Sociology Optional - OnlyIAS

Like any Indian, we already know that “Caste” is the name of Ancient Social Institution that has been part of Indian History and Culture for thousands of years. But like any Indian we also know that it is still a part and parcel of our everyday life.

As a student of Sociology we already know that Caste forms a important part of Paper 2. Over the years, questions have been asked on its continuity and change. For example, In 2015, it was directly asked “Is Caste system changing, weakening or Disintegrating in India?” or In 2010, it was asked to Critically analyse the forms in which untouchability continues to be practiced.

Recently two incidences came into light, which has brought Caste in the Focus lens yet again..

1. Apple Becomes First Tech Giant To Explicitly Ban Caste Discrimination.

This example can be used to explain how the development of state and private sector affected caste indirectly through intensifying economic change. Modern Industry created all kinds of new jobs and avenues for which there were no caste rules. Urbanisation and conditions of collective living in the cities have made it difficult for caste segregated patterns of social interactions to survive. Modern Indians are attracted to the ideas of individualism and meritocracy and have begun to abandon the extreme caste practice.

2. Dalit student beaten to death by his Teacher for touching water pot of upper caste in Rajasthan.

This example shows how in cultural and domestic spheres, Caste has still proved to be the strongest deciding factor. While some boundaries might have become porous, Caste in Socio-Economic status are still heavily patrolled.

Keep looking for such live examples in your surroundings!!
Happy Learning!!

OnlyIAS Sociology Recent Current Affairs:
1. National Flag: Why “Har Ghar Tiranga”?
2. Independence Day (75 Years of Azaadi)
3. Thinking Sociologically about Holidays

Note: This is not the complete month CA. It will be published along with other articles as well.

There are few articles which we decided to share.. Like what is independence from Sociological lens and relating 'Har ghar Tiranga' from sociological view. Also concept of holidays (due to Muharram, Rakshabandhan & Independence Day). But we are confused that how to share them. We need your help to decide.

जिन परिंदों को उड़ता हुआ देख रहे हो,
वो भी कभी ज़मीन पर थे,
कुछ तो कभी घायल भी थे,
अपनी परों की हवा में यकीन रखो,
आसमान सबका है, उड़ान सबकी है ।।

🇮🇳🇮🇳Happy Independence Day…
Jay Hind🇮🇳🇮🇳

After four years of deliberations, the government recently withdrew the Personal Data Protection (PDP) Bill, 2019, which is to be replaced with one that has a “comprehensive framework” and is in alignment with “contemporary digital privacy laws”.

Is Privacy an Individual good or a Social good?

What does Sociology has to offer in it?


🤔Think about it. We will post our document at 1:00 PM.

📌No chair for many Dalit Panchayat Presidents in Tamil Nadu: Shocking survey report

🎯News:

🔹The survey which was conducted in 24 districts of the state found that many Dalit panchayat presidents were not even allowed to hoist the national flag.
🔹In some cases, the panchayat presidents were not even allowed access to the local body office and and in some cases, they were not given assess to documents.

Topic of Syllabus to be related:
#Untouchability, #Dalit_Movement,
#Caste_Conflicts

📃In News:

Cyberbullying includes racism, trolling, personal attacks and sexual harassment, among others. Cyberbullying in India reaches alarming highs as more than 1 in 3 kids face cyber racism, sexual harassment, and threats of physical harm as early as at the age of 10 - making India the number 1 nation for reported cyberbullying in the world.

✳️SOCIOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF CYBERBULLYING:

1️⃣ It can be related to Social Capital Concept of Pierre Bourdieu.
There are two different forms of social capital, the bonding social capital, which is the result of relationships characterized by a strong and intense emotional bond (such as the one born, for example, among family members, among close friends or in small local communities) and the bridging social capital, typical, instead, of looser and more scattered relationships which, however, can prove strategically profitable, because they enable the actors the access to a large number of social and/or professional networks.
The existence of a negative social capital, an antisocial capital, is capable of fueling exclusion and discrimination, instead of promoting integration and social cohesion.

2️⃣ Bauman (2000) highlights how today even interpersonal relations seem to be subjected to the typical dynamics of consumer society, where subjects are committed to immediately discarding the relationships from which they neither benefit nor enjoy.

3️⃣Concept of “pure relationship” developed by Giddens (1991) highlight how, in radicalized modernity, social actors privilege individual autonomy and freedom of choice criteria even within the management of most intimate bonds.

📌85% Indian children experienced cyberbullying: Survey.

🎯Poverty : A manifest Function (Functionalist Perspective) or Alienation (Conflictist Perspective) ??

