BSOC 108 Solved Guess Paper 2026 for Economic Sociology (BASOH)

What is economic sociology? In what way does it differ from economics?

Answer. Economic sociology is the branch of sociology that studies economic phenomena such as production, distribution, exchange and consumption as social processes, embedded in networks, institutions, norms and power relations. It treats the economy not as a self-contained mechanism but as one institution among many within society.

The difference from economics lies mainly in assumptions and method. Mainstream economics begins with the rational, self-interested individual who maximises utility under conditions of scarcity, and it treats preferences as given. Economic sociology begins with the socially situated actor whose preferences are formed by class, caste, religion, kinship and culture. Where the economist asks how a market clears, the sociologist asks who is allowed into the market in the first place.

Three further contrasts are worth stating. First, on the unit of analysis, economics privileges the individual while sociology privileges groups, networks and institutions. Second, on method, economics leans on deductive modelling and quantification, while economic sociology leans on comparative, historical and ethnographic work.

Third, on the conception of the economy itself, Karl Polanyi's distinction between the formal and substantive meanings of economy is decisive. The formal meaning concerns rational choice under scarcity. The substantive meaning concerns how humans actually secure their livelihood from their natural and social environment, and economic sociology works with that second meaning.

Mark Granovetter later sharpened this with the concept of embeddedness, arguing that economic action is neither purely atomised nor wholly determined by social structure, but is carried through concrete, ongoing social relations of trust and obligation.

In conclusion, economic sociology does not reject economics so much as widen its frame. It restores to view the social scaffolding, trust, reciprocity, status and authority, without which no market could function at all.

What do you understand by reciprocity? Outline its different forms.

Answer. Reciprocity is a form of exchange in which goods and services move between parties on the basis of mutual obligation and social relationship, rather than through price-setting markets or centralised redistribution. The return is expected, but it is not immediate, itemised or legally enforceable, and the delay itself is what sustains the relationship.

Karl Polanyi identified reciprocity as one of three forms of economic integration, alongside redistribution and market exchange, and located it in symmetrically arranged groups such as kin sets and villages.

Marshall Sahlins refined this into a well-known threefold classification. Generalised reciprocity is the altruistic pole, where giving carries no stated expectation of return, no accounting of value and no time limit. Feeding a child, or sharing food within a household, belongs here.

Balanced reciprocity is the midpoint, where the return is of roughly equivalent value and is expected within a defined period. Gift exchange at weddings and festivals, and traditional barter, fall in this category. Negative reciprocity is the unsociable pole, where each party tries to gain at the other's expense through haggling, deception or even theft.

Sahlins connected these forms to social distance. Generalised reciprocity dominates within the household and close kin, balanced reciprocity operates between neighbours and lineage members, and negative reciprocity appears with strangers and enemies. As kinship distance increases, the exchange becomes more calculating.

In the Indian context, the jajmani system illustrates long-running reciprocal obligations between service castes and patron households, sustained across generations rather than settled transaction by transaction.

In conclusion, reciprocity demonstrates that exchange can organise an entire economy without money or markets, held together instead by obligation, memory and social pressure.

Explain the functions of money in society.

Answer. Money is any generally accepted object or token that serves as a medium of exchange, and in sociological terms it is also a social institution resting on collective trust in its continued acceptance. A note has value because everybody expects everybody else to accept it.

Its economic functions are conventionally four. As a medium of exchange, money removes the double coincidence of wants that cripples barter. As a measure of value, it provides a common unit in which unlike goods can be priced and compared. As a store of value, it allows purchasing power to be held across time. As a standard of deferred payment, it makes credit, rent, wages and debt contracts possible.

The sociological functions matter just as much. Georg Simmel argued in The Philosophy of Money that money enlarges individual freedom by replacing personal bonds of dependence with impersonal obligation. A tenant who pays rent in cash is freer than one who pays in labour service. At the same time, Simmel warned that money flattens qualitative differences into quantity, encourages a calculating and blasé attitude, and drains transactions of personal meaning.

Money also functions as a marker of status and power, since command over it converts readily into influence, and it extends the geographical and temporal reach of exchange far beyond face-to-face contact.

Anthropological work complicates the picture usefully. Studies of special-purpose money show that in many societies certain currencies could purchase only certain categories of goods, which means money is not always the universal solvent modern economies assume it to be.

In conclusion, money is simultaneously a technical instrument that makes complex exchange possible and a social force that reshapes freedom, intimacy and inequality.

What is the domestic mode of production? Discuss the politics in the domestic mode of production.

Answer. The domestic mode of production is the concept developed by Marshall Sahlins to describe economies in which the household is the basic unit of production, using its own labour and its own means of production, chiefly to meet its own consumption needs rather than to generate a surplus for sale.

Its defining features are a household division of labour organised mainly by age and sex, simple and widely available technology, production geared to livelihood rather than accumulation, and a marked tendency towards underproduction. Households routinely work below their real capacity, stopping once needs are met, which Sahlins linked to Chayanov's rule that intensity of labour falls as the ratio of workers to consumers in the household rises.

The politics arise precisely because this mode contains a centrifugal tendency. Each household is economically self-sufficient and therefore has little structural need for the wider society, which pulls the community towards fragmentation. Something must work against that pull.

Kinship provides the first counterweight, since ties of marriage and descent generate obligations that reach across household boundaries. Reciprocal exchange provides the second, binding households into networks of debt and expectation.

The third counterweight is political leadership. Sahlins showed how the Melanesian big-man builds a following by pressing his own household and his kin to produce above their needs, then redistributing that surplus through feasts and gifts to accumulate prestige and obligation.

This creates an internal tension. Leadership depends on surplus, yet the domestic mode resists producing surplus. The big-man's authority is therefore always precarious, sustained by persuasion rather than coercion, and it can collapse when he overtaxes his supporters.

In conclusion, the domestic mode of production is not merely an economic arrangement but a political problem, in which kinship, exchange and leadership are the mechanisms by which self-sufficient households are held together as a society.

Discuss the impact of globalisation on Indian society.

Answer. Globalisation is the intensification of worldwide social, economic and cultural interconnection, through which events and decisions in one part of the world increasingly shape everyday life in distant places. In India its decisive phase began with the liberalisation measures of 1991, which opened the economy to foreign investment, reduced licensing controls and lowered trade barriers.

The economic consequences have been genuinely mixed. Growth accelerated, foreign investment expanded, and the information technology and services sectors created a large, visible urban middle class with global consumption habits. Against this, agriculture came under pressure from import competition and input costs, informal employment expanded relative to secure jobs, and regional inequality widened as investment concentrated in a handful of states and metropolitan corridors.

Socially, the effects reach into family and caste. Occupational mobility has weakened the older link between caste and hereditary occupation in urban labour markets, particularly in new sectors with no traditional caste incumbency. Migration for work has accelerated the shift towards nuclear households.

Women's participation in organised service employment has risen, though it frequently coexists with an undiminished burden of unpaid domestic work. That double burden is a point examiners reward when it is stated explicitly rather than implied.

Culturally, the picture is not simple homogenisation. Global media and consumer brands are visible everywhere, yet what emerges is closer to hybridisation, with global forms reworked into local idioms. Alongside this runs a counter-current of assertive cultural and religious identity, which many sociologists read as a response to the disorientation globalisation produces.

Critics such as Arjun Appadurai stress that global cultural flows are uneven and imaginative rather than uniform, while dependency theorists argue the terms of integration remain weighted towards advanced economies.

In conclusion, globalisation has expanded opportunity for some Indians while deepening insecurity for others, and its social consequences are best read as uneven and contradictory rather than uniformly good or bad.