Structure of Indian Society Test - 1

The correct answer is Risley.

Key Points

• Between 1868 and 1875, John Forbes Watson and John William Kaye compiled The People of India, an eight-volume study.
• The booklets included 468 images of India's native castes and tribes, all of which were annotated.
• The origins of the project lay in the desire of Lord Canning to possess photographs of native Indian people.
• Risley's book The People of India was released in 1908. Hence the correct option is 1).
• By this point in his career, he had served as Census Commissioner for the 1901 Census of India.
• He also had been a long-time ethnographer and supporter of Paul Topinard's anthropometric theories.
• Despite the fact that Risley regarded Watson and Kaye's previous book as "renowned in its day," he did not mention it in his 1908 effort.
• Risley had already published works such as The Tribes and Castes of Bengal, a four-volume masterpiece.

The correct answer is Cultural-traits.

Key Points

• A cultural trait is a socially learned quality of human behavior that is passed down through various channels of communication.
• The word 'cultural attribute' can also be used to describe a thing that is the result of human conduct.
• Similar traits can be grouped together as components, or subsystems of culture.
• Biologist Julian Huxley coined the terms sociofact and mentifact (or psychofact) as two of three subsystems of culture—the third being artifacts—to describe how cultural traits take on a life of their own, spanning generations.
• Artifacts are the objects, materials, and technology that culture creates, or simply the things that humans produce.
  • They supply essential necessities, pleasure, and entertainment, as well as the majority of the items that make people's lives easier.
  • Clothing, food, and shelter are only a few examples.
• Sociofacts — interpersonal interactions and social structures.
  • i.e., the structures and organizations of a culture that influence social behaviour.
  • This includes families, governments, education systems, religious groups, etc.
• Mentifact - Abstract conceptions, or "things in the head," i.e., a culture's common ideas, values, and beliefs (mentifact or psychofact).
  • Religion, language, and ideas are all examples of this.

Important Points

• A cultural universal (also called an anthropological universal or human universal) is an element, pattern, trait, or institution that is common to all known human cultures worldwide.
  • Taken together, the whole body of cultural universals is known as the human condition.
  • Evolutionary psychologists hold that behaviors or traits that occur universally in all cultures are good candidates for evolutionary adaptations.
• Cultural relativism is the idea that a person's beliefs and practices should be understood based on that person's own culture.
  • Proponents of cultural relativism also tend to argue that the norms and values of one culture should not be evaluated using the norms and values of another.
• Cultural complex- A distinct system of actions, beliefs, ceremonies, and customs related with one key characteristic of a culture's life. The buffalo hunting and use by Native Americans, for example, is related with a slew of activities, ceremonies, folklore, songs, and myths.

The correct answer is Pratiloma.

Key Points

• Pratiloma is a Sanskrit term used in the Manusmriti, or Manu's Laws (Shraddhadeva Manu).
• It denotes a hypergamous relationship between a high-born lady and a man of a lesser position (by birth) relative to her.
• Manu argues that the evolution of numerous castes among mankind arose as a result of the marriage of two people who did not belong to the same caste or class ladder (by birth, not money or social status) as each other.
• Marriage within the same caste, that is, between two people from the same rung on the social ladder, is ideal, according to Manu.
• Manu harshly criticises and condemns Pratiloma unions that were deemed to be "against the hair or grain," and holds them responsible for the following deterioration of the parties involved. 

Important Points

• Union of a Kshatriya man and a Brahmin woman results in a Suta.
• Union of a Vaishya man and a Brahmin woman results in a Magadha.
• Union of a Vaishya man and a Kshatriya woman results in a Vaidehaka.
• Union of a Shudra man and a Vaishya woman results in a Ayogava.
• Union of a Shudra man and a Kshatriya woman results in a Kshattri.
• Union of a Shudra man and a Brahmin woman results in a Chandala, the lowest of all mortals.

The correct answer is 18 years.

