UPHESC Assistant Professor Sociology 2025, 2026 PYQs

Concept: Structured (systematic/controlled) observation uses a predetermined schedule of categories to record behaviour.

1. Educational psychologists record classroom interaction with coding schemes such as Flanders' Interaction Analysis – categories are fixed in advance, behaviour is counted at intervals.
2. Ethnographic/unstructured observation is open-ended and descriptive; 'non reliable observation' is not a type.

Short trick: Pre-set categories + coding sheet = structured observation.

Concept: Karl Popper published 'Logik der Forschung' in 1934 (English 'The Logic of Scientific Discovery', 1959).

1. It rejects induction and proposes falsification and conjecture–refutation as the method of science.
2. Pearson – 'The Grammar of Science' (1892); Polanyi – 'The Great Transformation' (1944); Marx – 'Capital'.

Short trick: 1934 Logik der Forschung = Popper = falsification.

Concept: William J. Goode's 'World Revolution and Family Patterns' (1963) studied family change across the world.

1. He argued that industrialisation and urbanisation move families everywhere towards the conjugal (nuclear) type, aided by the ideology of the conjugal family.
2. Murdock – 'Social Structure' (1949, nuclear family universal); Firth – Tikopia kinship.

Short trick: Goode = conjugal family worldwide; Murdock = nuclear family universal.

Concept: R. W. (Raewyn) Connell, 'Gender and Power' (1987), described a hierarchy of masculinities and femininities.

1. Hegemonic masculinity – the dominant form (heterosexual, tough, authoritative) at the top of the gender order.
2. Emphasized femininity – complementary form oriented to accommodating men's interests.
3. Below are subordinated, complicit and marginalised masculinities and resistant femininities.

Short trick: Connell: Hegemonic masculinity ↔ Emphasized femininity.

Concept: Giddens's 'New Rules of Sociological Method: A Positive Critique of Interpretative Sociologies' (1976) answers Durkheim's 'Rules' (1895).

1. It introduces the 'double hermeneutic' – sociologists interpret a world already interpreted by actors.
2. Durkheim wrote the original 'Rules' in 1895, not the 'New Rules'.

Short trick: Rules (1895) = Durkheim; New Rules (1976) = Giddens.

Concept: 'The Limits to Growth' (1972) was a report to the Club of Rome by Meadows and others (MIT).

1. Computer model (World3) predicted overshoot and collapse if population and industrial growth continued on finite resources.
2. UN 1972 = Stockholm Conference; Malthus 1798 = 'Essay on the Principle of Population'.

Short trick: 1972: Club of Rome (Limits to Growth) + Stockholm (UN).

Concept: Lionel Tiger and Robin Fox, 'The Imperial Animal' (1971), coined the 'human biogrammar'.

1. Biogrammar = a genetically based programme predisposing humans to behave in certain ways, shaped by hunting-gathering evolution.
2. Men are programmed for dominance and bonding (Tiger's 'Men in Groups'), women for child-care.
3. Ann Oakley criticised such biological views, arguing gender roles are cultural.

Short trick: Biogrammar = Tiger & Fox (biology); Oakley = culture.

Concept: Georg Simmel's essay 'The Metropolis and Mental Life' (1903) analysed the psychology of city dwellers.

1. Intense nervous stimulation leads to an intellectual, calculating attitude and the 'blasé attitude'.
2. Reserve, indifference and a money economy mark metropolitan life, yet the city also offers individual freedom.
3. Tönnies – Gemeinschaft/Gesellschaft; Park – human ecology; Harvey – Marxist urbanism.

Short trick: Simmel's city = blasé attitude + reserve.

Concept: Factorial ecology (Shevky–Bell social area analysis, Murdie, Berry and Rees) found that different social dimensions have different spatial patterns.

1. Socio-economic status tends to be arranged in sectors, ethnic status in clusters, and family status (family type) in concentric zones.
2. Brian Berry and Philip Rees ('The Factorial Ecology of Calcutta', 1969) showed that distinct family types settle in concentric zones.
3. Burgess's concentric zones are based on land use and the outward growth of the city, not on family type.

Short trick: Factorial ecology: Status = sectors, Family = zones, Ethnicity = clusters.

Concept: Oscar Lewis studied Rani Khera ('Rampur') near Delhi and published 'Village Life in Northern India' (1958).

1. He showed the village is not isolated – kinship, caste and marriage link it to a wide region (village exogamy).
2. Dube – Shamirpet; Srinivas – Rampura; B. R. Chauhan – 'A Rajasthan Village'.

