Sociology Questions and Answers

Answer: D

The four functional problems are Parsons's idea.

Talcott Parsons argued that every social system must solve four functional prerequisites, summarised as AGIL: adaptation to the environment, goal attainment, integration of its parts, and latency (pattern maintenance and tension management). In a whole society these are met mainly by the economy, the polity, the societal community and the institutions of socialisation.

Durkheim, Merton and Malinowski were functionalists too, but the four-problem scheme is Parsons's. Malinowski spoke of individual needs, and Merton of manifest and latent functions.

Answer: A

The conception is social personality.

In his essay 'On Social Structure' (1940), A. R. Radcliffe-Brown wrote that closely connected with the concept of social structure is the conception of 'social personality', meaning the position a human being occupies in a social structure, the complex of all his social relationships with others. Social structure, for him, is the arrangement of persons in institutionally defined relationships.

Status, interaction and socialisation are related ideas, but they are not the term Radcliffe-Brown used in that passage.

Answer: C

It was Radcliffe-Brown.

Radcliffe-Brown developed Durkheim's functionalism into structural-functionalism. Wary of the psychological sense of 'need' (which Malinowski used for biological needs), he spoke instead of the 'necessary conditions of existence' of a social system, which its institutions help to maintain.

Malinowski built his theory precisely on needs, so he is the opposite case. Parsons wrote of functional prerequisites, and Nadel worked on the theory of social structure and roles.

Answer: A

The statement is Radcliffe-Brown's.

Radcliffe-Brown distinguished social structure, the arrangement of persons in relationships such as those of a kinship system, from social organisation, the arrangement of activities of two or more persons adjusted to give a combined activity. The quoted sentence, with its contrast between persons and activities, is his formulation.

Levi-Strauss treated structure as a model built by the analyst, not an arrangement of persons; Malinowski and Parsons did not draw this particular distinction.

Answer: C

Conflict theory arose mainly as a reaction to structural-functionalism.

In the 1950s and 1960s, writers such as Ralf Dahrendorf, Lewis Coser and C. Wright Mills criticised the dominant structural-functionalism of Parsons for stressing consensus, order and equilibrium and neglecting power, coercion, interests and change. Conflict theory placed these at the centre of sociology.

Existentialism is a philosophy, interactionism developed alongside conflict theory as another alternative, and formalism refers to Simmel's school. None was the main target.

Answer: B

They are latent functions.

Robert Merton distinguished manifest functions, the consequences that are intended and recognised by participants, from latent functions, which are neither intended nor recognised. His example is the Hopi rain dance: its manifest function is to bring rain, but its latent function is to reinforce group identity.

'Rational' and 'logical' are not Merton's terms for functions, and manifest functions are by definition intended and recognised.

Answer: D

Central to Weber's discussion is interpretative understanding.

Weber defined sociology as a science that attempts the interpretive understanding (Verstehen) of social action in order to arrive at a causal explanation of its course and effects. Social action is behaviour to which the actor attaches a subjective meaning and which takes account of others, so understanding that meaning is the core of his method.

Interaction, knowledge and subject matter are involved, but they are not what Weber placed at the centre.

Answer: A

The answer the key accepts is Marxism.

Conflict theory sees society as an arena of inequality and struggle between groups over scarce resources and power. Its classic source is Marx's theory of class conflict, and in many textbooks the two are discussed almost interchangeably, with Weberian and other variants treated as offshoots.

Socialism is a political programme, capitalism an economic system, and critical theory the Frankfurt School's later Marxist-influenced philosophy; none is the usual synonym for conflict theory.

Answer: A

The three exchanges are I, II and III: women, words and commodities.

Claude Levi-Strauss argued that social life rests on communication through exchange at three levels: the exchange of women between groups through rules of marriage and kinship, the exchange of words (messages) in language, and the exchange of goods and services in the economy. All three obey similar structural rules of reciprocity.

Gift exchange was analysed by Marcel Mauss, whose work influenced Levi-Strauss, but it is not one of his three levels, so the codes including IV are wrong.

Answer: D

The sequence is IV, II, I, III.

1. Primitive communism, with no private property or classes.
2. Ancient slave society.
3. Feudalism, based on lords and serfs.
4. Capitalism, based on bourgeoisie and proletariat.

In Marx's historical materialism each mode of production gives way to the next through the contradictions within it, and he expected capitalism to be followed by socialism and communism. The other codes break this order, for example by putting slavery before primitive communism or feudalism before slavery.