Satyam: Sociology I answer copy

1. (a) Sociology as a by-product of Industrial revolution

Europe was caught in the jaws of a Dark Age, when Renaissance and Enlightenment came to its rescue. Ideas of humanism and rationality paved way to social change. The French Revolution, later on, transformed the political structure. But the most fundamental change was spearheaded by the Industrial Revolution.

Anthony Giddens says that within a century, from 1801 to 1901, the population of England changed from being overwhelmingly rural (20%) to being chiefly urban (74%). This transformation to urban way of life was mainly the result of industrial revolution which produced surplus goods and services by shifting the centre of production from the home to the factory.

However, meanwhile, there was a qualitative change in the social structure too. People flocked to cities, breaking free from the chains of feudalism, only to find abysmal living conditions in congested slums and long, tireless working hours in factories.

Simultaneously, the older family system was collapsing and as poor class men thronged at brothels and liquor-shops, women-headed poor households proliferated. Besides, the class divides were ever increasing.

To address the set of unprecedented problems and changes in the society, which were out of the ambit of the then disciplines, Sociology emerged as a separate discipline trying to understand the 'social problems'.

1. (b) Suicide as a social fact

Durkheim was a positivist who wanted to establish sociology as a 'science of society'. Moreover, to create a 'niche' for this discipline, he tried to prove that even those facts as suicides - which are considered to be psychological - can be described through 'social currents' which affect every individual.

Durkheim said that even suicide is a social fact. That means the decisions to commit suicide are 'external to' and 'coercive of' individuals.

To prove his point, he made a comparative study of different societies. By the use of the method of concomitant variations, he established a few points:-

(a) Suicides were more observed in Protestant nations

(b) Suicides are more likely to affect single men than married men; so on.

Durkheim then went on to classify suicides based on the degrees of regulation and integration in society.

Durkheim is criticized by phenomenologists. One such criticism by Atkinson is: often in societies characterized by high levels of integration, the murders of young brides on issues like dowry are passed off as suicides. So, over-dependence on statistics is misplaced as the data are also value-biased.