RBSE SS Sociology cheat sheet

Sociology is the systematic study of human society, social groups and social interaction; it is a social science, not a natural science, because its subject matter is interpretive and reflexive.

Auguste Comte coined the term 'sociology' in 1838 and proposed a hierarchy of sciences with sociology at the apex as the most complex and specific discipline.

Scope debate: Emile Durkheim's 'social fact' position treats social phenomena as external and constraining; Max Weber's verstehen position treats sociology as interpretive understanding of social action.

Culture is the total way of life (norms, values, beliefs, symbols); society is the organised set of relationships. Society is the container, culture the content.

Status is a social position (ascribed or achieved); role is the expected behaviour attached to a status. Role conflict arises when expectations of two or more roles clash.

Norms are shared expectations of behaviour; folkways are everyday customary norms, mores are strongly held norms with moral force, and laws are codified and enforceable norms.

Social group vs. aggregate vs. category: groups involve interaction and a sense of membership; aggregates are physically co-present strangers; categories are statistically grouped without interaction.

Primary groups (Charles Cooley) are small, intimate and face-to-face; secondary groups are larger, impersonal and goal-oriented.

Family is a universal institution based on marriage, blood or adoption; it is the most basic unit of reproduction and socialisation.

Types of family: nuclear (conjugal, two generations) vs. joint/extended (three or more generations, common residence and property); patrilocal, matrilocal, neolocal residence rules.

Descent: patrilineal traces descent through the father's line, matrilineal through the mother's line, bilateral through both.

Marriage types: monogamy (one spouse) vs. polygamy; polygyny is one husband with multiple wives, polyandry is one wife with multiple husbands; endogamy marries within a group, exogamy marries outside.

Levirate is marriage of a widow to her deceased husband's brother; sororate is marriage of a man to his deceased wife's sister.

Kinship is classified as consanguineal (by blood) and affinal (by marriage); kinship terms are classificatory or descriptive depending on whether they lump or distinguish relatives.

Functions of family: regulation of sex, reproduction, socialisation, economic cooperation, emotional support and status ascription.

The Hindu Marriage Act 1955 governs Hindu marriage, divorce and maintenance, and prohibits bigamy; the Special Marriage Act 1954 permits civil marriage across communities.

Culture has material (artefacts, tools) and non-material (norms, values, beliefs, symbols, language) components.

Ethnocentrism judges other cultures by one's own standards; cultural relativism understands a culture in its own terms; xenocentrism overvalues other cultures.

Cultural lag (William Ogburn) is the gap between rapid material change and slower adaptive non-material culture.

Socialisation is the lifelong process of learning culture and roles; primary socialisation occurs in childhood in the family, secondary socialisation in school, peers and workplace.

Key agents: family, school, peer group, mass media and workplace. George Herbert Mead distinguished the 'I' (spontaneous) from the 'me' (socially internalised) and the 'generalised other'.

Charles Cooley's 'looking-glass self' holds that self-concept forms from imagining how others see and judge us.

Sigmund Freud's model: id (instincts), ego (reality principle) and superego (internalised moral norms) shape personality through psychosexual stages.

Status set is all statuses a person holds; master status is the one that dominates others; role set is the array of roles attached to a single status.

Social stratification is the hierarchical ranking of groups by unequal access to valued resources; universal but variable in form.

Three classical bases: class (economic, achieved, open), caste (birth-ascribed, closed, endogamous) and estate (legal, feudal).

Karl Marx: class defined by relation to means of production - bourgeoisie and proletariat - with exploitation of surplus value and class conflict as the engine of change.

Max Weber: three dimensions of stratification - class (economy), status (social honour) and party (power) - giving a multidimensional model.

Functionalist view (Davis and Moore) holds stratification is necessary for allocating scarce talent to important roles; conflict view (Tumin, Marx) holds it serves dominant groups.

Social mobility types: vertical (up or down), horizontal (lateral), intergenerational and intragenerational; open systems allow mobility, closed systems restrict it.

Caste is a closed system with hereditary membership and ritual hierarchy; class is an open system with achieved status and loose boundaries.

Poverty line in India is estimated from consumption expenditure on food and non-food items; poverty is both absolute (below subsistence) and relative (below prevailing standards).

