SOC 100 LGCC Social Science People and Society Exam Practice

SOCIOLOGY, ANTHROPOLOGY, AND SOCIAL WORK DEPT.

Sociology 100: People and Society

Instructor: Spring 2019

Part one: Give short answer/definition for only four out of the following;

1- What is sociology? How it deals with the ‘common sense’ and ‘normal’ acts in society?

2-How a class-based society differ from a cast society? Can a class-based society act as a cast system!

3-Durkheim believed that society has a live of its own, explain!

4-How in Weber’s perspective the notion of ‘calling’ affect the development of the capitalist mode of production?

5-What is the different between ideology and any other individual set of thoughts or believes? What makes a set of believe an ideology, and what not? Give an example of an ideology.

Part two: Write four short essays  in response for four of the following:

1-The sociological imagination enables us to grasp history and biography and the relations between the two within society. That is its task and its promise

2-How a materialist perspective differs from the idealist perspective in the sociological account of change in society? Give two examples of a materialist and idealist thinkers.  

3-What is ‘mode of production’, what signifies a capitalist mode of production, what it is about, how it function! What might be wrong about the capitalist mode of production?

4-In his study of “Suicide” Durkheim investigates how, social facts – understood as ways of acting, thinking, and feeling – are external to individuals and have their own reality outside the lives and perceptions of individual people. Explain! And show in your answer how suicide is not only about depression.

5-According to Weber “‘Man is dominated by the making of money, by acquisition as the ultimate purpose of his life. Economic acquisition is no longer subordinated to man as the means for the satisfaction of his material needs’”. How, according to Weber, a specific protestant set of ethics met the needs and rationalities of the spirt of capitalism?   

6-According to Althusser, what are the kinds of ideological state apparatuses in society? What differ them from one another? What is the most important ISA for Althusser, and why?