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Sociology Optional PYQ Solutions · Model answer

How could one use Merton’s concept of deviance to understand the traffic problem in urban India?

  • UPSC 2014
  • Sociological Thinkers

Robert K. Merton ("Social Structure and Anomie", 1938) located deviance not in the individual but in a disjunction between culturally prescribed goals and institutionalised means. Urban Indian traffic is a daily laboratory of this strain: the goal of reaching fast is exalted, while the legitimate means (lane discipline, signals, safe speeds) are slow, crowded and…

You are reading the opening of the model answer. The full answer is part of Sociology Optional PYQ Solutions.

What the full answer covers

  • The anomic situation on city roads
  • Merton's adaptations on the road
  • Enforcement as the missing "institutional" side
  • Limits of the Mertonian reading
  • Conclusion

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