Social change is alteration in social structure, institutions and behaviour over time; it may be evolutionary, revolutionary or cyclical.

Factors of change: technological (innovation, diffusion), demographic (birth, death, migration), economic, ideological and environmental.

Evolutionary theories (Comte, Spencer) see change as gradual differentiation; conflict theories (Marx) see it as driven by contradiction and struggle.

Modernisation involves industrialisation, urbanisation, rationalisation and the spread of achievement-based values; it is not identical with westernisation.

Sanskritisation (M.N. Srinivas) is the process by which a low caste adopts the customs and rituals of a higher caste to improve its status.

Westernisation is adoption of western cultural traits such as dress, diet and education; secularisation is decline in the social authority of religion.

Diffusion is the spread of cultural traits between societies; acculturation is the resultant change when two cultures come into sustained contact.

Ogburn's cultural lag and Sorokin's cyclical theory of cultural change are standard reference points for change analysis.

Varna is the fourfold textual classification (Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya, Shudra); jati is the actual endogamous local group. Varna is pan-Indian, jati is local.

Caste features: hereditary membership, endogamy, occupational association, ritual purity and pollution, and hierarchical ranking.

Louis Dumont's 'Homo Hierarchicus' treats purity and pollution as the organising principle of caste; M.N. Srinivas gave the concepts of dominant caste and Sanskritisation.

Tribe is distinguished from caste by territory, common descent, language, culture and relatively egalitarian internal structure; Indian tribes are largely listed as Scheduled Tribes.

Class in India is measured by occupation, income, education and consumption; the middle class has expanded with urbanisation and services.

Gender is socially constructed roles and expectations, distinct from biological sex; patriarchy is male dominance institutionalised in family, economy and polity.

Constitutional safeguards: Article 15 prohibits discrimination, Article 17 abolishes untouchability, Article 46 promotes educational and economic interests of SCs and STs.

Protective legislation includes the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act 1989 and the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act 2006.

Social problem is a condition widely perceived as harmful and demanding collective remedy; objective condition plus subjective definition.

Dowry is property or cash demanded at marriage; the Dowry Prohibition Act 1961 prohibits giving, taking or demanding dowry.

Domestic violence is addressed by the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act 2005, which provides protection orders, residence orders and maintenance.

Child marriage is prohibited by the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act 2006; the minimum age is 18 for females and 21 for males.

Sexual harassment at the workplace is governed by the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act 2013.

The Maternity Benefit Act 1961 (amended 2017) provides 26 weeks of paid maternity leave for eligible women.

The Right to Education Act 2009 guarantees free and compulsory education for children aged 6 to 14 years.

The National Commission for Women (1992) and the National Human Rights Commission (1993) are statutory bodies for redress and monitoring.

Development implies planned change; the debate contrasts growth (GDP) with distributive justice and human development (capability approach of Amartya Sen).

Displacement and rehabilitation are recurring costs of dams, mining and infrastructure; the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act 2013 addresses them.

The Green Revolution raised foodgrain output through high-yielding varieties, irrigation and fertiliser but widened regional and class inequality.

Peasant movements include the Tebhaga and Telangana movements; the Naxalite movement is a radical peasant struggle rooted in land inequality.

The Dalit movement draws on Ambedkar's critique of caste; the term 'Dalit' gained currency through the Dalit Panthers in the 1970s.

The women's movement in India spans the anti-sati campaigns, the anti-dowry movement and the campaign following the Mathura rape case (1979).

Environmental movements include Chipko (forest protection) and Narmada Bachao Andolan (dam displacement); they use non-violent protest and public interest litigation.

New social movements focus on identity, environment, gender and human rights rather than class alone.

Functionalism (Durkheim, Parsons, Merton) sees society as an integrated system of parts contributing to stability; Merton added manifest and latent functions and dysfunctions.

Conflict theory (Marx, Dahrendorf, Coser) sees society as held together by coercion and competing interests; Coser showed conflict can strengthen group solidarity.

Symbolic interactionism (Mead, Blumer, Goffman) focuses on meaning-making in face-to-face interaction; Blumer coined the term and set out its three premises.

