CUET Sociology Previous Year Solved Paper 1 (15 July 2022 Slot-1) - Humanities/Arts MCQ

Aggregate statistics – or the numerical characteristics that refer to a large collectivity consisting of millions of people – offer a concrete and strong argument for the existence of social phenomena. Even though country-level or statelevel statistics like the number of deaths per 1,000 population – or the death rate – are made up by aggregating (or adding up) individual deaths, the death rate itself is a social phenomenon and must be explained at the social level.

Population momentum refers to a situation, where a large cohort of women of reproductive age will fuel population growth over the next generation, even if each woman has fewer children than previous generations did.

Another significant theory in demography is the theory of demographic transition. This suggests that population growth is linked to overall levels of economic development and that every society follows a typical pattern of developmentrelated population growth.

This flow of rural-tourban migration has also been accelerated by the continuous decline of common property resources like ponds, forests and grazing lands. These common resources enabled poor people to survive in the villages although they owned little or no land.

Malthus’s theory of population growth – outlined in his Essay on Population (1798) – was a rather pessimistic one. He argued that human populations tend to grow at a much faster rate than the rate at which the means of human subsistence (specially food, but also clothing and other agriculture-based products) can grow.
While population rises in geometric progression (i.e., like 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 etc.), agricultural production can only grow in arithmetic progression (i.e., like 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 etc.).
Unfortunately, humanity has only a limited ability to voluntarily reduce the growth of its population (through ‘preventive checks’ such as postponing marriage or practicing sexual abstinence or celibacy). Malthus believed therefore that ‘positive checks’ to population growth – in the form of famines and diseases – were inevitable because they were nature’s way of dealing with the imbalance between food supply and increasing population.

Caste is determined by birth – a child is “born into” the caste of its parents. Caste is never a matter of choice. Membership in a caste involves strict rules about marriage. Caste groups are “endogamous”, i.e. marriage is restricted to members of the group. Caste involves a system consisting of many castes arranged in a hierarchy of rank and status.

• Mysore Narasimhachar Sriniv as was one of India’s foremost sociologists and social anthropologists. He was known for his works on the caste system and terms such as ‘sanskritisation’ and ‘dominant caste’.
• Jotirao Govindrao Phule denounced the injustice of the caste system and scorned its rules of purity and pollution. In 1873 he founded the Satyashodhak Samaj (Truth Seekers Society).
• Savitri Bai Phule was the first headmistress of the country’s first school for girls in Pune. She devoted her life to educating Shudras and AtiShudras.
• Periyar (E.V. Ramasami Naickar) is known as a rationalist and the leader of the lower caste movement in South India.

A family can be defined as nuclear or extended.
It can be male-headed or female-headed. The line of descent can be matrilineal or patrilineal.An extended family (commonly known as the ‘joint family’) can take different forms, but has more than one couple, and often more than two generations, living together. This could be a set of brothers with their individual families, or an elderly couple with their sons and grandsons and their respective families.

Khasi matriliny generates intense role conflict for men. They are torn between their responsibilities to their natal house on the one hand, and to their wife and children on the other.
In a way, the strain generated by such role conflict affects Khasi women more intensely.

‘Dominant caste’ is a term used to refer to those castes which had a large population and were granted landrights by the partial land reforms effected after Independence. Their large numbers also gave them political power in the era of electoral democracy based on universal adult franchise.

Initially, the British administrators began by trying to understand the complexities of caste in an effort to learn how to govern the country efficiently.

And while various kinds of non-market exchange systems (such as the ‘jajmani system’) did exist in many villages and regions, even during the precolonial period villages were incorporated into wider networks of exchange through which agricultural products and other goods circulated, an important instrument of exchange and credit was the hundi, or bill of exchange (like a credit note), which allowed merchants to engage in long-distance trade. Because trade took place primarily within the caste and kinship networks of these communities, a merchant in one part of the country could issue a hundi that would be honoured by a merchant in another place.

• A well-known ex am ple is the dem ise of the handloom industry due to the flooding of the market with cheap manufactured textiles from England. Although pre-colonial India already had a complex monetised economy, most historians consider the colonial period to be the turning point. In the colonial era India began to be more fully linked to the world capitalist economy.
• Before being colonised by the British, India was a major supplier of manufactured goods to the world market. After colonisation, she became a source of raw materials and agricultural products and a consumer of manufactured goods, both largely for the benefit of industrialising England.
• In the late colonial period and after Independence, some Marwari families transformed themselves into modern industrialists, and even today
• Marwaris control more of India’s industry than any other community.

Social inclusion can happen with the increased social, cultural and political rights.