Key Points

• Juvenile delinquency refers to the antisocial or criminal activity of a child (below 16 years of age for boys and 18 years for girls) which violates the law.
• In true context, that same activity would have been a crime if it was committed by an adult.
• The term ‘juvenile’ has been defined in clause (h) of Section 2 of the Juvenile Justice Act, 1986.
• The term ‘delinquency’ has been defined in clause (e) of section 2 of the Juvenile Justice Act, 1986.

Important Points

• Juvenile Justice (Care and protection of children) Act, 2000
• The act provides for a special approach to the prevention and treatment of juvenile delinquency.
• It provides a framework for the protection, treatment, and rehabilitation of children in the purview of the juvenile justice system.
• This law, brought in compliance with the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), repealed the earlier Juvenile Justice Act of 1986 after India signed and ratified the UNCRC in 1992. 
• It ensures proper care, protection, and treatment, as well as adopting a child-friendly approach to adjudication and disposition of matters in the best interests of children.

The correct answer is The Dominant Caste in Rampura.

Key Points

• The concept of "dominant caste" was initially presented by M.N. Srinivas in his essay "The social system of a Mysore hamlet."
• Srinivas came up with the idea while researching Rampura village, which is located near Mysore in the state of Karnataka.
• Srinivas, on the other hand, desired to conduct a thorough examination of Rampura.
• Srinivas had gone to Stanford to write a monograph on Rampura(The Dominant Caste in Rampura) in order to record the details of the village. Hence option 1) is correct.

Important Points

• A dominating caste is one that outnumbers other castes numerically and has disproportionate economic and political power.
• If a large and powerful caste group's place in the local caste system is not too low.
• Srinivas asserts that to be a dominant caste, a caste must have the following characteristics:
  • It must own a sizeable amount of cultivable land.
  • It must be of considerable numerical strength.
  • It must enjoy a high place in the local caste hierarchy.
  • Western education, jobs in administration and political clout and contacts have been considered by subsequent authors to be additional factors of dominance.

The correct answer is Baldwin.

Key Points

• James Arthur Baldwin was an American writer and activist who lived from August 2, 1924, to December 1, 1987.
• He received distinction as a writer in a variety of mediums, including essays, novels, plays, and poems.
• His debut novel, Go Tell It On The Mountain, was published in 1953, and Time Magazine named it one of the top 100 English-language novels produced between 1923 and 2005.
• Notes of a Native Son, his first collection of essays, was released in 1955.
• David Adams Leeming who has written - James Baldwin: A Biography quoted "The philosophy applies to individual relationships as well as to more general ones. It encompasses sexuality as well as politics, economics, and race relations. And it emphasizes the dire consequences, for individuals and racial groups, of the refusal to love."
• Hence option 4) is correct.
• Baldwin's work fictionalizes fundamental personal questions and dilemmas amid complex social and psychological pressures.
• Themes of masculinity, sexuality, race, and class intertwine to create intricate narratives that run parallel with some of the major political movements toward social change in mid-twentieth-century America.
• Such as the civil rights movement and the gay liberation movement.
• Baldwin's protagonists are often but not exclusively African American, and gay and bisexual men frequently feature prominently in his literature.
• These characters often face internal and external obstacles in their search for social and self-acceptance. 

The correct answer is Public Cooperation.

Key Points

• Development, planning, and change are interrelated terms.
  • In sociology, development essentially refers to a process of social change, which is planned and desired by society.
  • Development is a value-laden concept.
• Social change refers to alterations that occur in the social structure and social relations.
  • It is a value-free or neutral concept.
  • Planning, which simply means the arrangement of parts in a certain design or a formulated scheme for getting something done, is an important factor in social change.
  • Thus the success of planned change in a democratic society is possible only through Public Cooperation. Hence the correct answer is Public Cooperation.
• Planning implies that ways and means are devised and decisions for future actions are chalked out well in advance.
• All cases of social change cannot be described as development.
• Only, planned and desired social change can be described as development.