Short trick: Delhi village → Oscar Lewis; also 'culture of poverty'.

Concept: Oscar Lewis studied both Tepoztlán (Mexico) and Rampur (Delhi).

1. In 'Peasant Culture in India and Mexico: A Comparative Analysis' (1955, in Marriott's 'Village India') he compared the two villages.
2. Redfield studied Tepoztlán and Yucatán but did not do a field comparison with an Indian village; Béteille studied Sripuram.

Short trick: Lewis = Tepoztlán + Rampur → India–Mexico comparison.

Concept: Célestin Bouglé ('Essays on the Caste System', 1908) defined caste through three tendencies.

1. Repulsion – separation in marriage, food and contact.
2. Hierarchy – groups ranked one above the other.
3. Hereditary specialisation – occupation fixed by birth.
4. Exploitation is not among them (it is stressed by Marxist writers).

Short trick: Bouglé's 3: Repulsion, Hierarchy, Hereditary specialisation – 'RHH'.

Concept: Arnold W. Green ('Sociology: An Analysis of Life in Modern Society') defined objectivity as 'the willingness and ability to examine evidence dispassionately'.

1. Objectivity means keeping personal values, bias and emotions away from the study of facts.
2. This definition is regularly quoted in research methodology texts alongside Green's name.

Short trick: Green = 'dispassionately'.

Concept: 'The People's Choice' (Lazarsfeld, Berelson and Gaudet) studied voting in Erie County, Ohio, in the 1940 US presidential election.

1. Repeated interviews of the same respondents (panel survey) traced how voters made up their minds.
2. It produced the 'two-step flow of communication' and opinion leaders – a classic survey research study.

Short trick: Erie County panel = survey research → two-step flow.

Concept: Goode and Hatt, 'Methods in Social Research' (1952): 'Science begins with observation and must ultimately return to observation for its final validation.'

1. Observation is both the starting point (facts) and the final test (verification) of scientific theory.
2. Moser wrote 'Survey Methods in Social Investigation'; Young wrote 'Scientific Social Surveys and Research'; Bogardus – social distance scale.

Short trick: Goode & Hatt: observation is the first and last step of science.

Concept: Yogendra Singh classified approaches to the study of social change in India; Dumont's is the cognitive-historical (structural/indological) approach.

1. Dumont analysed change through the ideas and values of Indian civilisation (hierarchy, pure–impure) seen historically – the cognitive structure of caste.
2. He held that modern change brings 'substantialisation' of caste but the ideology of hierarchy persists.
3. Functional frame of reference fits Srinivas and Dube.

Short trick: Dumont = ideas/values + history → cognitive-historical.

Concept: The Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act was passed in 1976 (following an ordinance of October 1975).

1. It abolished bonded labour, extinguished bonded debts and made compelling bonded labour a punishable offence.
2. It gives effect to Article 23 (prohibition of forced labour/begar).

Short trick: 1975 ordinance → 1976 Act; Article 23.

Concept: Jean Baudrillard ('Simulacra and Simulation', 1981) argued that media images create hyperreality.

1. Signs and simulations no longer refer to reality; the copy becomes more 'real' than the real.
2. He claimed 'The Gulf War did not take place' – people knew it only as a TV spectacle.
3. Bauman – liquid modernity; Lyotard – end of metanarratives; Castells – network society.

Short trick: Baudrillard = simulacra + hyperreality.

Concept: The Green Revolution (HYV seeds + irrigation + fertilisers + pesticides) raised yields but harmed Punjab's ecology.

1. (A) is true: falling water table, soil degradation and salinity, loss of crop diversity (wheat–paddy cycle), pesticide residues and health problems.
2. (R) is true and is the very cause: over-extraction of groundwater (tube-wells for paddy), intensive cropping and excess chemicals for higher output.
3. So (R) correctly explains (A).

Short trick: Wheat–paddy + tube-wells + chemicals → ecological crisis in Punjab.

Concept: Irawati Karve's kinship zones: South India is mostly patrilineal; matriliny is limited to groups like the Nayars, Tiyyas and Mappilas of Kerala and the Bunts of Karnataka.

1. (A) is true – the whole of South India is not matrilineal.
2. (R) is false – the Nambudiri illam is patrilineal and patrilocal (only the eldest son marries within caste), whereas the Nayar tarwad is matrilineal and matrilocal (karanavar = eldest male of the mother's line).
3. The two families are opposite in type, not the same.

Short trick: Illam = patrilineal (Nambudiri); Tarwad = matrilineal (Nayar).