OPTIONAL SOCIOLOGY

FAVOURITE CHOICE IN UPSC CIVIL SERVICE

SOCIOLOGY OPTIONAL

Sociology Optional Course Key features

Sociology courses at IAS VISION offers students following advantages,

  • Coverage of the complete syllabus,
  • debates to help students achieve conceptual clarity,
  • Round the year personal interaction to clarify doubts,
  • Emphasis on answer writing, UPSC pattern Mock Tests series,
  • updated Study Material,
  • Round the clock Doubts Clearing,
  • Personal Attention to every student,
  • highlighting of linkages with current affairs,
  • Emerging latest studies & reports

 

Students are encouraged to think coherently & , develop powers to arrive at logical conclusions and focus on clarifying their concepts and to continuously engage in debate and discussion. Classes provide enough opportunity deliberative & adequately interactive.

FEES DETAILS

upsc civil service syllabus

SOCIOLOGY OPTIONAL FOR UPSC
SOCIOLOGY OPTIONAL FOR UPSC

UPSC Optional Paper Syllabus for Sociology - Paper I (Fundamentals of Sociology)

  1. Sociology – The Discipline
  • Modernity and social changes in Europe and the emergence of sociology.
  • Scope of the subject and comparison with other social sciences.
  • Sociology and common sense.
  1. Sociology as Science:
  • Science, scientific method and critique.
  • Major theoretical strands of research methodology.
  • Positivism and its critique.
  • Fact value and objectivity.
  • Non- positivist methodologies.
  1. Research Methods and Analysis:
  • Qualitative and quantitative methods.
  • Techniques of data collection.
  • Variables, sampling, hypothesis, reliability and validity.
  1. Sociological Thinkers:
  • Karl Marx- Historical materialism, mode of production, alienation, class struggle.
  • Emile Durkheim- Division of labour, social fact, suicide, religion and society.
  • Max Weber- Social action, ideal types, authority, bureaucracy, protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism.
  • Talcolt Parsons- Social system, pattern variables.
  • Robert K. Merton- Latent and manifest functions, conformity and deviance, reference groups.
  • Mead – Self and identity.
  1. Stratification and Mobility:
  • Concepts- equality, inequality, hierarchy, exclusion, poverty and deprivation.
  • Theories of social stratification- Structural functionalist theory, Marxist theory, Weberian theory.
  • Dimensions – Social stratification of class, status groups, gender, ethnicity and race.
  • Social mobility- open and closed systems, types of mobility, sources and causes of mobility.
  1. Works and Economic Life:
  • Social organization of work in different types of society- slave society, feudal society, industrial /capitalist society.
  • Formal and informal organization of work.
  • Labour and society.
  1. Politics and Society:
  • Sociological theories of power.
  • Power elite, bureaucracy, pressure groups, and political parties.
  • Nation, state, citizenship, democracy, civil society, ideology.
  • Protest, agitation, social movements, collective action, revolution.
  1. Religion and Society:
  • Sociological theories of religion.
  • Types of religious practices: animism, monism, pluralism, sects, cults.
  • Religion in modern society: religion and science, secularization, religious revivalism, fundamentalism.
  1. Systems of Kinship:
  • Family, household, marriage.
  • Types and forms of family.
  • Lineage and descent.
  • Patriarchy and sexual division of labour.
  • Contemporary trends.
  1. Social Change in Modern Society:
  • Sociological theories of social change.
  • Development and dependency.
  • Agents of social change.
  • Education and social change.
  • Science, technology and social change.

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