village, caste group), based on common living; association is a deliberately formed group with a specific purpose and formal rules (trade union, club).

Institution: an established pattern of norms and procedures organised around a basic social need (family, religion, education, property); institutions are normative structures, not buildings or organisations.

Social group defining features: two or more members, interaction, shared expectations and a sense of identity; primary groups (Cooley) are small, face-to-face, diffuse and enduring; secondary groups are large, impersonal, segmental and goal-oriented.

Sumner's in-group/out-group and Gemeinschaft/Gesellschaft (Tönnies): Gemeinschaft = community of personal, affective ties; Gesellschaft = impersonal, contractual, rational ties.

Culture: the total way of life of a people; material culture (artefacts, technology) and non-material culture (norms, values, beliefs, symbols, language); norms range from folkways and mores to laws.

Culture traits, complexes and patterns; ethnocentrism judges other cultures by one's own standards, cultural relativism understands a culture in its own terms; culture lag (Ogburn) is the delay of non-material culture behind material change.

Status: the position a person occupies (ascribed status is inherited, achieved status is earned); role is the dynamic behavioural expectation attached to a status; role conflict and role strain arise from incompatible expectations.

Socialisation: the lifelong process of learning culture and acquiring a self; stages are primary (infancy, family) and secondary (school, peers, workplace); agencies include family, school, peer group, media and religion; theories: Cooley's looking-glass self, Mead's 'I' and 'me' and role-taking, Freud's id/ego/superego.

Family types: nuclear vs extended/joint; patrilocal, matrilocal or neolocal residence; patrilineal, matrilineal or bilateral descent; matriarchal vs patriarchal authority; family of orientation vs family of procreation.

Functions of family: regulation of sex, reproduction, socialisation, economic cooperation, emotional security, status ascription; Ogburn notes a decline in some functions (productive, educational) while emotional functions persist.

Marriage forms: monogamy, polygyny (one husband, several wives), polyandry (one wife, several husbands, e.g. fraternal polyandry in Tibet); endogamy marries within a group, exogamy outside it; cross-cousin and parallel-cousin marriage rules differ.

Marriage regulations: prohibited degrees (incest taboo), age and consent rules, monogamy under the Hindu Marriage Act 1955; forms of marriage payment - bride price (bridewealth) vs dowry.

Kinship: consanguineal (blood) vs affinal (marriage) kin; lineage and clan; kinship terminology classifies relatives and prescribes behaviour (joking and avoidance relationships); kinship is a key basis of political and economic organisation in tribal societies.

Religion (Durkheim): a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things; sacred/profane distinction; totemism, magic vs religion (magic is instrumental and coercive, religion is expressive and supplicative); functions: integration, social control, meaning, emotional support; Marx, Weber and Malinowski offer contrasting accounts.

Education: manifest functions - transmission of knowledge and skills, selection and allocation of roles; latent functions - socialisation, custodianship, peer networks, social control (Merton); education can reproduce inequality (conflict view) or promote mobility (functional view).

Economy: production, distribution and consumption; division of labour (Durkheim's mechanical vs organic solidarity; Durkheim's abnormal forms - anomic, forced, poorly coordinated); informal sector and occupational diversification in India.

Polity: the institution allocating and legitimating power; Weber's types of authority - traditional, charismatic, legal-rational; state, government and citizenship; power, authority and influence are distinct concepts.

Stratification is the ranking of social positions into layers with unequal access to valued resources; the main bases are class (economic), status (social honour), party/power (political) - Weber's three dimensions; caste, gender and ethnicity add further bases.

Caste: hereditary, endogamous, hierarchically ranked groups with traditional occupational association and ritual purity/pollution rules; the varna model (four varnas plus the excluded) is an ideal scheme, whereas jati is the actual local endogamous group.

Caste features: hereditary membership, endogamy, commensality rules, occupational specialisation, ritual hierarchy; caste is ascriptive and closed, class is achieved and relatively open.

Class: a category sharing similar economic position and life chances; Marx's two classes defined by ownership of means of production and relations of exploitation; Weber adds status groups and party; class consciousness is contingent, not automatic.

