Sociological Theory: Classical and Contemporary
What it is
Unit 1 is the theoretical canon every other unit borrows from: the classical founders, structure-functionalism and structuralism, the interpretative traditions, the postmodern, post-structural and postcolonial turn with major contemporary theorists, and six Indian thinkers. UGC-NET tests it through thinker–work–concept matching, chronology and Assertion–Reason, so exact attribution wins marks.
Core concepts
Emile Durkheim. Social facts are external and coercive and must be treated as things (The Rules of Sociological Method, 1895). The Division of Labour in Society (1893): mechanical solidarity (likeness, strong collective conscience, repressive law) gives way to organic solidarity (interdependence, restitutive law). Suicide (1897) types suicide by integration (egoistic low, altruistic high) and regulation (anomic low, fatalistic high, only in a footnote). The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912) defines religion by the sacred–profane split, using Australian totemism.
Max Weber. Verstehen and the ideal type are his tools. Action is instrumentally rational, value-rational, affectual or traditional; authority is traditional, charismatic or legal-rational, and charisma is routinised when passed on. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904–05) ties Calvinist predestination, the calling and worldly asceticism to capitalism; "iron cage" is Parsons's translation. Stratification runs on class, status and party. Economy and Society appeared posthumously (1922).
Karl Marx. Forces plus relations of production form the mode of production, the base under the legal, political and ideological superstructure (Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, 1859); history moves through class struggle (The Communist Manifesto, 1848, with Engels). The 1844 Manuscripts give four alienations: from product, from labour process, from species-being, from others. Capital, Volume I (1867) locates exploitation in surplus value and analyses commodity fetishism. A class "for itself" is conscious of its interest.
Malinowski, Radcliffe-Brown and Lévi-Strauss. Malinowski's Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922) made participant observation the norm (Trobriands, the Kula ring); his functionalism explains institutions by basic and derived needs. Radcliffe-Brown (The Andaman Islanders, 1922; Structure and Function in Primitive Society, 1952) defines function as contribution to maintaining social structure, the network of actual relations, and analysed joking relationships. Lévi-Strauss, building on Saussure, seeks unconscious binary oppositions: The Elementary Structures of Kinship (1949) founds alliance theory on the incest taboo and exchange of women (restricted versus generalised); The Savage Mind (1962) gives bricolage.
Talcott Parsons and Robert K. Merton. Parsons wrote The Structure of Social Action (1937) and The Social System (1951). AGIL: Adaptation (economy), Goal attainment (polity), Integration (societal community), Latency (family, school, religion). Pattern variables: affectivity–neutrality, diffuseness–specificity, particularism–universalism, ascription–achievement, collectivity–self. Merton (Social Theory and Social Structure, 1949) urged middle-range theory, split manifest from latent functions (Hopi rain dance), added dysfunction, and rejected functional unity, universal functionalism and indispensability. His anomie modes, goals then means: conformity (+ +), innovation (+ −), ritualism (− +), retreatism (− −), rebellion (replaces both).
G.H. Mead and Karl Mannheim. Mead's Mind, Self and Society (1934) was compiled posthumously from student notes: the self grows through role-taking from the play stage to the game stage and the generalised other; the "I" responds, the "me" holds others' attitudes. Blumer coined "symbolic interactionism" (1937). Mannheim's Ideology and Utopia (1929) founds the sociology of knowledge: thought is existentially bound; particular versus total ideology; ideology stabilises, utopia transcends; relationism and a relatively unattached intelligentsia.
Schutz, Garfinkel, Goffman and Geertz. Schutz (The Phenomenology of the Social World, 1932) fused Husserl and Weber: the lifeworld, natural attitude, typifications, "in-order-to" and "because" motives. Garfinkel's Studies in Ethnomethodology (1967): breaching experiments, indexicality, reflexivity, the documentary method (from Mannheim), Agnes. Goffman: dramaturgy and front and back regions (The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, 1956; US edition 1959), the total institution (Asylums, 1961), discredited versus discreditable (Stigma, 1963). Geertz (The Interpretation of Cultures, 1973): thick description, a term from Gilbert Ryle, and the Balinese cockfight.
