List of top Sociology Questions

There is scholarly controversy over the role of the middle peasants in peasant movements in India. In this regard, which of the following statements is/are true?

Which statement(s) about contemporary India is/are endorsed by recent sociological research?

Imagine there is a spiritual leader from any religion who has a huge estate, organisation, publications etc. In Weberian terms, this could be considered an example of

According to Karl Marx, the socially necessary labour time to produce a commodity will directly vary with

Which of the following is a proposed explanation for a group of facts or phenomena that provides the basis for empirical testing?

Match statements (P), (Q), (R), (S) to names (1), (2), (3), (4):
(P) “Today, Indians no longer idealise hierarchy. What they … idealise is equality.”
(Q) “[We] do not argue that non-dalit feminists can ‘speak as’ or ‘for the’ dalit women but they can ‘reinvent themselves as dalit feminists’.”
(R) “[From] the point of view of people at the lowest end of the scale, caste has functioned (and continues to function) as a very effective system of economic exploitation.”
(S) “The pure hierarchy that Louis Dumont wrote so compellingly about a few decades ago … now stands bereft of empirical support from practically every quarter of Hindu India.”
(1) Dipankar Gupta
(2) Sharmila Rege
(3) André Béteille
(4) Joan P. Mencher

The Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) is

Which of the following is/are Louis Dumont’s formulation(s)?

Read the abstract of the article titled “‘Taming’ Arab social movements: Exporting neoliberal governmentality” (2013).
“In the wake of the recent Arab revolutions, the European Union (EU) has sought to provide genuine and substantial support to a range of Arab social movements in the region’s emerging polities. We argue, however, that the EU’s attempts at democracy promotion in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region may be understood through a governmentality framework, despite the limitations of such an approach. Specifically, the EU is actively promoting neoliberal policies in the aftermath of the Arab Spring in order to foster a mode of subjectivity that is conducive to the EU’s own norms and interests. What we observe are not just innocent attempts at democracy promotion, but a form of politics and economics that seeks to subject the agency on the ‘Arab street’ to EU standards. We conclude by going over the radical plurality of the Arab street, and show how it was in fact earlier neoliberal reforms by their former regimes that created the conditions of possibility for the recent revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt.”
On the basis of the above statement, which of the following can be asserted?
(1) Social movements can no longer be understood as a purely intra-national phenomenon.
(2) Local social movements for democratisation have little to do with the transnationalisation of the practices of neoliberal governmentality.

Which statement(s) correctly explain(s) why feminists and women’s rights activists are uncomfortable with the term ‘honour killings’?

For Karl Marx, which statement(s) below define(s) absolute surplus value?

Who among the following sociologist(s) use(s) a Marxist framework to understand Indian society and history?

Which of the following reverse(s) the process of primitive accumulation in India?

Read the following statements:
(1) Throughout the developing world, poverty rates among households headed by women are higher than those headed by men.
(2) The greater ‘investment value’ associated with the survival of boys in a household in comparison with girls leads to discrimination against girl children and adult women.
(3) The unequal allocation of resources within households results in differential allotments of nutrition and healthcare that reflect the perceived inferior short-term and long-term value of females.
(4) In all transitional economies, an increase in prostitution and trafficking of women has been observed.
The above statements are all examples of

The Jonestown massacre of 1978 in the United States saw the death of 900 persons including children. Reverend Jones, leader of an American cult, ordered his followers ‘The Peoples Temple’ to kill a US Congressman and several journalists and then commit mass suicide by drinking fruit punch laced with cyanide. In Durkheim’s view, this would be a case of

A fisherman in southwest Sri Lanka has received a warning that a cyclone may hit his coastal region and he has to decide whether to evacuate or stay put. He knows that the probability of the cyclone striking is 70%. He has the means to evacuate and his property is worth three times the cost of evacuation. He calculates accurately that his best chance to protect himself and his assets lies in evacuation. At a later meeting of the whole community, the village elders decide that no one will evacuate because the village shrines cannot be left unattended indefinitely. Hence in deference to the elders, the fisherman decides to stay put.
In Max Weber’s terms, his decision is closest to

Pierre Bourdieu defined __________ as “Systems of durable dispositions, structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures … collectively orchestrated without being the product of the orchestrating action of a conductor.”
Which of the following completes the above sentence?

‘The City and the Grassroots’ authored by _________ is among the most important books published on urban social movements.

In which of the following ways did the founding scholars usually distinguish New Social Movements (NSMs) from Old Social Movements?

The avunculate refers to the relationship between

“An ideal society should be mobile, should be full of channels for conveying a change taking place in one part to other parts. In an ideal society there should be many interests consciously communicated and shared. There should be varied and free points of contact with other modes of association. In other words there must be social endosmosis.”
On the basis of the above statement, which one of the following can be asserted?

In an experimental design, the dependent variable is

M. N. Srinivas’ principal work was built around the method of

M.N. Srinivas called his work on Rampura ‘The Remembered Village’ because

Who among the following Indian sociologists argued against Verrier Elwin’s proposal of preserving the ‘tribal way of life’ on the grounds that the Indian tribes are not ‘aborigines’ but are ‘imperfectly integrated classes of Hindu society’ or are ‘Backward Hindus’?