Gender stratification: unequal distribution of power, resources and opportunity by sex; patriarchy as male dominance in family and public life; sex vs gender (biological vs socially constructed); gendered division of labour and the double burden of paid and unpaid work.

Tribe: a category of communities with distinct territory, language, kinship organisation and often endogamous clans; in India Scheduled Tribes are constitutionally listed; tribe–caste–peasant relations are fluid, and tribal societies face displacement and assimilation pressures.

Social mobility types: vertical (up or down the hierarchy) vs horizontal (change of position without rank change); intergenerational (compared with parents) vs intragenerational (within a career); structural mobility arises from changes in the occupational structure.

Channels of mobility: education, occupation, marriage, migration, political power; closed systems (caste, estate) restrict mobility; open systems (class) permit it; mobility rates are measured by comparing origin and destination status.

Sanskritisation (Srinivas) is a mobility strategy of lower castes adopting upper-caste ritual practices; Westernisation and modernisation are alternative processes; caste associations and reservation policy reshape mobility in India.

Social change is a significant alteration over time in behaviour patterns, culture and social structure; it differs from evolution (gradual, cumulative) and revolution (rapid, fundamental, often violent).

Processes: evolution, diffusion (spread of traits between societies), acculturation (cultural borrowing under contact), assimilation (merging of groups), accommodation (adjustment to conflict), modernisation and urbanisation.

Factors: technological and economic change, demographic shifts, ideological and religious movements, education, legislation, conflict and social movements; Ogburn's culture lag describes non-material culture adjusting slowly to technology.

Theories: evolutionary (Comte, Spencer, Morgan - unilinear vs multilinear), cyclical (Spengler, Toynbee, Sorokin's ideational–sensate cycles), functionalist equilibrium (Parsons, Smelser's structural differentiation), conflict (Marx, Dahrendorf), and world-systems/dependency (Wallerstein).

Marx: change is driven by contradictions between forces and relations of production; class conflict produces transformation; base (economy) shapes superstructure (law, politics, religion) - a thesis criticised as economically deterministic.

Durkheim: change from mechanical to organic solidarity through increased division of labour and dynamic density; anomie is a pathological by-product of too-rapid change.

Weber: ideas and values can drive change (The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism); rationalisation and bureaucracy are key modernising processes; change is multicausal.

Social movement: sustained collective action to promote or resist change; types - reform, revolutionary, redemptive/religious, alternative, resistance/regressive; stages - emergence, coalescence, bureaucratisation, decline (success, failure, repression, co-optation).

Movement resources and framing: relative deprivation, resource mobilisation, political opportunity structure, new social movements (identity and lifestyle issues rather than class); Indian examples include peasant, tribal, women's, environmental and backward-class movements.

Unity in diversity: India has many languages, religions, castes, tribes and regions, held together by constitutional citizenship, a shared civilisational heritage, market integration, migration and a common administrative and educational system.

Village studies: the village as a social unit with caste ranking, jajmani relations (patron–client occupational exchange), factionalism and panchayats; M. N. Srinivas's 'dominant caste' concept; the village is not isolated but linked to towns and markets.

Family and kinship in India: joint family (common residence, shared property, common kitchen, authority of the eldest male) is in decline in urban areas; nuclear households rise with migration and employment; dowry, kinship exogamy (gotra/village exogamy) and lineage organisation persist.

Caste in India: varna–jati distinction, purity and pollution, caste panchayats, caste and politics, caste associations; change agents include constitutional abolition of untouchability (Article 17), reservation policy, education and urbanisation; caste persists as identity even as its ritual hierarchy weakens.

Caste–class overlap: caste historically mapped onto occupation and land ownership, but education and urban occupations loosen the link; 'dominant caste' combines ritual rank with numerical strength and land control.

Tribal society in India: concentration in central, north-eastern and Himalayan regions; features - kinship-based organisation, community ownership of land, village councils, distinct languages and religions; issues include land alienation, displacement, forest rights and assimilation vs integration (Verrier Elwin vs Nehru's panchsheel).

