List of top Questions asked in GATE XH- C6

“The capitalistic economy of the present day is an immense cosmos into which the individual is born, and which presents itself to him, at least as an individual, as an unalterable order of things in which he must live. … In order that a manner of life so well adapted to the peculiarities of capitalism could be selected at all, i.e. should come to dominate others, it had to originate somewhere, and not in isolated individuals alone, but as a way of life common to whole groups of men. This origin is what really needs explanation. … The question of the motive forces in the expansion of modern capitalism is not in the first instance a question of the origin of the capital sums which were available for capitalistic uses, but, above all, of the development of the spirit of capitalism. Where it appears and is able to work itself out, it produces its own capital and monetary supplies as the means to its ends, but the reverse is not true.”
(Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism)
Which among the following is/are Weber’s argument(s) in the above excerpt?

“We demanded changes that would make the law more sensitive to the cultural and economic contexts of women’s lives. Women’s groups investigating ‘dowry deaths’ demonstrated how the designation of the family as the private domain restricted women’s access to protection against domestic violence. They exposed the collusion of the law, police, medical system, and the family in classifying these deaths as suicides. Feminist scholars worked to salvage gender and women’s issues from being subsumed by class analysis, sought to extend the Marxist understanding of labour to include domestic production, and pointed out the marginality and vulnerability of women in the workforce.”
(Susie Tharu and Tejaswini Niranjana (1996), Problems for a Contemporary Theory of Gender)
Which among the following statements can be asserted from the above excerpt?

``The claim, made by structuralism and dependency theory, that subordination to the world market seals the fate of nations is wrong. Inequality, poverty, low productivity and sluggish growth in the periphery, their propensity to import luxury goods and transfer profits to the centre, and the lack of coordination of economic activity in many countries, are due primarily to the social structures prevailing in the periphery, rather than their international trade relations.''
(Alfredo Saad-Filho (2005), `The Rise and Decline of Latin American Structuralism and Dependency Theory')
Which among the following statements can be asserted from the above excerpt?

There is scholarly controversy over the role of the middle peasants in peasant movements in India. In this regard, which of the following statements is/are true?

In ‘The Nation and its Fragments’ (1993), Partha Chatterjee observes that nationalism linked the legitimacy of the postcolonial Indian state with economic development. In what way(s) was this connection achieved, for Chatterjee?

Which of the following statement(s) correctly represent(s) A.M. Shah’s views in his ‘The Household Dimension of the Family in India’?

According to Karl Marx, the socially necessary labour time to produce a commodity will directly vary with

Imagine there is a spiritual leader from any religion who has a huge estate, organisation, publications etc. In Weberian terms, this could be considered an example of

Which of the following is a proposed explanation for a group of facts or phenomena that provides the basis for empirical testing?

To which of the following option(s) does C. Wright Mills’ ‘Grand Theory’ NOT apply?

Which statement(s) about contemporary India is/are endorsed by recent sociological research?

Which of the following statements is/are representation(s) of the ‘modernisation theory’ of the mid-twentieth century?

Which of the following is/are Louis Dumont’s formulation(s)?

The Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) is

Match statements (P), (Q), (R), (S) to names (1), (2), (3), (4):
(P) “Today, Indians no longer idealise hierarchy. What they … idealise is equality.”
(Q) “[We] do not argue that non-dalit feminists can ‘speak as’ or ‘for the’ dalit women but they can ‘reinvent themselves as dalit feminists’.”
(R) “[From] the point of view of people at the lowest end of the scale, caste has functioned (and continues to function) as a very effective system of economic exploitation.”
(S) “The pure hierarchy that Louis Dumont wrote so compellingly about a few decades ago … now stands bereft of empirical support from practically every quarter of Hindu India.”
(1) Dipankar Gupta
(2) Sharmila Rege
(3) André Béteille
(4) Joan P. Mencher

Match statements (P), (Q), (R), (S) to names (1), (2), (3), (4):
(P) ``The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.''
(Q) The state is ``an institutional association of rule, which within a given territory has succeeded in gaining a monopoly of legitimate physical force as a means of ruling.''
(R) ``It is only through the State that individualism is possible, although it cannot be the means of making it a reality, except in certain precise conditions. We might say that in the State we have the prime mover. It is the State that has rescued the child from patriarchal domination and from family tyranny; it is the State that has freed the citizen from feudal groups and later from communal groups; it is the State that has liberated the craftsman and his master from guild tyranny.” ''
(S) “The family is indeed a fiction, a social artefact, an illusion in the most ordinary sense of the word, but a ‘well-founded illusion’, because, being produced and reproduced with the guarantee of the state, it receives from the state at every moment the means to exist and persist.”
(1) Pierre Bourdieu
(2) Emile Durkheim
(3) Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
(4) Max Weber

Read the abstract of the article titled “‘Taming’ Arab social movements: Exporting neoliberal governmentality” (2013).
“In the wake of the recent Arab revolutions, the European Union (EU) has sought to provide genuine and substantial support to a range of Arab social movements in the region’s emerging polities. We argue, however, that the EU’s attempts at democracy promotion in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region may be understood through a governmentality framework, despite the limitations of such an approach. Specifically, the EU is actively promoting neoliberal policies in the aftermath of the Arab Spring in order to foster a mode of subjectivity that is conducive to the EU’s own norms and interests. What we observe are not just innocent attempts at democracy promotion, but a form of politics and economics that seeks to subject the agency on the ‘Arab street’ to EU standards. We conclude by going over the radical plurality of the Arab street, and show how it was in fact earlier neoliberal reforms by their former regimes that created the conditions of possibility for the recent revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt.”
On the basis of the above statement, which of the following can be asserted?
(1) Social movements can no longer be understood as a purely intra-national phenomenon.
(2) Local social movements for democratisation have little to do with the transnationalisation of the practices of neoliberal governmentality.

Which of the following option(s) correctly applies/apply to a key informant in sociological research?

For Karl Marx, which statement(s) below define(s) absolute surplus value?

Who among the following sociologist(s) use(s) a Marxist framework to understand Indian society and history?

Which of the following reverse(s) the process of primitive accumulation in India?

Which of the following applies/apply to Lévi-Strauss’ fundamental unit of kinship?

Which statement(s) correctly explain(s) why feminists and women’s rights activists are uncomfortable with the term ‘honour killings’?

‘The City and the Grassroots’ authored by _________ is among the most important books published on urban social movements.

A fisherman in southwest Sri Lanka has received a warning that a cyclone may hit his coastal region and he has to decide whether to evacuate or stay put. He knows that the probability of the cyclone striking is 70%. He has the means to evacuate and his property is worth three times the cost of evacuation. He calculates accurately that his best chance to protect himself and his assets lies in evacuation. At a later meeting of the whole community, the village elders decide that no one will evacuate because the village shrines cannot be left unattended indefinitely. Hence in deference to the elders, the fisherman decides to stay put.
In Max Weber’s terms, his decision is closest to