Important Points

• Auguste Comte: Auguste Comte tried to understand social changes that occurred in the early years of the industrial revolution as an evolutionary
  process.
  • Evolution implies gradual transformation or changes through a series of stages.
  • The theory of evolution explains that societies pass through a number of stages starting from a simple form and becoming more complex as the process of evolution progresses.
• Herbert Spencer: Herbert Spencer treated human society as a biological organism and, therefore, tried to study ‘development’ in the sense of change
  from within.
• Max Weber: He examined the question of development and change in the context of his study on capitalism.
• Karl Marx: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in contrast to Durkheim and Weber argued that the processes of social change and development were in their nature not gradual and evolutionary; rather they were characterized by a conflict of interests among classes in society.

The correct answer is Marx.

Key Points

• In contrast to Durkheim and Weber, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels claimed that the processes of social change and growth were inherently not gradual and evolutionary, but rather marked by conflicts of interests among social classes.
• They essentially discussed the imbalance between a society's creative capacity and its members' allocation of goods and services.
• As a result, this view holds that social change occurs as a result of potential conflicts and radical breaks in continuity, rather than as a result of continuous progression.
• Class conflict has long been recognized as a major driver of societal change and development.
• Entrepreneurial growth, according to Max Weber, is contingent on society's ethical-moral system.
• The treatment of the protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism is the primary figure in Weber's theory of social change.
• Religion and its impact on entrepreneurial culture are also examined in this hypothesis.
• According to Weber, the spirit of rapid industrial growth depends upon the rationale of use technology, acquisition of money, and its rational use for productivity and multiplication of money.
• These elements of industrial growth depend upon a specific value orientation of individuals, i.e., the tendency of acquisition and rational attitude towards action which are generated by ethical values.
• And individual growth is hampered by the advance of industrial development. Hence option 2) is correct.

The correct answer is Reference group.

Key Points

• Prof. M.N. Srinivas coined the term "Sanskritisation" in Indian sociology.
• The word refers to a process in which members from lower castes work together to embrace upper-caste behaviors and beliefs as a first step toward achieving better social status.
• As a result, this points to a trend of cultural mobility in India's conventional social framework.
• The process of Sanskritisation serves as a “reference group”. Hence option 3) is correct.
• It is through this process a caste group tries to orient its beliefs, practices, values, attitudes, and “lifestyles” in terms of another superior or dominant group so that it can also get some recognition. 
• Sanskritisation does not require economic development, nor does it require economic development to lead to Sanskritisation.
• However, a group (caste/tribe) might begin by gaining political power, which could lead to economic progress and Sanskritisation.
• Modern education, Western literature, and the philosophy of people widened, and as a result, the mental horizons and vision of people changed.
• They welcomed rationality and other good features of and made good use of liberal, and humanitarian ideas and thoughts. 

The correct answer is ​G.S. Ghurye.

Key Points

• Govind Sadashiv Ghurye (1893-1983) is regarded as one of India's early sociologists. He began working at Bombay University's Sociology Department in 1924 and left in 1959.
• He grew up in a traditional Maharashtrian Brahmin family. His conservatism came from his family and stayed with him throughout his life.
• He was an avid writer who had written 32 books on a range of subjects.
• Ideologically, he was a doctrinaire Hindu who saw Hindu texts as the primary source of analysis for his Indian civilization.
• Process of Diffusion
  • Culture diffusion is fundamentally an anthropological theory that deals with the nature of cultural interaction, which occurs primarily among primitive people.
  • Culture is the essential or core aspect for comprehending society and its evolution, according to Ghurye.
  • Culture, in fact, is a broad term that encompasses humanity's whole history.
  • Ghurye's lifelong passion was to study the history of cultural progress as well as the type of inheritance that humanity has rejected in the past.
  • Hence according to him, culture is the memory of the human race. So option 4) is correct.
  • Ghurye thought that for analyzing the dynamics of culture in. a long historical civilization.
  • In this context, the process of accultur­ation is more relevant than the process of diffusion.
  • He thinks that the challenging task of a sociologist is to analyze this complex accul­turation process in India.