Revision summary
Revolution can replace political order and, in Marx’s aim, the mode of production. Charisma routinises into new staff (Weber); bureaucracy and oligarchy return (Michels). Durkheim, Mead, and gender analysis show slow everyday remainder. India 1947 replaced the colonial state more than caste society. Extent: high for sovereignty, uneven for class, low for honour in the short run.
Model answer
Introduction
Revolution is a rapid, extra-ordinary break in political sovereignty and, in the Marxist sense, in the mode of production. It can replace a ruling staff and a legal order. The extent to which it replaces the whole existing society is historically limited.
Body
High extent: what can be replaced
- Karl Marx: a social revolution transforms relations of production, not only the palace. 1789 and 1917 aimed at that extent, with different outcomes.
- Max Weber: charisma and then a new legal-rational or traditional staff can replace legitimate domination.
- The French Revolutionary calendar of rights and the Soviet property law show deep legal replacement.
Limited extent: what persists
- Emile Durkheim: moral density and habits do not change on a decree day. Anomie can follow the break.
- George Herbert Mead’s self and everyday generalised others change slowly.
- Family, gender, and unpaid care, as later feminists showed after Oakley, often survive as patriarchal order inside a new state.
- Bureaucracy, in Weber’s and Robert Michels’s keys, reconstitutes minority rule.
- Robert K. Merton: manifest new man, latent old networks.
Indian discussion
- National movement and 1947 replaced colonial sovereignty more than village hierarchy. Caste and property showed high persistence.
- Naxal and other revolutionary projects faced the same extent problem: state smash versus social structure.
Discussion of extent
- Political order: often high replacement of personnel and constitution.
- Class structure: possible but reversible or incomplete.
- Status honour and kinship: lowest extent of replacement in the short run.
- Talcott Parsons would call a full replace a new system; most revolutions are hybrid.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD REV[Revolution] --> POL[New sovereignty staff] REV --> MOP[Possible new production] PER[Kin gender honour habit] --> LIM[Limited replacement]
Conclusion
Revolution can replace sovereignty, law, and a ruling class to a large extent. It replaces everyday honour, gender, and moral habits to a much smaller extent unless a long process follows. Marx names the ambition; Durkheim, Weber, and Mead name the remainder.
Quick related
Students also ask
-
"Education is a major source of social mobility in contemporary society." Explain.
Next question in the 2016 paper (Q8). View answer →
-
Is reform the opposite of revolution?
Reform changes within an order. Revolution claims to found a new order. Empirically they mix.
-
Did any revolution replace everything?
None replaced all of kinship, language, and habit on day one. Claims of total replace are ideological.
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. -
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. -
2015 · Q8(a) · Sociology GS 1 · 20 marks
"Globalization involves deterritorialization ." Examine with reference to the nation-state."
More from this paper
Q1(a) · UPSC Mains 2016 · Sociology GS 1 · 10 marks
"Sociology is pre-eminently study of modern societies." Discuss
Religion and Society
Sociology emerged to explain industrial, political, and secular modern order. Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Mead, and Parsons mapped that object. Comparison with other types is a method, not a betrayal. Colonial India is inside modernity’s history, not outside sociology. Discuss: pre-eminently modern, not exclusively the contemporary West.
Q1(b) · UPSC Mains 2016 · Sociology GS 1 · 10 marks
What is 'value-free sociology'? Clarify
Sociology as Science
Value-free sociology is Weber’s split: values choose questions; proof stays disciplined. It is not Comte’s moral church, not Marx’s fusion of theory and practice, not a view from nowhere. Durkheim’s files, Mead’s interaction, and Harding’s standpoint show the strain. Clarify: a rule of demonstration, not a ban on moral topics.
Q1(c) · UPSC Mains 2016 · Sociology GS 1 · 10 marks
Analyze the importance of qualitative methods in social research
Research Methods and Analysis
Qualitative methods recover meaning, process, and context. Weber, Mead, Blumer, Geertz, and Merton justify that object. They reach hidden groups and latent functions that tables miss. They still need triangulation and comparison. Importance is complementarity with Census and survey magnitudes.
Toppers' copies
Toppers' copies for this question will be uploaded soon.