OPSC OAS Sociology Syllabus – Paper-I (Optional Subject)

Exam: Odisha Public Service Commission (OPSC) – OAS / OCS
Paper: Optional Subject – Sociology (Paper-I)
Focus: Foundations of Sociology

Digital Syllabus Tracker – Sociology Paper-I

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1. Sociology – The Discipline

• Sociology as a science and as an interpretative discipline
• Impact of Industrial and French Revolution on the emergence of sociology
• Sociology and its relationship with history, economics, political science, psychology and anthropology

2. Scientific Study of Social Phenomena

• Problem of objectivity and value neutrality
• Issue of measurement in social science
• Elements of scientific method – concepts, theory and fact, hypothesis
• Research designs – descriptive, exploratory and experimental
• Content analysis

3. Techniques of Data Collection and Analysis

• Participant and quasi-participant observation
• Interview, questionnaire and schedule
• Case study
• Sampling – size, reliability and validity
• Scaling techniques – social distance and Likert scale

4. Pioneering Contributions to Sociology

• Karl Marx – Historical materialism, alienation and class struggle
• Emile Durkheim – Division of labour, social fact, religion and society, suicide
• 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, anomie, conformity and deviance, reference groups

5. Marriage and Family

• Types and forms of marriage
• Family – structure and function
• Personality and socialization
• Social control
• Family, lineage, descent and property
• Changing structure of family and marriage in modern society
• Divorce and its implications
• Role conflicts

6. Social Stratification

• Concepts – hierarchy, inequality and stratification
• Theories of stratification – Marx, Davis and Moore and Melvin Tumin's critique
• Forms and functions of stratification
• Class – different conceptions of class
• Class-in-itself and class-for-itself
• Caste and class; caste as a class

7. Social Mobility

• Types of mobility – open and closed models
• Intra- and intergenerational mobility
• Vertical and horizontal mobility
• Social mobility and social change

8. Economic System

• Sociological dimensions of economic life
• The impact of economic processes on the larger society
• Social aspects of division of labour and types of exchange
• Features of pre-industrial and industrial economic system
• Industrialisation and social change
• Social determinants of economic development

9. Political System

• The nature of power – personal power, community power, power of the elite, class power, organisational power, power of the un-organised masses
• Authority and legitimacy
• Pressure groups and political parties
• Voting behaviour
• Modes of political participation – democratic and authoritarian forms

10. Educational System

• Education and Culture
• Equality of educational opportunity
• Social aspects of mass education
• Problems of universalisation of primary education
• Role of community and state intervention in education
• Education as an instrument of social control and social change
• Education and modernisation

11. Religion

• Origins of religious beliefs in pre-modern societies
• The sacred and the profane
• Social functions and dysfunctions of religion
• Monistic and pluralistic religion
• Organised and unorganised religions
• Semitism and antisemitism
• Religion, sect and cults
• Magic, religion and science

12. Social Change and Gender Issues

• Social construction of gender
• Equality vrs. Differences
• Impact of globalization on women
• Emergence of feminist thought
• Gender issues