Sociological Theory Questions and Answers

Answer: A

Habermas's concept is undistorted communication.

Jurgen Habermas argued that rational agreement on social goals and values is possible only under conditions of undistorted communication, which he also described as the ideal speech situation. All participants can speak and question freely, no one is coerced, and only the force of the better argument decides the outcome.

Social action is Weber's general category of meaningful action oriented to others. Symbolic interactionism is the Mead and Blumer tradition. Disenchantment is Weber's term for the decline of magical and religious explanation under rationalization. None describes the conditions for rational consensus.

Answer: C

In Foucault's writings, archaeology means the analysis of discourse.

In The Order of Things (1966) and The Archaeology of Knowledge (1969), Michel Foucault used 'archaeology' for his method of uncovering the rules that govern discursive formations: what can be said, by whom and as what kind of knowledge in a given period. It digs beneath the surface of texts to the systems of discourse that make them possible.

Archaeology is not concerned with speech as individual utterance, with action, or with values. Foucault's later 'genealogy' added the analysis of power, but archaeology itself is the study of discourse.

Answer: B

Weber treated bureaucracy as the classic expression of rationalization.

For Max Weber, modern Western society is marked by the spread of formal, calculable, rule-bound action. Bureaucracy, with its fixed jurisdictions, written rules, hierarchy of offices, technical expertise and impersonal procedure, is the organisational form of that process, which is why he called it technically superior to any other form of administration and also warned of an 'iron cage'.

Feminization and democratization are not Weber's terms for bureaucracy; in fact he thought mass democracy tended to increase bureaucratization rather than the reverse. Individualisation is a theme of later writers such as Ulrich Beck, not Weber's account of bureaucracy.

Answer: A

Parsons's The Social System (1951) is the classic statement of the structure-functional approach.

The book treats society as a system of interdependent parts that must meet functional requirements, analyses institutionalised roles and value orientations (the pattern variables), and asks how the system maintains equilibrium. That is structural-functionalism in its most developed form.

The conflict approach (Marx, Dahrendorf, Coser) was developed largely as a critique of Parsons. Middle-range theory was Merton's reply to Parsons's grand theory. A micro-sociological approach, such as symbolic interactionism, studies face-to-face interaction rather than whole social systems.

Answer: A

The idea that the existence of different social classes is the source of conflict is Karl Marx's.

For Marx, classes are defined by their relation to the means of production, and the opposed interests of owners and non-owners (bourgeoisie and proletariat under capitalism) make class struggle the motor of history.

The other three are later conflict theorists who moved away from this. Ralf Dahrendorf located conflict in authority relations within organisations rather than in property classes. Lewis Coser studied the functions of social conflict, and Randall Collins built a broader conflict theory around interaction rituals and the struggle for status and resources.

Answer: B

Erving Goffman is best known for his dramaturgical theory.

In The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959) Goffman used the language of the theatre to analyse social interaction: people perform roles before audiences, manage the impressions they give, and move between a 'front stage' and a 'back stage'.

Goffman is often grouped with symbolic interactionism, which is why 'Symbolic' is the tempting distractor, but the approach that carries his name is dramaturgy, and 'symbolic' alone is not the name of a theory. Phenomenological sociology is associated with Alfred Schutz, and exchange theory with George Homans and Peter Blau.

Answer: A

The distinction between ideology and utopia was drawn by Karl Mannheim (spelt 'Manheim' in the paper).

In Ideology and Utopia (1929), a founding work of the sociology of knowledge, Mannheim called idea systems that justify and stabilise the existing order 'ideologies', and those that look beyond it and seek to transform it 'utopias'. Both, he argued, are shaped by the social position of the groups that hold them.

Marx wrote about ideology as the ideas of the ruling class but did not pair it with utopia in this way. Weber and Spencer are not associated with the distinction.

Answer: B

The idea of 'informational capitalism' comes from Manuel Castells.

In his trilogy The Information Age (1996-1998), beginning with The Rise of the Network Society, Castells argued that capitalism has been restructured around information technology, so that productivity and power now depend on generating and processing knowledge through networks. He called the new mode of development 'informationalism' and the society built on it the network society.

Richard Emerson is an exchange theorist, Jeffrey C. Alexander the founder of neofunctionalism and cultural sociology, and Frantz Fanon a theorist of colonialism and decolonisation.

Answer: B

The label 'the high priest of modernity' is attached to Anthony Giddens.

Giddens's later work is built around modernity: The Consequences of Modernity (1990) and Modernity and Self-Identity (1991) argue that we live in 'high' or 'late' modernity rather than in a postmodern age, marked by time-space distanciation, disembedding and reflexivity. Critics such as Stjepan Mestrovic, in Anthony Giddens: The Last Modernist, treated him as the leading defender of the modernist project, which is the sense of the label.

Talcott Parsons wrote on modernisation, but well before the modernity debate of the 1990s. Peter M. Blau is known for exchange theory and the study of organisations, and Randall Collins for conflict theory.

Answer: C

The Marxist account of the Indian national movement is A.R. Desai's.

In Social Background of Indian Nationalism (1948) Desai explained the rise of nationalism through the material changes British rule brought: a new economy, new classes such as the industrial bourgeoisie, the working class and the educated middle class, and the contradictions between them. It is the standard example of the Marxist approach in Indian sociology.

D.P. Mukerji called himself a Marxologist but emphasised Indian tradition rather than class analysis of the national movement. Andre Beteille studied caste, class and power, and Surajit Sinha worked on tribes and state formation.