Durkheim's 'Suicide' (1897) identified egoistic, altruistic, anomic and fatalistic types and treated suicide rates as a social fact with social causes.

Weber's 'The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism' linked Calvinist asceticism to capitalist rationalisation; his ideal types are analytical constructs, not descriptions.

Marx's base-superstructure model treats the economic base as shaping the legal, political and ideological superstructure.

Goffman's dramaturgy analyses social life as performance with front stage, back stage, impression management and face-work.

Parsons' pattern variables (universalism-particularism, achievement-ascription, specificity-diffuseness, affectivity-affective neutrality) describe role choices in modern societies.

Quantitative methods use numbers and statistical inference (surveys, experiments); qualitative methods use meanings and interpretation (interviews, observation, ethnography).

A population is the full set of units; a sample is a subset. Probability sampling (simple random, stratified, cluster) allows inference; non-probability sampling (purposive, quota, snowball) does not.

Validity is whether an instrument measures what it claims; reliability is consistency of repeated measurement.

A hypothesis is a testable proposition about the relation between variables; an independent variable is manipulated or explanatory, a dependent variable is the outcome.

Levels of measurement: nominal (labels only), ordinal (rank order), interval (equal intervals, arbitrary zero) and ratio (true zero).

Questionnaire is a self-administered written schedule; interview schedule is administered by the researcher; schedule and questionnaire differ in who records responses.

Participant observation requires the researcher to enter the field and balance involvement with detachment; the Hawthorne effect is behaviour changed by being observed.

Ethics: informed consent, confidentiality, anonymity, no harm, and the right to withdraw. Triangulation uses multiple methods or sources to strengthen findings.

Sociology emerged in 19th-century Europe amid industrialisation, urbanisation and political revolution; founding figures are Comte, Marx, Durkheim and Weber.

Sociology differs from psychology (individual vs. group focus), from history (general patterns vs. unique events) and from anthropology (largely modern complex societies vs. small-scale communities).

Common sense is unsystematic and taken for granted; sociology is systematic, evidence-based and tests claims against data.

Social control refers to mechanisms that enforce conformity; formal control is through law and police, informal through family, peers and public opinion.

Anomie (Durkheim) is a state of normlessness arising when social regulation breaks down; it is linked to anomic suicide.

Socialisation is a two-way process: individuals internalise society, and society is reproduced through them.

Values are shared ideals about what is desirable; norms are specific rules deriving from values.

A society is a group of people with a shared culture and territory who interact and are interdependent.

Hindu marriage is traditionally a sacrament (samskara) with three goals: dharma, praja and rati; modern law increasingly treats it as a contract with legal remedies.

Forms of marriage by partner choice: arranged, love, and cross-cousin marriage (common in parts of south India).

Family of orientation is the family into which one is born; family of procreation is the family formed by one's own marriage.

Functions of kinship include inheritance, political alliance, ritual obligation and support in times of crisis.

Incest taboo is a universal prohibition on sexual relations between close kin; it is explained by biological, social and family-disruption arguments.

Joint family is characterised by common residence, common kitchen, common property and a common head; it is weakening under urbanisation and migration.

Endogamy operates at the level of caste, sub-caste and religion; exogamy operates at the level of gotra and clan.

The Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act 2005 gave daughters equal coparcenary rights in ancestral property.

Culture is learned, shared, transmitted and symbolic; it is not instinctive.

Cultural universals are traits found in all societies (language, family, ritual, incest taboo); cultural particulars vary between societies.

Subculture is a distinctive culture within a larger society; counterculture rejects core values of the dominant culture.

Agents of socialisation: family (primary), school (formal and hidden curriculum), peer group (identity and autonomy), media (values and images) and workplace (occupational roles).

Social structure is the patterned arrangement of roles, statuses and institutions that persists beyond individual actors.

Ascribed status is assigned at birth; achieved status is earned through effort; status inconsistency occurs when statuses rank differently on different dimensions.

Stereotypes are oversimplified generalisations about a group; prejudice is an attitude, discrimination is behaviour.

Institutions are enduring patterns of norms and roles organised around basic social needs such as family, education, religion and economy.

Social differentiation is mere difference; social stratification is ranked inequality with differential access to resources.

Slavery, estate, caste and class are the historical systems of stratification; each differs in closure, mobility and justification.

