KSLU Solved Question Papers
Sociology I
Previous Year Question Paper with Solution
B.A. LL.B. (Five Years) · Sem 1
2026 Jan (100 marks) Examination
munotes.in
Mumbai
B.A. LL.B. (Five Years) Sem 1 Sociology I 2026 Jan (100 marks) 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 (100 marks) examination, in the order it was set.
MarksPage
The Paper as Set
The questions in this volume are the questions asked at the 2026 Jan (100 marks) 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 100 · 13 questions answered
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.
Q1Define sociology. Explain the scope of sociology.[16]
Answer
For full marks, cover: the meaning of the word; four definitions with their authors; what scope means; the formalistic school with Simmel's argument and its other members; its criticism; the synthetic school with Durkheim's three divisions and its other members; its criticism; the reconciliation; the modern fields of sociology; why the scope matters to law; a conclusion.
Meaning of sociology
Auguste Comte coined the word sociology in 1838, in the fourth volume of his Cours de philosophie positive. It joins the Latin socius, a companion, with the Greek logos, a study. So sociology is, literally, the study of people living in company with one another. In plain words, it is the scientific study of society, of social relationships and of the groups and institutions through which people live together.
Definitions
- Auguste Comte saw sociology as the science of society as a whole, studied by observation like any natural science.
- MacIver and Page said that sociology is about social relationships. The network of those 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 called sociology the science of social institutions, their origin and working.
The definitions stress different things: society, relationships, action and institutions. They share one idea. The object of study is the social, not the individual person.
What scope means
The scope of a subject means its range: what it studies and where it stops. The question is sharp for sociology, because almost everything people do together is social. If sociology studies all of it, what is left for economics, politics and history? Two schools gave opposite answers.
The formalistic or specialistic school
The claim. Sociology is a separate and independent science with a limited subject of its own. That subject is the forms of social relationships, studied apart from their content.
Georg Simmel (1858 to 1918) led this school. He used the analogy of geometry. Geometry studies the form of a sphere without asking whether it is made of wood or iron. In the same way, sociology studies forms such as cooperation, competition, conflict, superiority and subordination, and the division of labour. It does not ask whether these happen in a factory, a temple or an army. The content belongs to economics, religion or political science. The form belongs to sociology.
Other members of the school.
- Ferdinand Tonnies distinguished two forms of social life. Gemeinschaft is the close community of kin and village. Gesellschaft is the impersonal association of the city and the contract.
- Max Weber held that sociology should interpret social action and classify its forms, keeping clear of history's concern with the particular.
- Leopold von Wiese limited sociology to the forms of social processes and relationships and tried to list them all.
- Alfred Vierkandt held that sociology should study the ultimate forms of the mental or psychic bonds that hold people together.
Criticism of the formalistic school.
- Form cannot be separated from content. Competition between two shopkeepers and competition between two nations share a form, but they are nothing alike.
- The forms are not sociology's alone. Economists and political scientists also study competition and conflict.
- There is no agreed list of forms. Von Wiese counted some six hundred and fifty forms of relationship, and Simmel's list was quite different.
- It makes sociology too narrow. It cuts the subject off from real problems such as caste, poverty and crime.
The synthetic school
The claim. Sociology is a general science of society. It brings together, or synthesises, the findings of the special social sciences. Economics studies the economic slice of life and political science the political slice. Sociology studies the whole and the links between the slices.
Emile Durkheim led this school. He divided the scope of sociology into three parts.
- Social morphology: the material base of society, such as the size, density and distribution of population over territory.
- Social physiology: the working of society, studied through its branches: the sociology of religion, of law and morals, of the economy and of language.
- General sociology: the philosophical part, which seeks the general social laws that the branches reveal.
Other members of the school.
- Morris Ginsberg set the scope as social morphology, social control, social processes and social pathology. Social pathology covers crime, poverty and social disorganisation.
- Pitirim A. Sorokin said sociology studies the relations between different classes of social facts. It also studies their relation with non-social facts and the features common to all social facts.
- L. T. Hobhouse treated sociology as a synthesis of the many social sciences.
- Karl Mannheim divided it into systematic and general sociology, and historical sociology.
Criticism of the synthetic school.
- It makes sociology too wide. If it studies everything social, it has no subject of its own.
- A synthesis needs specialists. No one scholar can master economics, politics, religion and law well enough to combine them honestly.
- It risks being superficial, since breadth is bought at the cost of depth.
The two schools compared
| Point | Formalistic school | Synthetic school |
|---|---|---|
| Leading names | Simmel, Tonnies, Weber, von Wiese, Vierkandt | Durkheim, Ginsberg, Sorokin, Hobhouse, Mannheim |
| What sociology studies | Forms of social relationships only | Society as a whole |
| Point | Formalistic school | Synthetic school |
|---|---|---|
| Relation to other sciences | Stands beside them as an equal | Stands above them and draws on them |
| Analogy | Geometry | The living body |
| Strength | Gives sociology a clear subject | Keeps it close to real problems |
| Weakness | Too narrow | Too wide |
The reconciliation
The two schools are complementary, not contradictory. The formalist gives the general concepts, such as conflict and cooperation, that let us compare one case with another. The synthesist gives the concrete study of whole situations, without which those concepts are empty. Modern sociology does both. It studies particular institutions in depth and uses general concepts to compare them.
The subject matter within the scope
Whichever school is followed, textbooks agree on the main subject matter sociology covers.
- Social units: groups, communities, associations and institutions, from the family to the state.
- Social processes: cooperation, competition, conflict, accommodation and assimilation.
- Social structure and culture: statuses, roles, norms, values and stratification such as caste and class.
- Social control: how a society keeps its members in line, through custom, religion and law.
- Social change: how and why societies change, and with what effects.
- Social problems: crime, poverty, unemployment and disorganisation, which Ginsberg called social pathology.
- Methods: the ways of studying all of this, such as observation, surveys and case studies.
The fields of modern sociology
Today the scope of sociology covers many special fields. They include the sociology of law, criminology and penology, rural and urban sociology and industrial sociology. Others are political sociology, the sociology of religion, of the family and of education, demography and social research methods. Each studies one part of social life while keeping the whole in view.
Why the scope of sociology matters to a law student
Law is one of society's institutions. The synthetic view places law beside the family, religion and the economy, and asks how they shape one another. The formalistic view gives the lawyer tools such as conflict and accommodation, which describe how disputes arise and settle. A lawyer who knows sociology can see why a law works in one community and fails in another.
Conclusion. Sociology is the scientific study of society, coined as a word by Comte in 1838 and defined by Comte, MacIver and Page, Weber and Durkheim. On its scope, Simmel's formalistic school limits it to the forms of social relationships. Durkheim's synthetic school makes it a general science of society. Each is one-sided alone. Taken together, they give sociology both a distinct subject and a wide reach.
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