Rural–urban linkages: rural-to-urban migration, remittances, commuting, market towns, rural dependence on urban services, urban dependence on rural labour and food; the rural–urban continuum rather than a sharp divide.

Urbanisation in India: growth of census towns, slums, informal employment, urban local bodies; planned townships and industrial towns; urbanism as a way of life (Wirth) with impersonality and secondary ties.

Constitutional and legal framework: equality before law, abolition of untouchability, protection of minority and tribal rights, and affirmative action shape the contemporary structure of Indian society.

Deviance is behaviour violating significant social norms; it is relative to time, place and group; not all deviance is criminal, and not all crime is regarded as deviant by every group.

Theories of deviance: biological/psychological (Lombroso, Sheldon), anomie/strain (Durkheim - crime is normal and functional; Merton's conformity, innovation, ritualism, retreatism, rebellion), cultural transmission (Sutherland's differential association), labelling (Becker - deviance is a label applied by powerful audiences), control (Hirschi's bonds) and conflict (law reflects ruling-class interests).

Crime types: violent, property, white-collar (Sutherland), organised, cyber, juvenile and victimless; official crime statistics suffer from under-reporting and the dark figure of unreported crime.

Poverty: absolute vs relative poverty; measurement by income/consumption lines, capability deprivation (Sen); causes include unemployment, low productivity, landlessness, inequality and social exclusion; policies include employment guarantee, food security and targeted transfers.

Unemployment types: frictional, structural, cyclical, seasonal, disguised (surplus labour on family farms), educated unemployment; underemployment and informal work are widespread in India.

Gender inequality: unequal access to education, health, employment and political power; sex ratio and female foeticide, wage gap, domestic violence, dowry harassment; causes include patriarchy, kinship rules, son preference and labour market segregation.

Social control: the means by which society enforces norms; formal control (law, police, courts, codified sanctions) vs informal control (custom, folkways, mores, public opinion, gossip, ridicule, religion, family and peer pressure).

Control theories: internalisation through socialisation vs external sanctions; Durkheim's collective conscience; social disorganisation (Shaw and McKay); Hirschi's attachment, commitment, involvement and belief.

Social disorganisation and social problems: rapid change, migration, urban anonymity and weakened primary ties are associated with higher deviance; social problems are conditions defined collectively as harmful and requiring intervention.

Functionalism: society is a system of interdependent parts contributing to stability; manifest vs latent functions and dysfunctions (Merton); key figures - Comte, Spencer, Durkheim, Radcliffe-Brown, Malinowski, Parsons; criticised for conservatism and neglect of conflict.

Conflict approach: society is held together by coercion and unequal distribution of power and resources; Marx on class and ideology, Dahrendorf on authority relations, Coser on the functions of conflict, Mills on the power elite; criticised for overemphasising conflict and underplaying consensus.

Interactionist approach: focuses on face-to-face interaction, meanings and definitions of the situation; symbolic interactionism (Mead, Blumer's three premises), dramaturgy (Goffman's front stage/back stage, impression management), ethnomethodology (Garfinkel); criticised for neglecting macro structures.

Comte: coined sociology; law of three stages - theological, metaphysical, positive; social statics (order) and social dynamics (progress); positivism as method.

Marx: historical materialism; modes of production; alienation; ideology and false consciousness; class struggle as the engine of history; predicted proletarian revolution and a classless society.

Durkheim: social facts as external and constraining; The Division of Labour in Society (mechanical vs organic solidarity); Suicide (egoistic, altruistic, anomic, fatalistic) explained by social integration and regulation; The Elementary Forms of Religious Life.

Weber: verstehen and ideal types; social action types - zweckrational, wertrational, affective, traditional; authority types; bureaucracy's ideal-typical features; The Protestant Ethic thesis; class, status and party.

Other classical figures: Spencer's social Darwinism and militant vs industrial societies; Simmel's formal sociology and the stranger; Pareto's circulation of elites and residues; Mead and Cooley on the social self.

Choosing a perspective: functionalism explains integration and persistence, conflict explains inequality and change, interactionism explains meaning and everyday conduct; contemporary sociology often combines them (e.g. Giddens's structuration).