Said, Foucault and Bourdieu. Postmodernism (Lyotard: distrust of grand narratives) and post-structuralism reject grand theory and fixed meaning. Said's Orientalism (1978), using Foucault's discourse and Gramsci's hegemony, shows the West constructing the Orient as Other. Foucault: power/knowledge is productive; Discipline and Punish (1975) gives disciplinary power and Bentham's panopticon, The History of Sexuality, Volume I (1976) biopower. Bourdieu (Distinction, 1979): habitus, field, and economic, cultural, social and symbolic capital; cultural capital is embodied, objectified or institutionalised; symbolic violence.
Habermas, Giddens and Castells. Habermas: The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1962); Knowledge and Human Interests (1968: technical, practical, emancipatory); The Theory of Communicative Action (1981: communicative versus strategic action, colonisation of the lifeworld by system). Giddens: structuration and the duality of structure (The Constitution of Society, 1984), the double hermeneutic (1976), disembedding and ontological security (The Consequences of Modernity, 1990). Castells's The Information Age (1996–98): network society, space of flows versus space of places, timeless time, resistance and project identity.
Gandhi, Ambedkar and Radhakamal Mukerjee. Gandhi's Hind Swaraj (1909) indicts modern civilisation; swaraj, satyagraha, ahimsa, trusteeship, bread labour and sarvodaya (his rendering of Ruskin's Unto This Last). Ambedkar's Castes in India (Columbia, 1916): superimposing endogamy on exogamy creates caste, Brahmins forming the first "enclosed class"; Annihilation of Caste (1936); caste as graded inequality. Radhakamal Mukerjee (the syllabus's Radha Kamal Mukherjee), of the Lucknow school: social ecology, regional sociology and a transdisciplinary theory of values.
Ghurye, Srinivas and Karve. Ghurye, Indologist and founder of the Indian Sociological Society: Caste and Race in India (1932) lists six features of caste (segmental division, hierarchy, restrictions on feeding and social intercourse, civil and religious disabilities and privileges, restricted occupational choice, restrictions on marriage); tribes as "backward Hindus". Srinivas: Sanskritisation (first called Brahminisation) in Religion and Society among the Coorgs of South India (1952); the dominant caste (numbers, land, power, not-too-low ritual rank); Westernisation (Social Change in Modern India, 1966); field view versus book view. Karve's Kinship Organisation in India (1953): northern, central, southern and eastern kinship zones.
Worked example
Match List I with List II.
| List I (concept) | List II (thinker) |
|---|---|
| A. Anomic suicide | I. Erving Goffman |
| B. Routinisation of charisma | II. Robert K. Merton |
| C. Latent function | III. Max Weber |
| D. Total institution | IV. Emile Durkheim |
Options: (1) A-IV, B-III, C-II, D-I; (2) A-IV, B-II, C-III, D-I; (3) A-II, B-III, C-IV, D-I; (4) A-I, B-III, C-II, D-IV.
- Anchor the surest pair. Anomic suicide is a type in Durkheim's Suicide (1897): A-IV. Options 3 and 4 fall.
- Split the survivors. Options 1 and 2 differ on B and C. Routinisation of charisma is Weber's: B-III, leaving option 1.
- Verify, do not trust elimination. Merton set latent against manifest function (1949): C-II. Goffman's Asylums (1961) gives the total institution: D-I.
- Read the distractors. Option 3 tempts with Merton's anomie, which is goals–means strain, not a suicide type.
Answer: option 1 (A-IV, B-III, C-II, D-I).
Common traps
- Durkheim's anomie (weak regulation) versus Merton's (goals–means strain); in Merton, innovation keeps goals and drops means, ritualism the reverse.
- Blumer coined "symbolic interactionism", Cooley the "looking-glass self"; Mead gave I and me and the generalised other.
- Risk Society is Ulrich Beck's (1986), not Giddens's.
