Sociology Optional PYQ Solutions · Model answer
Is ‘interpretativism’ more effective than ‘positivism’ in analysing social reality? Discuss.
- UPSC 2026
- Sociology as a Science
Positivism, announced by Auguste Comte in Course in Positive Philosophy (1830–42) and executed by Émile Durkheim in The Rules of Sociological Method (1895), holds that social reality is external and thing-like, and can be measured and causally explained like nature. Interpretativism, running from Max Weber through Alfred Schutz (The Phenomenology of the Social World, 1932)…
You are reading the opening of the model answer. The full answer is part of Sociology Optional PYQ Solutions.
What the full answer covers
- Two claims about what social reality is
- Where interpretativism is the more effective
- Where positivism remains the more effective
- The opposition is overdrawn
- Conclusion
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