Revision summary
Deterritorialisation: practices unhook from one soil, via finance, media, and migration. The nation-state’s territorial monopoly of force is strained, not abolished. Marx’s world market and Wallerstein precede the slogan; Giddens and Appadurai name intensity. Borders, nationalism, and war re-territorialise. India: remittances and IT versus Census, farms, and internal social borders.
Model answer
Introduction
Deterritorialisation means social practices unhook from a single bounded place. Globalisation of capital, media, and migration does that. The nation-state is a territorial claim to law and force. The statement is strong as a tendency, not as the end of territory.
Body
What deterritorialisation names
- Arjun Appadurai’s scapes: finance, media, and people move across borders faster than maps.
- Anthony Giddens: time–space distanciation; modernity already stretched relations, globalisation intensifies it.
- Immanuel Wallerstein’s world-system: accumulation was never only national.
Nation-state under strain
- Max Weber defined the state as monopoly of legitimate force in a territory. Capital flight, tax havens, and platforms weaken fiscal monopoly even when police remain local.
- Karl Marx already pictured a world market. The nation is a political form inside that market, not its master.
- Human rights, trade treaties, and rating agencies add extra-territorial rules.
- Diasporas vote, remit, and fund parties: belonging without exclusive soil.
Why territory returns
- Borders, passports, and camps are hyper-territorial. Migration control is a booming state craft.
- Nationalism resacralises soil, which Emile Durkheim’s civic cult and later civil religion help read.
- War and sanctions re-territorialise supply chains.
- Talcott Parsons’s goal-attainment subsystem, politics, still needs a territorial centre to tax and to war.
Indian reference
- Liberalisation after 1991, IT exports, and Gulf remittances deterritorialise livelihoods.
- The Census still counts a territorial population. Personal law and internal borders of caste–language re-territorialise intimacy.
- Farmers and informal workers remain place-bound while prices are global.
Examination
- Globalisation involves deterritorialisation of some circuits, especially finance and images.
- The nation-state is reorganised, not erased: it competes to host capital and to police people.
- Robert K. Merton’s latent function of “global culture” can be a new local inequality.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD GLOB[Globalisation] --> DET[Deterritorial circuits] GLOB --> RET[Re-bordering] NS[Nation-state] --> FORCE[Weber territorial force] DET --> NS RET --> NS
Conclusion
Deterritorialisation is a real dimension of globalisation, especially for capital and media. The nation-state remains the territorial organiser of force, census, and most welfare. Examine unhooking and re-bordering together. Weber’s state and Marx’s world market are both still on the map.
Quick related
Students also ask
-
Examine the dialectical relation between tradition and modernity in the study of social change.
Next question in the 2015 paper (Q8). View answer →
-
Has the nation-state ended?
No. It has changed tasks: attract capital, police mobility, and still wage law inside borders.
-
Is the internet placeless?
Content travels. Cables, moderation laws, and identity documents still sit in territories.
PYQ trend
When UPSC asked this
Related PYQs from other years, newest first. Open a question to read it.
-
2017 · Q5(b) · Sociology GS 1 · 10 marks
Discuss the changing interface between state and civil society in post-independent India -
2017 · Q6(c) · Sociology GS 1 · 10 marks
Examine the dynamics of pressure group in multi-party political system -
2016 · Q5(b) · Sociology GS 1 · 10 marks
Discuss the importance of 'power elite' in democracy. -
2016 · Q6(c) · Sociology GS 1 · 15 marks
Examine the role of protest movements in changing the status of Dalits in India. -
2016 · Q7(c) · Sociology GS 1 · 15 marks
To what extent revolution replaces the existing order of society? Discuss. -
2015 · Q5(b) · Sociology GS 1 · 10 marks
"Ideology is crucial for social transformation in a democracy." Discuss. -
2015 · Q6(b) · Sociology GS 1 · 15 marks
Explain the conditions under which a collective action transforms into a social movement. -
2015 · Q7(c) · Sociology GS 1 · 15 marks
Caste ideology appears to have strengthened democracy .Comment.
More from this paper
Q1(a) · UPSC Mains 2015 · Sociology GS 1 · 10 marks
Is sociology a science? Give reasons for your answer.
Sociology as Science
Sociology is a science of patterned social relations, not a physics of persons. Comte, Durkheim, and Marx claimed laws, facts, and historical regularities. Weber, Mead, and Merton add meaning, interaction, and middle-range theory. The claim holds as systematic social science, not as laboratory naturalism.
Q1(b) · UPSC Mains 2015 · Sociology GS 1 · 10 marks
Discuss the relevance of historical method in the study of society.
Sociological Thinkers: Karl Marx
Historical method treats institutions as dated products, not as timeless attitudes. Marx, Weber, and Durkheim all needed sequences of production, domination, and solidarity. Indian caste, law, and Census household forms show path dependence. It situates survey and ethnography; it is not a substitute for them.
Q1(c) · UPSC Mains 2015 · Sociology GS 1 · 10 marks
What are variables? Discuss their role in experimental research.
Research Methods and Analysis
A variable is a property with more than one value. Experiments isolate an independent condition and measure a dependent outcome, with controls. Durkheim and Merton already thought in relations among variables. Weber and Mead limit a stimulus–response reading of persons. Most sociology uses quasi-experiments and surveys, not a closed lab.
Toppers' copies
Toppers' copies for this question will be uploaded soon.