• Social stratification persists over generations. It is closely linked to the family and to the inheritance of social resources from one generation to the next.
• Social resources are unequally distributed to various social categories regardless of people’s innate individual abilities.

In every society, some people hav e a greater share of valued resources – money, property, education, health, and power – than others. These social resources can be divided into three forms of capital – economic capital in the form of material assets and income; cultural capital such as educational qualifications and status; and social capital in the form of networks of contacts and social associations.

Ranade used the writings of scholars such as Bishop Joseph Butler whose Analogy of Religion and Three Sermons on Human Nature dominated the moral philosophy syllabus of Bombay University in the 1860s.

An alternative to the nation-state, then, is the “state nation”, where various “nations”— be they ethnic, religious, linguistic or indigenous identities— can co-exist peacefully and cooperatively in a single state polity. Case studies and analyses demonstrate that enduring democracies can be established in polities that are multicultural. Explicit efforts are required to end the cultural exclusion of diverse groups … and to build multiple and complementary identities. Such responsive policies provide incentives to build a feeling of unity in diversity — a “we” feeling. Citizens can find the institutional and political space to identify with both their country and their other cultural identities, to build their trust in common institutions and to participate in and support democratic politics.
All of these are key factors in consolidating and deepening democracies and building enduring “state-nations”.

Regionalism in India is rooted in India’s diversity of languages, cultures, tribes, and religions.

Civil society is the name given to the broad arena which lies beyond the private domain of the family, but outside the domain of both state and market. Civil society is the non-state and non-market part of the public domain in which individuals get together voluntarily to create institutions and organisations. It is the sphere of active citizenship: here, individuals take up social issues, try to influence the state or make demands on it, pursue their collective interests or seek support for a variety of causes. It includes political parties, media institutions, trade unions, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), religious organisations, and other kinds of collective entities.

Our community provides us the language (our mother tongue) and the cultural values through which we comprehend the world. It also anchors our self-identity.

The industrialisation and urbanisation did not happen in India quite the way it did in Britain.
More importantly, this is not because we began industrialisation late, but because our early industrialisation and urbanisation in the modern period were governed by colonial interests.

The 19th century social reform attempts was the modern context and mix of ideas. It was a creative combination of modern ideas of western liberalism and a new look on traditional literature.

India’s structural and cultural diversity is selfevident. This diversity shapes the different ways that modernisation or westernisation, sanskritisation or secularisation effects or does not effect different groups of people. The following pages seek to capture these differences.

Writing on the dif ferent kinds of urbanisation witnesses in the first two decades after independence sociologist M.S.A. Rao argued that in India many villages all over India are becoming increasingly subject to the impact of urban influences.

• A considerable number of emigrants reside not only in Indian cities but also in overseas towns.
• The second kind of urban impact is to be seen in villages which are situated near an industrial town.
• The growth of metropolitan cities accounts for the third type of urban impact on the surrounding villages

Industrialisation and urbanisation transformed the lives of people. Factories replaced fields as places of work for some. Cities replaced villages as places to live for many. Living and working arrangements or structures changed. Changes also took place in culture, ways of life, norms, values, fashions and even body language. Shopping malls is an example of urbanization.

Social welfare responsibilities of the Panchayats include the maintenance of burning and burial grounds, recording statistics of births and deaths, establishment of child welfare and maternity centres, control of cattle pounds, propagation of family planning and promotion of agricultural activities.

• Panchayati Raj Institution: Panchay ati Raj translates literally to ‘Governance by five individuals’. The idea is to ensure at the village or grass root level a functioning and vibrant democracy. While the idea of grassroot democracy is not an alien import to our country, in a society where there are sharp inequalities democratic participation is hindered on grounds of gender, caste and class.
• Political Party: A political party may be defined as an organisation oriented towards achieving legitimate control of government through an electoral process. Political Party is an organisation established with the aim of achieving governmental power and using that power to pursue a specific programme FICCI, ASSOCHAM: Industrialists form associations / interest groups such as Federation of Indian Chambers and Commerce (FICCI) and Association of Chambers of Commerce (ASSOCHAM).
• Nyay Panchayat: They possess the authority to hear some petty, civil and criminal cases. They can impose fines but cannot award a sentence.

They have been particularly effective in punishing men who harass women for dowry and perpetrate violence against them.

The famous sociologist, Harry Braverman, argues that the use of machinery actually deskills workers.

People often do not see the end result of their work because they are producing only one small part of a product. The work is often repetitive and exhausting. Yet, even this is better than having no work at all, i.e., being unemployed. Marx called this situation alienation.