KSLU Solved Question Papers
Sociology I
Previous Year Question Paper with Solution
B.A. LL.B. (Five Years) · Sem 1
2025 Feb Examination
munotes.in
Mumbai
B.A. LL.B. (Five Years) Sem 1 Sociology I 2025 Feb Question Paper with Solutions
First published on munotes.in on 21 October 2026.
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Contents
The questions below are the paper as Karnataka State Law University set it at the 2025 Feb examination, in the order it was set.
MarksPage
MarksPage
The Paper as Set
The questions in this volume are the questions asked at the 2025 Feb examination, reproduced as Karnataka State Law University set them, in the order it set them. Long reading passages are shortened to their first and last lines and our summary; the original paper prints them in full. Only the answers are ours. See the original question paper.
Duration 3 hours · Total marks 80 · 20 questions answered
Instructions printed on the paper
- N.B. (1) Answer all five Units. (2) One essay type question and one short note. (3) Figures to the right indicate marks. (4) Answer should be written either in English or Kannada completely.
How to use this volume
Solve the paper first, under exam conditions and against the clock. Then read the answers here and mark your own. Reading a solution before attempting the question feels productive and teaches very little, because recognising an answer is not the same as being able to write one.
Q1
Unit I
(a)Define sociology. Explain the scope of sociology.[10]
Answer
For full marks, cover: the meaning of the word; three definitions; what scope means; the formalistic school (Simmel and others) with two criticisms; the synthetic school (Durkheim and others) with two criticisms; the modern view; a conclusion.
Meaning and definitions
Sociology is the scientific study of society. Auguste Comte coined the word in 1838 from the Latin socius, companion, and the Greek logos, study.
- MacIver and Page described sociology as the study of social relationships, whose network we call society.
- Max Weber defined it as the science which seeks the interpretive understanding of social action, in order to explain its course and effects.
- Emile Durkheim called it the science of social institutions.
What scope means
The scope of a subject is its range: what it covers and where it stops. Because almost all human activity is social, sociologists disagreed sharply about how far their subject should reach. Two schools gave opposite answers.
The formalistic or specialistic school
This school holds that sociology is an independent science with a narrow subject of its own. That subject is the forms of social relationships, studied apart from their content.
Georg Simmel (1858 to 1918) compared sociology to geometry. Geometry studies the shape of a sphere whether it is made of wood or of iron. In the same way, sociology studies forms such as competition, cooperation, conflict, domination and subordination. It does not ask whether these occur in business, religion or politics. Those contents belong to other sciences.
Other members were Ferdinand Tonnies, with his contrast of community and association, and Max Weber. Leopold von Wiese, who tried to list all forms of social relationship, and Alfred Vierkandt also belonged to it.
Criticism. Form cannot really be separated from content: competition between traders and between nations are very different things. The forms are also studied by other sciences, so they do not give sociology a field of its own. And the school makes sociology too narrow.
The synthetic school
This school holds that sociology is a general science of society. It brings together the findings of the special social sciences and studies society as a whole.
Emile Durkheim divided its scope into three parts:
- social morphology, the size, density and spread of population;
- social physiology, the working of institutions such as religion, law, morals and the economy;
- general sociology, the search for general social laws.
Other members were L. T. Hobhouse, Morris Ginsberg, who listed social morphology, social control, social processes and social pathology, Pitirim Sorokin and Karl Mannheim.
Criticism. The school makes sociology so wide that it seems to have no subject of its own. A true synthesis of all the social sciences is beyond any single scholar.
The subject matter within this scope
Whichever school one prefers, sociology in practice covers a recognisable field.
- Social groups and units: the family, the community, associations, caste and class.
- Social institutions: marriage, family, religion, education, the economy, the state and law.
- Social processes: cooperation, competition, conflict, accommodation and assimilation.
- Culture, norms and values, and the socialisation through which they are learned.
- Social control, from custom and religion to law and the police.
- Social change, its causes and its effects.
- Social problems, such as crime, poverty and disorganisation, which Ginsberg called social pathology.
- Research methods, the tools by which all of these are studied.
The modern view
The two schools are complementary. The formal school gives sociology clear concepts for comparison; the synthetic school keeps it in touch with whole, real societies. Modern sociology does both. It has also grown many special fields. Among them are the sociology of law, criminology, rural and urban sociology, and the sociology of religion and of the family.
The scope of sociology in India
In India, sociology grew with a wide scope from the start. Patrick Geddes founded the Department of Sociology at the University of Bombay in 1919, and G. S. Ghurye headed it from 1924. Indian sociologists studied caste, kinship, village life, religion, tribes and social change. M. N. Srinivas's study of the Coorgs of Karnataka gave the concept of Sanskritisation. Today Indian sociology also studies cities, migration, gender, the environment and the working of law. Its scope has kept widening as society has changed.
Scope and the law student
For a law student the wide view is the useful one. Law is one institution among many, and its working depends on the family, religion, economy and caste around it. Sociology's scope is wide enough to take all of these into account.
Conclusion. Sociology is the scientific study of society, named by Comte in 1838. On its scope, Simmel's formalistic school confines it to the forms of social relationships. Durkheim's synthetic school treats it as a general science of society. Today the two views are combined, giving sociology a clear method and a wide field.
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