Slavery is the extreme form of stratification in which some people are owned as property; caste is closed but not property-based.

Class consciousness (Marx) is awareness of shared class interest, required for a class 'in itself' to become a class 'for itself'.

Status inconsistency (Weberian) is a mismatch such as high education with low income; it can produce political discontent.

Social mobility is measured by comparing status across generations (intergenerational) or over a career (intragenerational).

Education and occupation are major channels of upward mobility in modern societies; caste and gender remain barriers in India.

Poverty is measured in India using consumption expenditure surveys; the Multidimensional Poverty Index adds health, education and living standards.

Social change is alteration in social structure, institutions and behaviour; it may be evolutionary, revolutionary or cyclical.

Factors of change: technological (innovation, diffusion), demographic (birth, death, migration), economic, ideological and environmental.

Evolutionary theories (Comte, Spencer) see change as gradual differentiation; conflict theories (Marx) see it as driven by contradiction and struggle.

Modernisation involves industrialisation, urbanisation, rationalisation and the spread of achievement-based values; it is not identical with westernisation.

Sanskritisation (M.N. Srinivas) is the process by which a low caste adopts the customs and rituals of a higher caste to improve its status.

Westernisation is adoption of western cultural traits such as dress, diet and education; secularisation is decline in the social authority of religion.

Diffusion is the spread of cultural traits between societies; acculturation is the resultant change when two cultures come into sustained contact.

Ogburn's cultural lag and Sorokin's cyclical theory of cultural change are standard reference points for change analysis.

Varna is the fourfold textual classification; jati is the actual endogamous local group. Varna is pan-Indian, jati is local.

Caste features: hereditary membership, endogamy, occupational association, ritual purity and pollution, and hierarchical ranking.

Louis Dumont's 'Homo Hierarchicus' treats purity and pollution as the organising principle of caste; M.N. Srinivas gave the concepts of dominant caste and Sanskritisation.

Tribe is distinguished from caste by territory, common descent, language, culture and relatively egalitarian internal structure.

Class in India is measured by occupation, income, education and consumption; the middle class has expanded with urbanisation and services.

Gender is socially constructed roles and expectations, distinct from biological sex; patriarchy is male dominance institutionalised in family, economy and polity.

Constitutional safeguards: Article 15 prohibits discrimination, Article 17 abolishes untouchability, Article 46 promotes the interests of SCs and STs.

Protective legislation includes the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act 1989 and the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act 2006.

A social problem is a condition widely perceived as harmful and demanding collective remedy; objective condition plus subjective definition.

Dowry is property or cash demanded at marriage; the Dowry Prohibition Act 1961 prohibits giving, taking or demanding dowry.

Domestic violence is addressed by the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act 2005, which provides protection orders, residence orders and maintenance.

Child marriage is prohibited by the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act 2006; the minimum age is 18 for females and 21 for males.

Sexual harassment at the workplace is governed by the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act 2013.

The Maternity Benefit Act 1961 (amended 2017) provides 26 weeks of paid maternity leave for eligible women.

The Right to Education Act 2009 guarantees free and compulsory education for children aged 6 to 14 years.

The National Commission for Women (1992) and the National Human Rights Commission (1993) are statutory bodies for redress and monitoring.

Development implies planned change; the debate contrasts growth (GDP) with distributive justice and human development (capability approach of Amartya Sen).

Displacement and rehabilitation are recurring costs of dams, mining and infrastructure; the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act 2013 addresses them.

The Green Revolution raised foodgrain output through high-yielding varieties, irrigation and fertiliser but widened regional and class inequality.

Peasant movements include the Tebhaga and Telangana movements; the Naxalite movement is a radical peasant struggle rooted in land inequality.

The Dalit movement draws on Ambedkar's critique of caste; the term 'Dalit' gained currency through the Dalit Panthers in the 1970s.

The women's movement in India spans the anti-sati campaigns, the anti-dowry movement and the campaign following the Mathura rape case (1979).

Environmental movements include Chipko (forest protection) and Narmada Bachao Andolan (dam displacement); they use non-violent protest and public interest litigation.

New social movements focus on identity, environment, gender and human rights rather than class alone.

