The Sociology Optional Paper 1 syllabus for the UPSC Civil Services Examination, as outlined by Plutus IAS, encompasses the following topics:
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Sociology – The Discipline:
- Modernity and social changes in Europe and the emergence of sociology.
- Scope of the subject and comparison with other social sciences.
- Sociology and common sense.
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Sociology as Science:
- Science, scientific method, and critique.
- Major theoretical strands of research methodology.
- Positivism and its critique.
- Fact value and objectivity.
- Non-positivist methodologies.
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Research Methods and Analysis:
- Qualitative and quantitative methods.
- Techniques of data collection.
- Variables, sampling, hypothesis, reliability, and validity.
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Sociological Thinkers:
- Karl Marx: Historical materialism, mode of production, alienation, class struggle.
- Emile Durkheim: Division of labor, social fact, suicide, religion, and society.
- Max Weber: Social action, ideal types, authority, bureaucracy, protestant ethic, and the spirit of capitalism.
- Talcott Parsons: Social system, pattern variables.
- Robert K. Merton: Latent and manifest functions, conformity and deviance, reference groups.
- Mead: Self and identity.
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Stratification and Mobility:
- Concepts – equality, inequality, hierarchy, exclusion, poverty, and deprivation.
- Theories of social stratification – structural-functional, Marxist, Weberian.
- Dimensions – social stratification of class, status groups, gender, ethnicity, and race.
- Social mobility – open and closed systems, types of mobility, sources, and causes of mobility.
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Works and Economic Life:
- Social organization of work in different types of society – slave society, feudal society, industrial/capitalist society.
- Formal and informal organization of work.
- Labour and society.
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Politics and Society:
- Sociological theories of power.
- Power elite, bureaucracy, pressure groups, and political parties.
- Nation, state, citizenship, democracy, civil society, ideology.
- Protest, agitation, social movements, collective action, revolution.
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Religion and Society:
- Sociology of religion.
- Types of religious practices: animism, monism, pluralism, sects, cults.
- Religion in modern society: religion and science, secularization, religious revivalism, fundamentalism.
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Systems of Kinship:
- Family, household, marriage.
- Types and forms of family.
- Lineage and descent.
- Patriarchy and sexual division of labor.
- Contemporary trends.
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Social Change in Modern Society:
- Sociological theories of social change.
- Development and dependency.
- Agents of social change.
- Education and social change.
- Science, technology, and social change.
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