UPHESC Assistant Professor Sociology 2025, 2026 PYQs

Concept: Cyclical theorists: Pareto, Spengler, Toynbee, Sorokin.

1. Pareto's 'circulation of elites': lions (residue of persistence of aggregates) and foxes (residue of combinations) replace each other in cycles – 'history is a graveyard of aristocracies'.
2. Morgan gave a linear evolutionary scheme (savagery–barbarism–civilisation); Parsons an evolutionary/equilibrium model; Weber spoke of rationalisation.

Short trick: Cyclical = Pareto, Spengler, Toynbee, Sorokin; Linear = Comte, Spencer, Morgan.

Concept: A hypothesis is a proposition about the relation between two or more variables that is yet to be verified.

1. Example: 'Higher education reduces caste endogamy' – testable but not yet tested.
2. Survey and research method are ways of collecting data; sampling is selecting units.

Short trick: Variables + relation + not yet verified = hypothesis.

Concept: Random (probability) sampling gives every unit an equal, known chance of selection.

1. Lottery method, Tippett's random number tables and Fisher–Yates tables are all tools of random selection.
2. Snowball sampling – each respondent leads to the next – is a non-probability method used for hidden populations.

Short trick: Tables and lottery = random; snowball, quota, purposive = non-random.

Concept: In 'The Consequences of Modernity' (1990) Giddens named four institutional dimensions of modernity.

1. Capitalism (capital accumulation in competitive markets).
2. Industrialism (transformation of nature).
3. Surveillance (control of information and supervision).
4. Military power (control of the means of violence). Socialism is not one of them.

Short trick: Giddens' 4: Capitalism, Industrialism, Surveillance, Military power – 'CISM'.

Concept: Victor A. Thompson wrote 'Bureaucracy and Innovation' (1969 book; first as an article in 1965) and 'Modern Organization' (1961).

1. He argued that the monocratic, hierarchical bureaucracy stifles creativity and proposed looser, professional structures to foster innovation.
2. Weber gave the ideal type; Blau wrote 'The Dynamics of Bureaucracy'; Merton wrote 'Bureaucratic Structure and Personality'.

Short trick: Thompson: bureaucracy vs innovation; 'bureaupathology'.

Concept: Social research tests, verifies and modifies existing knowledge and theory (P. V. Young: discovering new facts and verifying old ones).

1. (A) is correct – research tests or challenges existing theories.
2. (R) is correct – the Hindi makes clear it means research revises ('receives' = revises) theories in the light of new evidence.
3. Revising theories with new evidence is exactly why research tests/challenges them, so (R) explains (A).

Short trick: Research cycle: theory → test → new evidence → revised theory.

Concept: In sampling theory an element is the unit about which information is collected and which is the basis of analysis.

1. Elements may be individuals, households, castes, cities or societies.
2. Population (universe) = the aggregate of all elements; sample = the selected subset of elements.
3. 'Totality' is not a technical term here.

Short trick: Element = single unit; Population = all elements; Sample = chosen elements.

Concept: Dual-systems theory (Heidi Hartmann, Sylvia Walby) holds that women's oppression arises from two interacting systems – capitalism and patriarchy.

1. Capitalism is the focus of Marxist feminism; patriarchy is the focus of radical feminism.
2. Dual-systems theory combines both, which is why it is called socialist feminism.
3. Liberal feminism focuses on legal rights and equal opportunity, not systems.

Short trick: Dual = Capitalism (Marxist) + Patriarchy (Radical).

Concept: In the Introduction to 'A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right' (1844) Marx wrote:

1. 'Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.'
2. Religion consoles the oppressed but also hides exploitation (false consciousness).
3. Berger – 'sacred canopy'; Bruce – secularisation; Durkheim – religion as worship of society.

Short trick: Marx: sigh, heart, soul, opium – all in one line.

Concept: Census 2011 counted about 10.43 crore Scheduled Tribe persons (104.3 million), 8.6% of India's population.

1. Of these about 94 million live in rural areas and 10.5 million in urban areas.
2. Among the options, 104.5 million is the one that matches (≈104 million); 95.2 and 125.2 million do not.

Short trick: ST 2011 ≈ 10.4 crore = 8.6%; SC ≈ 20.1 crore = 16.6%.

Concept: The Chicago School (1920s–30s) developed urban ecology at the University of Chicago.

