Sociology

Basic Concepts

• Society, community, association, institution. Culture-culture change, diffusion, Cultural-tag, Cultural relativism, ethnocentrism, acculturation.
• Social Groups-primary, secondary and reference groups.
• Social structure, social system, social action.
• Status and role, role conflict, role set.
• Norms and values-conformity and deviance.
• Law and customs.
• Socio-cultural processes :
• Socialisation, assimilation, integration, cooperation, competition, conflict, accommodation, Social distance, relative deprivation.

Marriage, Family and Kinship 

• Marriage: types and norms, marriage as contract, and as a sacrament.
• Family: types, functions and changes.
• Kinships: terms and usages, rules of residence, descent, inheritance.

Social Stratification

• Forms and functions; Caste and Class.
• Jajmani system, purity and pollution, dominant caste, sanskritisation.

Types of Society

• Tribal, agrarian, industrial and post-industrial.

Economy and Society

• Man, nature and social production, economic systems of simple and complex societies, non-economic determinants of economic behaviour, market (free) economy and controlled (planned) economy.

Industrial and Urban Society 

• Rural-Urban Continuum, urban growth and urbanisation-town, city and metropolis.
• Basic features of industrial society
• Impact of automation on society
• Industrialisation and environment.

Social Demography

• Population size, growth, composition, and distribution in India.
• Components of population growth-births, deaths and migration.
• Causes and consequences of population growth; population and social development; population policy.

Political Processes

• Power, authority and legitimacy.
• Political socialisation; political modernisation, pressure groups.
• Caste and politics.

Weaker Sections-and Minorities

• Social justice-equal opportunity and special opportunity.
• Protective discrimination; constitutional safeguards.

Social Change

• Theories of change; factors of change; science, technology and change.
• Social movements-Peasant Movement, Women's Movement, Backward Caste Movement, Dalit Movement.