Nature and Scope of sociology — Specialistic and synthetic schools

Ask five people what sociology is about and you get five different answers — crime, family, caste, media, the economy. That is not confusion; it is the debate this topic is built on. Some scholars think sociology should stick to one narrow lane, others think its job is to synthesise everything the social sciences know into one picture of society. The exam wants you to know both camps and to say, in the end, whether sociology is a science at all.

In two minutes

The specialistic school confines sociology to one specific aspect of social life, while the synthetic school treats it as the master science that synthesises the findings of all other social sciences.

The rest of this chapter

The full explanation, the cheat sheet, every previous-year question at every mark weight, the quiz and the answer skeletons are part of Sociology on LexBlox Semester. Sign in to unlock the subject, or read Module 1 of Legal Language and Writing free.