1. Robert E. Park – human ecology; Ernest Burgess – concentric zone model; Louis Wirth – urbanism as a way of life; also McKenzie.
2. Doreen Massey (1944–2016) was a British Marxist geographer ('Spatial Divisions of Labour', 'For Space') – not Chicago School.

Short trick: Chicago trio: Park–Burgess–Wirth (+ McKenzie).

Concept: Dahrendorf borrowed Weber's 'Herrschaftsverband' and called it the imperatively coordinated association (ICA).

1. Every ICA (state, firm, church) has positions of domination and subjection; conflict arises from this authority division.
2. Mills – power elite; Frank – dependency theory; Nadel – theory of social structure (roles).

Short trick: ICA = Dahrendorf (authority-based conflict).

Concept: Immanuel Wallerstein ('The Modern World-System', 1974 onward) made the world-system, not the nation-state, the unit of analysis.

1. The capitalist world-economy is divided into core, semi-periphery and periphery linked by unequal exchange.
2. Braudel influenced him (the Fernand Braudel Center is named after him) but did not build the formal world-systems framework.

Short trick: Wallerstein: Core – Semi-periphery – Periphery.

Concept: Structuration theory (Giddens, 'The Constitution of Society', 1984) overcomes the structure–agency dualism.

1. 'Duality of structure': structures (rules and resources) are both the medium and the outcome of the practices they organise.
2. Lévi-Strauss and Saussure are structuralists; Lacan is a structuralist psychoanalyst – 'structuration' is different from 'structuralism'.

Short trick: Structuration ≠ structuralism; Giddens = duality of structure.

Concept: Jürgen Habermas's 1980 Adorno-prize lecture 'Modernity – An Unfinished Project' defended the Enlightenment against postmodernists.

1. He argued the emancipatory potential of reason (communicative rationality) is not exhausted; modernity should be completed, not abandoned.
2. Lyotard declared 'incredulity towards metanarratives' (postmodern); Jameson saw postmodernism as the logic of late capitalism; Ritzer – McDonaldization.

Short trick: Habermas = finish modernity; Lyotard = end of grand narratives.

Concept: Ivan Illich, 'Deschooling Society' (1971), criticised compulsory institutional schooling.

1. Schools teach a 'hidden curriculum' of passive consumption and confuse process with substance (grades with learning).
2. He proposed 'learning webs' – open access to resources, skill exchanges and peer matching.
3. Bourdieu – cultural capital; Murray – underclass; MacLeod – 'Ain't No Makin' It'.

Short trick: Illich = deschool; Bourdieu = cultural capital.

Concept: Louis Dumont, 'Homo Hierarchicus' (1966), combined Indology (classical texts) with structuralism.

1. Caste rests on the opposition of pure and impure; hierarchy is the encompassing value, with the Brahmin at the top.
2. N. K. Bose – Hindu method of tribal absorption; Ambedkar – origin/annihilation of caste; Dipankar Gupta criticised Dumont, stressing difference over hierarchy.

Short trick: Dumont = Purity–Impurity + Hierarchy (indology + structuralism).

Concept: Howard Becker, 'Outsiders' (1963): 'deviant behaviour is behaviour that people so label'.

1. Deviance is created by social groups making rules and applying them to particular people; the label becomes a 'master status'.
2. Lombroso – biological (born criminal); Merton – anomie/strain; Albert Cohen – delinquent subculture.

Short trick: Becker = label; Lemert = primary/secondary deviance.

Concept: In 'The Rules of Sociological Method' (1895) Durkheim argued that crime is normal.

1. 'Crime is present in all societies … it is an integral part of all healthy societies.'
2. Crime reaffirms collective sentiments, sets moral boundaries and can anticipate future morality (e.g. Socrates).
3. Sutherland – differential association; Lombroso – born criminal.

Short trick: Durkheim: crime is normal, functional, even necessary.

Concept: Karl Popper made falsifiability the criterion that demarcates science from non-science.

1. A theory is scientific only if it can, in principle, be proved false by observation.
2. He criticised Marxism and psychoanalysis as unfalsifiable ('The Poverty of Historicism', 'The Open Society').
3. Munro, Ritzer and Goode are not linked with this term.

Short trick: Popper: no number of white swans proves 'all swans are white'; one black swan refutes it.