Functionalism (Durkheim, Parsons, Merton) sees society as an integrated system of parts contributing to stability; Merton added manifest and latent functions and dysfunctions.

Conflict theory (Marx, Dahrendorf, Coser) sees society as held together by coercion and competing interests; Coser showed conflict can strengthen group solidarity.

Symbolic interactionism (Mead, Blumer, Goffman) focuses on meaning-making in face-to-face interaction; Blumer coined the term and set out its three premises.

Durkheim's 'Suicide' (1897) identified egoistic, altruistic, anomic and fatalistic types and treated suicide rates as a social fact with social causes.

Weber's 'The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism' linked Calvinist asceticism to capitalist rationalisation; his ideal types are analytical constructs, not descriptions.

Marx's base-superstructure model treats the economic base as shaping the legal, political and ideological superstructure.

Goffman's dramaturgy analyses social life as performance with front stage, back stage, impression management and face-work.

Parsons' pattern variables (universalism-particularism, achievement-ascription, specificity-diffuseness, affectivity-affective neutrality) describe role choices in modern societies.

Quantitative methods use numbers and statistical inference (surveys, experiments); qualitative methods use meanings and interpretation (interviews, observation, ethnography).

A population is the full set of units; a sample is a subset. Probability sampling (simple random, stratified, cluster) allows inference; non-probability sampling (purposive, quota, snowball) does not.

Validity is whether an instrument measures what it claims; reliability is consistency of repeated measurement.

A hypothesis is a testable proposition about the relation between variables; an independent variable is manipulated or explanatory, a dependent variable is the outcome.

Levels of measurement: nominal (labels only), ordinal (rank order), interval (equal intervals, arbitrary zero) and ratio (true zero).

A questionnaire is self-administered; an interview schedule is administered by the researcher; they differ in who records responses.

Participant observation requires the researcher to enter the field and balance involvement with detachment; the Hawthorne effect is behaviour changed by being observed.

Ethics: informed consent, confidentiality, anonymity, no harm, and the right to withdraw. Triangulation uses multiple methods or sources to strengthen findings.

Sociology emerged in 19th-century Europe amid industrialisation, urbanisation and political revolution; founding figures are Comte, Marx, Durkheim and Weber.

Sociology differs from psychology (individual vs. group focus), from history (general patterns vs. unique events) and from anthropology (largely modern complex societies vs. small-scale communities).

Common sense is unsystematic and taken for granted; sociology is systematic, evidence-based and tests claims against data.

Social control refers to mechanisms that enforce conformity; formal control is through law and police, informal through family, peers and public opinion.

Anomie (Durkheim) is a state of normlessness arising when social regulation breaks down; it is linked to anomic suicide.

Socialisation is a two-way process: individuals internalise society, and society is reproduced through them.

Values are shared ideals about what is desirable; norms are specific rules deriving from values.

A society is a group of people with a shared culture and territory who interact and are interdependent.

Hindu marriage is traditionally a sacrament (samskara) with three goals: dharma, praja and rati; modern law increasingly treats it as a contract with legal remedies.

Forms of marriage by partner choice: arranged, love, and cross-cousin marriage (common in parts of south India).

Family of orientation is the family into which one is born; family of procreation is the family formed by one's own marriage.

Functions of kinship include inheritance, political alliance, ritual obligation and support in times of crisis.

Incest taboo is a universal prohibition on sexual relations between close kin; it is explained by biological, social and family-disruption arguments.

Joint family is characterised by common residence, common kitchen, common property and a common head; it is weakening under urbanisation and migration.

Endogamy operates at the level of caste, sub-caste and religion; exogamy operates at the level of gotra and clan.

The Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act 2005 gave daughters equal coparcenary rights in ancestral property.

Culture is learned, shared, transmitted and symbolic; it is not instinctive.

Cultural universals are traits found in all societies (language, family, ritual, incest taboo); cultural particulars vary between societies.

Subculture is a distinctive culture within a larger society; counterculture rejects core values of the dominant culture.

Agents of socialisation: family (primary), school (formal and hidden curriculum), peer group (identity and autonomy), media (values and images) and workplace (occupational roles).

Social structure is the patterned arrangement of roles, statuses and institutions that persists beyond individual actors.

