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Sociology Optional PYQ Solutions · Model answer

What are the shortfalls of positivist philosophy that gave rise to the non-positivist methods of studying social reality?

  • UPSC 2022
  • Sociology as a Science

Auguste Comte and Emile Durkheim built positivism on the claim that society could be studied with the same objectivity, causal law-seeking, and unity of method as the natural sciences, treating social facts as external "things."

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

What the full answer covers

  • Ignoring Subjective Meaning → Weber's Verstehen
  • Treating Humans as Passive Objects → Symbolic Interactionism
  • Assuming a Stable Reality Knowable Independent of Consciousness → Phenomenology
  • Claiming Universal, Context-Free Laws → Ethnomethodology's Local Order

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