📌Friendships between rich and poor can reduce poverty, study finds

📋Topic to be related :
Inequality : Social Stratification


❇️Points to reflect:

1️⃣ Over the last four decades, the financial circumstances into which children have been born have increasingly determined where they have ended up as adults. But an expansive new study, based on billions of social media connections, has uncovered a powerful exception to that pattern that helps explain why certain places offer a path out of poverty. (Concept of Cultural Capital)

2️⃣For poor children, living in an area where people have more friendships that cut across class lines significantly increases how much they earn in adulthood, the new research found. (Class Divide in Friendship)

3️⃣These cross-class friendships — what the researchers called Economic Connectedness— had a stronger impact than school quality, family structure, job availability or a community’s racial composition. The people you know, the study suggests, open up opportunities, and the growing class divide closes them off.

📋Back to Basics

1. Functionalist View on Poverty
Functionalist theory assumes that society's structures exist because they help society function and maintain stability
In turn, functionalism argues that stratificaiton exists because it is functional and inevitable for society

2. Conflict Theory View on Poverty
Stratification results from lack of opportunity and from discrimination and prejudice against the poor, women, and people of color. It is neither necessary nor inevitable. People with power take advantage of their position at the top of society to stay at the top.

3. Symbolic Interactionism View on Poverty
Unlike the functionalist and conflict views, symbolic interactionism does not try to explain why we have stratification in the first place. Rather, it examines the differences that stratification makes for people's lifestyles and heir interaction with other people. Symbolic interactionism recognizes that the labeling of certain groups as "poor" affects how other members of society view and interact with them

#Poverty #Social_Stratification #Class_Divide #Economic_Connectedness #Conflict_Theory_on_Poverty #Functionalist_Theory_on_Poverty #Symbolic_Interactionism_on_Poverty

📌Friendships between rich and poor can reduce poverty, study finds..

📌A tribal president and the tribal cause
📋Topic to be related :
Tribal Communities in India

❇️Points to reflect:
1️⃣ Our very first tribal president spoke of the special relationship the tribal community enjoys with nature, taking "necessary resources from it" and simultaneously "serving it with equal reverence".
(Features of Tribals)

2️⃣Basis of bitter and prolonged conflict in our country is that tribals have tried to hold on to forests and lands that sustain them against a State, however state have been eager to lay their hands on the treasures that lie underneath.
(Colonial Policy and its continuance after Independence.)

3️⃣Tribal issues hardly make news; resistance to the takeover of tribal land may go on for years and yet not impinge on the consciousness of the privileged urban middle class simply because it's so far away. Add to that the mainstream media's tendency to portray such projects as essential for "infrastructural development", which, going by experience, never benefits the tribals displaced by them.
(Issues of Tribal Integration and Autonomy.)

4️⃣Tribal protests confined to individual states may not have the same impact on the Head of State of the entire country. (Issues of Tribal Integration and Autonomy.)

#President_Murmu #Tribal_integration #Santhal_Tribe

📌A tribal president and the tribal cause

📌Kerala: Campaigns target LGBTQ community over monkeypox.
📋Topic to be related :
1. Gender as a basis of Social Stratfication.
2. Identity Movement in Modern India.

❇️Points to reflect:
1️⃣ Initial cases were reported among LGBTQ community members in some countries, unfortunately led to framing the entire community as carriers of monkeypox. (Thinker to be related : Robert Merton Theory of Deviance, Labelling theory by H.S. Becker)

2️⃣As part of the Pride month, several organisations and college campuses organised events to support the LGBTQ community. However, there were sections of society, frustrated about the increasing support to gender and sexual minorities, that begun campaigning against the LGBTQ community. That could be the reason for the misleading campaigns against the community over monkey pox.
(It can be related to Stages of Social Movement by Herbert Blumer and particularly the repressive stage. It can also be related to the theory of Relative Deprivation as the cause of Social Movement by Robert Merton.)

3️⃣There are social media campaigns, by persons posing as scholars of a particular religion, also being carried out against the LGBTQ community. (Fundamentalism topic.)

#Gender #Social_Stratification
#LGBTQ #Monkey_Pox #Herbert_Blumer #Robert_Merton #Fundamentalism #Social_Movement #Deviance #Labelling_Theory

📌Kerala: Campaigns target LGBTQ community over monkeypox.

Sociology is unlike any other optional. It never starts with a zero – everyone one of us knows something about the society already. This prior knowledge is both an advantage and disadvantage.
Students pursuing Sociology has the tendency of studying the subject in a biased way while the purpose of Sociologist is always to understand the whole reality in a completely unbiased manner. Sociology helps us see the world from not just one vantage point but many-not just our own but also that of others.
Relating Current Affairs and social happenings occurring around the Aspirant with the theories is a problematic area for many , yet precisely the most important part of the learning in this optional. Being unbiased and reflexive is important to enrich your answer. Infact, your scores will certainly boost when you not just mention thinkers, their perspectives but also examples from the surroundings to support it.

This series will help the students to understand the society in a better manner and hence give a new outlook towards sociology as an optional.

All the Best!👍

🔥OnlyIAS Sociology optional Monthly Magazine - June

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