Ascribed status is assigned at birth; achieved status is earned through effort; status inconsistency occurs when statuses rank differently on different dimensions.

Stereotypes are oversimplified generalisations about a group; prejudice is an attitude, discrimination is behaviour.

Institutions are enduring patterns of norms and roles organised around basic social needs such as family, education, religion and economy.

Social differentiation is mere difference; social stratification is ranked inequality with differential access to resources.

Slavery, estate, caste and class are the historical systems of stratification; each differs in closure, mobility and justification.

Slavery is the extreme form of stratification in which some people are owned as property; caste is closed but not property-based.

Class consciousness (Marx) is awareness of shared class interest, required for a class 'in itself' to become a class 'for itself'.

Status inconsistency (Weberian) is a mismatch such as high education with low income; it can produce political discontent.

Social mobility is measured by comparing status across generations (intergenerational) or over a career (intragenerational).

Education and occupation are major channels of upward mobility in modern societies; caste and gender remain barriers in India.

Poverty is measured in India using consumption expenditure surveys; the Multidimensional Poverty Index adds health, education and living standards.

Social change is alteration in social structure, institutions and behaviour; it may be evolutionary, revolutionary or cyclical.

Factors of change: technological (innovation, diffusion), demographic (birth, death, migration), economic, ideological and environmental.

Evolutionary theories (Comte, Spencer) see change as gradual differentiation; conflict theories (Marx) see it as driven by contradiction and struggle.

Modernisation involves industrialisation, urbanisation, rationalisation and the spread of achievement-based values; it is not identical with westernisation.

Sanskritisation (M.N. Srinivas) is the process by which a low caste adopts the customs and rituals of a higher caste to improve its status.

Westernisation is adoption of western cultural traits such as dress, diet and education; secularisation is decline in the social authority of religion.

Diffusion is the spread of cultural traits between societies; acculturation is the resultant change when two cultures come into sustained contact.

Ogburn's cultural lag and Sorokin's cyclical theory of cultural change are standard reference points for change analysis.

Varna is the fourfold textual classification; jati is the actual endogamous local group. Varna is pan-Indian, jati is local.

Caste features: hereditary membership, endogamy, occupational association, ritual purity and pollution, and hierarchical ranking.

Louis Dumont's 'Homo Hierarchicus' treats purity and pollution as the organising principle of caste; M.N. Srinivas gave the concepts of dominant caste and Sanskritisation.

Tribe is distinguished from caste by territory, common descent, language, culture and relatively egalitarian internal structure.

Class in India is measured by occupation, income, education and consumption; the middle class has expanded with urbanisation and services.

Gender is socially constructed roles and expectations, distinct from biological sex; patriarchy is male dominance institutionalised in family, economy and polity.

Constitutional safeguards: Article 15 prohibits discrimination, Article 17 abolishes untouchability, Article 46 promotes the interests of SCs and STs.

Protective legislation includes the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act 1989 and the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act 2006.

A social problem is a condition widely perceived as harmful and demanding collective remedy; objective condition plus subjective definition.

Dowry is property or cash demanded at marriage; the Dowry Prohibition Act 1961 prohibits giving, taking or demanding dowry.

Domestic violence is addressed by the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act 2005, which provides protection orders, residence orders and maintenance.

Child marriage is prohibited by the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act 2006; the minimum age is 18 for females and 21 for males.

Sexual harassment at the workplace is governed by the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act 2013.

The Maternity Benefit Act 1961 (amended 2017) provides 26 weeks of paid maternity leave for eligible women.

The Right to Education Act 2009 guarantees free and compulsory education for children aged 6 to 14 years.

The National Commission for Women (1992) and the National Human Rights Commission (1993) are statutory bodies for redress and monitoring.

Development implies planned change; the debate contrasts growth (GDP) with distributive justice and human development (capability approach of Amartya Sen).

Displacement and rehabilitation are recurring costs of dams, mining and infrastructure; the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act 2013 addresses them.

The Green Revolution raised foodgrain output through high-yielding varieties, irrigation and fertiliser but widened regional and class inequality.

Peasant movements include the Tebhaga and Telangana movements; the Naxalite movement is a radical peasant struggle rooted in land inequality.

