Sociological Theory Questions and Answers

Answer: A

Garfinkel's work is associated with conversation analysis.

Harold Garfinkel founded ethnomethodology, the study of the methods people use to make sense of and produce everyday social order (Studies in Ethnomethodology, 1967). Conversation analysis grew directly out of this programme: Harvey Sacks and Emanuel Schegloff, working with Garfinkel's ideas, studied the turn-taking and sequencing through which order is produced in talk.

Content analysis is a quantitative method for counting features of texts. Discourse and discursive analysis are associated more with Foucault and with discursive psychology than with Garfinkel.

Answer: D

The correct match is a-3, b-1, c-4, d-2.

• M. Foucault - episteme, the framework of knowledge of an age (The Order of Things).
• A. Giddens - duality of structure, the core of structuration theory.
• J. Habermas - the ideal speech situation of undistorted communication.
• P. Bourdieu - practice, in his theory of practice built on habitus and field.

The other codes give Giddens practice or Habermas duality of structure, which does not fit these theorists' key concepts.

Answer: D

An episteme is a framework of knowledge that shapes discourse and helps in specific understanding of the world.

In The Order of Things (1966) Foucault used episteme for the unconscious set of rules and assumptions that define what can count as knowledge in a given period, such as the Renaissance, the classical age or the modern age. It shapes what can be said and thought, and so how the world is understood in that period.

Analysing power's effect on discourse describes his later genealogy, and 'archaeology' is the name of his method for uncovering epistemes, not the episteme itself. An episteme is not a 'unidimensional' reading of codes.

Answer: C

Malinowski's derived (secondary) needs are social-structural and instrumental.

In A Scientific Theory of Culture, Malinowski distinguished three levels of needs. Basic needs are biological: nutrition, reproduction, bodily comfort, safety and so on. Meeting them collectively creates derived or instrumental needs, such as an economy, social control, education and political organisation, which are met by social institutions. At a third level come integrative needs, met by knowledge, magic, religion and art.

So biological needs are the primary ones, and symbolic and cultural needs belong to the integrative level. Psychological needs are not one of Malinowski's named levels.

Answer: B

An intended and recognised consequence that contributes to adaptation is a manifest function.

Robert K. Merton distinguished manifest functions, the consequences that contribute to the adjustment of a system and 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, while its latent function is to reinforce group solidarity.

Dysfunctions are consequences that lessen the adaptation of the system, so both dysfunction options are wrong because the act here contributes to adaptation, and 'latent' is wrong because the consequence is intended and recognised.

Answer: D

Agency refers to the capacity of an individual to act independently.

In social theory agency is the ability of people to act, make choices and affect the world, as opposed to structure, the patterned arrangements that constrain and enable action. Giddens's structuration theory and Bourdieu's work on habitus both try to show how agency and structure shape each other.

Normative behaviour is conformity to norms, which is closer to the effect of structure. Rebellion and political action are particular kinds of action that require agency, but agency is the general capacity behind any action, not one specific form of it.

Answer: D

The viewpoint not envisaged by Radhakamal Mukerjee is rationalization of tradition.

Mukerjee, a founder of sociology at Lucknow, argued for a transdisciplinary social science that combined economics, sociology, ecology and psychology. He insisted that values are part of social facts and must be studied, and he sought to fuse empirical study with normative concern for social welfare and the good life. These are the first three options.

'Rationalization of tradition' does not belong to his programme. It recalls Weber's theme of rationalization and, in India, discussions of the modernisation of tradition by Yogendra Singh, rather than Mukerjee's value-oriented, holistic sociology.

Answer: D

Bourdieu did not list religious capital among his main forms of capital.

Pierre Bourdieu, in 'The Forms of Capital' (1986) and related work, distinguished economic capital (money and property), cultural capital (knowledge, skills, educational qualifications and cultivated taste), social capital (networks and connections) and symbolic capital (prestige and recognition, the form other capitals take when they are seen as legitimate).

Cultural, symbolic and economic capital are therefore all his types. Bourdieu wrote about the religious field in a separate essay, but religious capital is not one of the forms of capital in his general theory, which is the sense of the question.

Answer: A

Indexicality is a concept of Harold Garfinkel.

In ethnomethodology, Garfinkel borrowed 'indexical expressions' from philosophy of language to argue that the meaning of words and actions depends on the context in which they occur, like 'here', 'now' or 'this'. Ordinary talk is full of such expressions, and members make sense of them by drawing on shared background knowledge. Studying how people accomplish this sense-making is central to his Studies in Ethnomethodology (1967).

Alfred Schutz influenced Garfinkel through his phenomenology of everyday life, Goffman studied the presentation of self in interaction, and Karl Mannheim (printed 'Manheim') founded the sociology of knowledge, but indexicality is Garfinkel's term in sociology.

Answer: D

The correct matching is a-2, b-4, c-3, d-1.

• Role taking, putting oneself in another's position, is G.H. Mead's concept and central to symbolic interactionism (2).
• The public, intersubjective world shared with others is a theme of Alfred Schutz's phenomenology (4).
• Impression management, controlling how others see us, is the core of Goffman's dramaturgical analysis (3).
• Breaching experiments, disrupting taken-for-granted routines to reveal hidden rules, are Garfinkel's ethnomethodology (1).

Only the last code gives (2), (4), (3), (1). The others misplace impression management or role taking, for instance by giving role taking to ethnomethodology.