- Borrowed terms: thick description (Ryle), documentary method (Mannheim), panopticon (Bentham).
- Sanskritisation is cultural mobility within caste, not Westernisation and not structural change.
Speed technique
- Learn each thinker as book–year–concept (Goffman–1961–total institution); one anchored pair cracks a matching item.
- Chronology anchors: Durkheim 1893–1912; Weber 1904–05; Parsons 1937 and 1951; Merton 1949; Habermas 1962; Foucault 1975; Bourdieu 1979; Giddens 1984; Castells 1996–98.
- "Who coined" questions are origin traps: check Blumer, Ryle, Mannheim, Bentham and Beck first.
Check yourself
- Which suicide type did Durkheim link to excessive regulation?
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Fatalistic — only in a footnote of Suicide, opposite anomic. - Which AGIL function do family, school and religion perform?
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Latency — pattern maintenance, sustaining values. - Who called caste an "enclosed class" from endogamy superimposed on exogamy?
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B.R. Ambedkar — Castes in India, 1916. - Which spatial pair describes Castells's network society?
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Space of flows versus space of places — The Information Age trilogy. - Name Bourdieu's three states of cultural capital.
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Embodied, objectified, institutionalised — dispositions, goods, credentials.
Try it: Sociological Theory: Classical and Contemporary questions
Real questions from the NET Sociology bank on exactly this skill. Pick an answer to see the full solution — the intuition, the worked steps, the faster methods and the traps.
In Merton's typology of individual adaptation, a person who accepts the culturally prescribed goal of success but rejects the institutionalised means of reaching it shows:
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Answer: option B
Merton's 'Social Structure and Anomie' classifies adaptations by acceptance (+) or rejection (−) of goals and of means: conformity (+ +), innovation (+ −), ritualism (− +), retreatism (− −) and rebellion, which replaces both.
Keeping the goal while abandoning legitimate means, as in fraud or theft for wealth, is innovation.
So accepting goals but rejecting means is innovation, option B.
In Talcott Parsons's AGIL scheme, the family, the school and religion chiefly serve which functional prerequisite?
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Answer: option A
AGIL names four functional prerequisites of any social system: Adaptation (the economy), Goal attainment (the polity), Integration (the societal community and law) and Latency (pattern maintenance and tension management).
Family, school and religion transmit and sustain the system's values and motivations, which is latency or pattern maintenance.
So family, school and religion serve latency, option A.
Caste and Race in India, which lists six features of caste including segmental division and hierarchy, was written by:
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Answer: option C
G.S. Ghurye, the Indological pioneer of Indian sociology at Bombay, wrote Caste and Race in India.
He listed six features of caste: segmental division, hierarchy, restrictions on feeding and social intercourse, civil and religious disabilities and privileges, restricted choice of occupation, and restrictions on marriage.
So Caste and Race in India was written by G.S. Ghurye, option C.
Arrange the following works in chronological order of first publication: I. Discipline and Punish II. The Structure of Social Action III. The Division of Labour in Society IV. Social Theory and Social Structure V. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism Choose the correct answer from the options.
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Answer: option B
Durkheim's The Division of Labour in Society: 1893. Weber's The Protestant Ethic: 1904–05. Parsons's The Structure of Social Action: 1937. Merton's Social Theory and Social Structure: 1949. Foucault's Discipline and Punish: 1975.
In numeral order that is III, V, II, IV, I.
So the order from Durkheim's 1893 work to Foucault's 1975 work is III, V, II, IV, I, option B.
Which of the following are forms of alienation identified by Marx in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844? I. Alienation from the product of labour II. Alienation from the activity of labour III. Alienation from species-being IV. Alienation from the collective conscience Choose the correct answer from the options.
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Answer: option D
The 1844 Manuscripts describe the worker as alienated from the product of labour, from the activity or process of labour, from species-being (human creative nature), and from other human beings.
The collective conscience is Durkheim's concept from The Division of Labour in Society and plays no part in Marx's account of alienation.
So the Marxian forms of alienation are I, II and III only, option D.
Answer above — every one shows its working.