UPSC SOCIOLOGY Syllabus :
Paper 1 – Chapter 6 – Politics and Society:
(a) Sociological theories of power
(b) Power elite, bureaucracy, pressure groups, and political parties.
(c) Nation, state, citizenship, democracy, civil society, ideology.
(d) Protest, agitation, social movements, collective action, revolution.
DEMOCRACY
- Democracy is derived from the Latin roots, Demos meaning people and Kratos meaning rule.
- So, it is a government or rule by the people.
- It is famously defined by Abraham Lincoln as a government for the people, of the people and by the people.
- Democracy makes struggle for power more civilized, organised and open to all.
- It is understood in terms of political equality, promoting individual liberty, rule of law, defending common interests and so on.
- In modern times, Indirect democracy or P articipative democracy has become the most common mode of governance.
- Some social thinkers argue that democracy is only one of the many devices to ensure governance in society.
- In a contrasting opinion, Roberto Michels considers current form of democracy as a puppet in the hands of oligarchs.
- Karl Marx contends that though democracy espouses equality still it tolerates inequality in economic and political forms.
- Hans Kelsen calls it tyranny of majority.
CITIZENSHIP
- Citizenship implies the status of freedom with accompanying responsibilities.
- In general, full political rights, including the right to vote and to hold public office, are predicated upon citizenship.
- Citizenship is a status bestowed on those who are full members of a community. All who possess the status are equal with respect to the rights and duties with which the status is endowed. – T H Marshall.
- In the ‘Politics’ (by Aristotle), he discusses three very important issues: first, the question of how precisely to constitute membership – and exclusion; second, the nature of the citizen as person; and third, the nature of politics itself.
- For Rousseau and Locke, social order can only be achieved through the acceptance of all to live via the agreement of the majority for the benefit of all.
- Marxists argue that citizenship is a myth as there is no equality in a capitalist society.
- Mark Smith says that the time has come to stress upon the concept of ecological citizenship in the wake of global ecological crisis.
IDEOLOGY
- It originated from the Latin word Eidos meaning science of ideas and was coined by Antoine Destutt De Tracy.
- Ideology is the lens through which a person views the world.
- Within the field of sociology, ideology is broadly understood to refer to the sum total of a person’s values, beliefs, assumptions, and expectations.
- It refers to a set of particular ideas which present a partial view of reality.
- It has few general elements – beliefs, doctrines and symbols.
- Ideology is often used as a guiding light for directing actions of individuals and is also used as a unifying force for collective actions.
- Karl Popper indicates that every ideology is totalitarian as it is blinded by ideological bias.
- Nigel Harris holds that ideology is value loaded.
- Louis Althusser opines that the institutions and the rituals in which an individual takes part, produce the ideas in mind of the man to which he submits himself to.
- Post Modernists contend that and multiplicity of ideology exist in society.