The Dalit movement draws on Ambedkar's critique of caste; the term 'Dalit' gained currency through the Dalit Panthers in the 1970s.

The women's movement in India spans the anti-sati campaigns, the anti-dowry movement and the campaign following the Mathura rape case (1979).

Environmental movements include Chipko (forest protection) and Narmada Bachao Andolan (dam displacement); they use non-violent protest and public interest litigation.

New social movements focus on identity, environment, gender and human rights rather than class alone.

Functionalism (Durkheim, Parsons, Merton) sees society as an integrated system of parts contributing to stability; Merton added manifest and latent functions and dysfunctions.

Conflict theory (Marx, Dahrendorf, Coser) sees society as held together by coercion and competing interests; Coser showed conflict can strengthen group solidarity.

Symbolic interactionism (Mead, Blumer, Goffman) focuses on meaning-making in face-to-face interaction; Blumer coined the term and set out its three premises.

Durkheim's 'Suicide' (1897) identified egoistic, altruistic, anomic and fatalistic types and treated suicide rates as a social fact with social causes.

Weber's 'The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism' linked Calvinist asceticism to capitalist rationalisation; his ideal types are analytical constructs, not descriptions.

Marx's base-superstructure model treats the economic base as shaping the legal, political and ideological superstructure.

Goffman's dramaturgy analyses social life as performance with front stage, back stage, impression management and face-work.

Parsons' pattern variables (universalism-particularism, achievement-ascription, specificity-diffuseness, affectivity-affective neutrality) describe role choices in modern societies.

Quantitative methods use numbers and statistical inference (surveys, experiments); qualitative methods use meanings and interpretation (interviews, observation, ethnography).

A population is the full set of units; a sample is a subset. Probability sampling (simple random, stratified, cluster) allows inference; non-probability sampling (purposive, quota, snowball) does not.

Validity is whether an instrument measures what it claims; reliability is consistency of repeated measurement.

A hypothesis is a testable proposition about the relation between variables; an independent variable is manipulated or explanatory, a dependent variable is the outcome.

Levels of measurement: nominal (labels only), ordinal (rank order), interval (equal intervals, arbitrary zero) and ratio (true zero).

A questionnaire is self-administered; an interview schedule is administered by the researcher; they differ in who records responses.

Participant observation requires the researcher to enter the field and balance involvement with detachment; the Hawthorne effect is behaviour changed by being observed.

Ethics: informed consent, confidentiality, anonymity, no harm, and the right to withdraw. Triangulation uses multiple methods or sources to strengthen findings.

Sociology emerged in 19th-century Europe amid industrialisation, urbanisation and political revolution; founding figures are Comte, Marx, Durkheim and Weber.

Sociology differs from psychology (individual vs. group focus), from history (general patterns vs. unique events) and from anthropology (largely modern complex societies vs. small-scale communities).

Common sense is unsystematic and taken for granted; sociology is systematic, evidence-based and tests claims against data.

Social control refers to mechanisms that enforce conformity; formal control is through law and police, informal through family, peers and public opinion.

Anomie (Durkheim) is a state of normlessness arising when social regulation breaks down; it is linked to anomic suicide.

Socialisation is a two-way process: individuals internalise society, and society is reproduced through them.

Values are shared ideals about what is desirable; norms are specific rules deriving from values.

A society is a group of people with a shared culture and territory who interact and are interdependent.

Hindu marriage is traditionally a sacrament (samskara) with three goals: dharma, praja and rati; modern law increasingly treats it as a contract with legal remedies.

Forms of marriage by partner choice: arranged, love, and cross-cousin marriage (common in parts of south India).

Family of orientation is the family into which one is born; family of procreation is the family formed by one's own marriage.

Functions of kinship include inheritance, political alliance, ritual obligation and support in times of crisis.

Incest taboo is a universal prohibition on sexual relations between close kin; it is explained by biological, social and family-disruption arguments.

Joint family is characterised by common residence, common kitchen, common property and a common head; it is weakening under urbanisation and migration.

Endogamy operates at the level of caste, sub-caste and religion; exogamy operates at the level of gotra and clan.

The Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act 2005 gave daughters equal coparcenary rights in ancestral property.