KSLU Solved Question Papers
Sociology I
Previous Year Question Paper with Solution
B.A. LL.B. (Five Years) · Sem 1
2026 Jan Examination
munotes.in
Mumbai
B.A. LL.B. (Five Years) Sem 1 Sociology I 2026 Jan 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 2026 Jan examination, in the order it was set.
MarksPage
MarksPage
The Paper as Set
The questions in this volume are the questions asked at the 2026 Jan 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 short note is compulsory from each Unit. (3) Figures to the right indicate marks. (4) Answer should be written either in English/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 nature of sociology.[10]
Answer
For full marks, cover: the meaning of the word and who coined it; three or four definitions with their authors; the seven characteristics of its nature, each explained with an example; whether sociology is a science; a conclusion.
Meaning of sociology
The word sociology was coined by Auguste Comte in 1838, in the fourth volume of his Cours de philosophie positive. It joins the Latin word socius, meaning companion or associate, and the Greek word logos, meaning study or science. So the word literally means the study of companionship. Put simply, sociology is the scientific study of society.
Sociology studies social relationships, social groups, social institutions and the processes through which people live together. Its subject is not one person but the patterns people form in groups. Why one student failed an exam is a question about a person. Why students from one kind of family fail more often, year after year, is a sociological question.
Definitions of sociology
There is no single agreed definition. Each author stressed a different part of social life, so a good answer gives three or four definitions and names the author of each.
- Auguste Comte, and after him Lester F. Ward and Franklin H. Giddings, treated sociology as the science of society as a whole.
- MacIver and Page treated sociology as the study of social relationships. The network of these relationships is what we call society.
- Max Weber defined sociology as the science which seeks the interpretive understanding of social action. Its aim is a causal explanation of the course and effects of that action.
- Emile Durkheim described sociology as the science of social institutions, their origin and their working.
These definitions differ in emphasis, but they agree on one thing. All of them treat the social, and not the individual, as the thing to be explained.
The nature of sociology
The nature of a subject means the kind of science it is. Robert Bierstedt, in The Social Order (1957), set out the characteristics of sociology's nature that textbooks still use. They are as follows.
- An independent science. Sociology is not a branch of philosophy, history or political science. It has its own subject matter, its own methods and its own body of theory.
- A social science, not a natural science. It studies human beings living together. It belongs with economics, political science and psychology, and not with physics or chemistry.
- A categorical, not a normative, science. It states what is, not what ought to be. It can show that dowry is still widely given despite the law against it. Whether dowry is wrong is a question of ethics, not of sociology.
- A pure science, not an applied science. Its aim is knowledge about society. Using that knowledge is the work of administrators, social workers and law makers. A sociologist studies why child marriage continues; a district officer acts to stop one.
- An abstract science, not a concrete science. It studies the forms and patterns of social life, such as conflict or cooperation. It does not record particular events, which is the work of history.
- A generalising science, not a particularising one. It looks for general statements that hold for many cases. One village feud interests a sociologist only as an example of conflict between groups.
- Both a rational and an empirical science. It is empirical because it relies on observation and evidence. It is rational because it organises that evidence through theory and logic. Facts without theory are blind, and theory without facts is empty.
Is sociology a science?
The case for. A science is known by its method, not its subject. Sociology observes, collects data, forms hypotheses and tests them. Durkheim's study of suicide is the standard proof. He showed that suicide rates vary with how closely people are bound into groups, and he supported this with official statistics.
The case against. Four difficulties remain. Controlled experiments on people are mostly impossible. The observer belongs to the society he studies, so objectivity is hard. Prediction of particular events is weak. Its terms, such as class, are not used in one agreed sense.
The settled view. Sociology is a science in its method and its aims. It is a social science, and these difficulties are permanent features of studying human beings who have purposes of their own.
Why the nature of sociology matters to a law student
Law works on society, and sociology tells the lawyer how society actually behaves. Because sociology is categorical, it can measure whether a law is obeyed, without deciding first whether the law is good. Because it generalises, it can show which groups a law reaches and which it misses. This is why sociology is taught in the first semester of the law course.
Conclusion. Sociology is the scientific study of society. Comte coined the word in 1838, and Comte, MacIver and Page, Weber and Durkheim each defined it in their own way. By nature it is an independent, social, categorical, pure, abstract and generalising science that is both rational and empirical. It is a science in method, though experiment, objectivity and prediction remain harder in it than in the natural sciences.
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