All Free Sociology MCQs with Answers

• A. None of these
• B. Increased development
• C. Industrialization
• D. Decrease in social solidarity

Explanation: Durkheim identified weakened social integration or solidarity as a root condition of suicide, especially egoistic suicide.

• A. Emile Durkheim
• B. Karl Marx
• C. Max Weber
• D. None of these

Explanation: Émile Durkheim made suicide a sociological subject in his classic 1897 study Suicide, explaining rates through social integration and…

• A. low wages
• B. Alienation from the results of production
• C. Job insecurity
• D. None of these

Explanation: Marx explained working-class unhappiness primarily through alienation, including separation from the product and the meaning of their…

• A. Increasingly happy individuals
• B. Equality in society
• C. Increasingly unhappy individuals
• D. None of these

Explanation: Marx argued that capitalist exploitation and alienation intensify the misery of the proletariat rather than making people increasingly…

• A. the working class
• B. the capitalist
• C. the middle man
• D. None of these

Explanation: The proletariat is the class that sells its labour for wages and does not own the means of production.

• A. Cultural pursuits
• B. rationality
• C. Increased development
• D. None of these

Explanation: Weber linked the transformation of modern society to rationality, meaning systematic calculation, rules and efficiency in institutions…

• A. indoctrination and propaganda
• B. one-party rule
• C. freedom of movement for citizens
• D. a centrally planned economy

Explanation: Totalitarian systems typically rely on one-party rule, propaganda and indoctrination, and strong state control of the economy.

• A. scientists are guided in their work by social values and interests, so they define and measure phenomena that will support their theories
• B. people negotiate shared definitions of their situation and live according to these often forgetting that these social worlds are not fixed and external
• C. sociologists decide what constitutes social reality and measure only that
• D. terms like reality have no deeper meaning beyond the level of discourse

Explanation: Berger and Luckmann argued that people create and maintain social reality through shared meanings and repeated interaction, then come to…

• A. both a and b
• B. scientific management approach
• C. human relations approach
• D. classical theory

Explanation: Unionisation challenged the view of workers as mere instruments of production and encouraged revisions to both classical organisation…

• A. Interdependence
• B. All of these
• C. Occupational Friendships
• D. Specialization

Explanation: Durkheim linked the division of labour with greater specialisation and organic solidarity, in which people become interdependent through…

• A. Individualism
• B. Social alienation
• C. Social solidarity
• D. None of these

Explanation: Durkheim treated social solidarity as the force integrating individuals into society: mechanical solidarity rests on similarity, while…

• A. Democracy
• B. None of these
• C. Dictatorship
• D. Communism

Explanation: Marx connected alienation to private ownership of the means of production and exploitation of wage labour.

• A. the capitalist
• B. the working class
• C. equally distributed
• D. to none of these

Explanation: Marx argued that workers produce the value appropriated by capitalists as profit, creating exploitation and alienation.

• A. the capitalist
• B. the working class
• C. the middle man
• D. None of these

Explanation: In Marxist sociology, the bourgeoisie are the capitalist class who own the means of production.

• A. both of these
• B. Self-denial
• C. None of these
• D. Self-actualization

Explanation: For Marx, species-being refers to humans’ distinctive capacity for conscious, creative and self-directed activity, which is closest here…

• A. Max Weber
• B. Emile Durkhiem
• C. August Comte
• D. Karl Marx

Explanation: Max Weber used the image of the iron cage to describe how rational rules and bureaucracy can trap individuals in impersonal systems of…

• A. Weber
• B. Marx
• C. Parsons
• D. Lincoln

Explanation: Marx treated capitalist stratification mainly as a conflict between the bourgeoisie, who own the means of production, and the proletariat…

• A. the best possible outcome available
• B. a perspective emphasizing the primacy of ideas
• C. a model based on certain features of a phenomenon
• D. the social agenda of political idealists

Explanation: Weber’s ideal type is an analytical model that selects and emphasises certain features of a social phenomenon to aid comparison.

• A. the tendency for the working class not to realize their own interests
• B. a mode of payment given for outstanding topiary
• C. a form of dual consciousness based on ideology and everyday experiences
• D. a dominant ideology that legitimates economic political

Explanation: Hegemony is domination maintained partly through ideas and cultural beliefs that make an existing economic and political order appear…

• A. Harriet Martineau
• B. Max Weber
• C. Auguste Comte
• D. Emile Durkheim

Explanation: Harriet Martineau examined social status alongside gender, race and other inequalities in Society in America.