Introduction

The chapter opens with a puzzle that every student has faced: the advice adults give about studying and choosing subjects. Four such suggestions are examined. First, “Study hard and you will do well in life.” Second, “Choose this subject or set of subjects and you will have a better chance of getting a good job.” Third, a gendered warning — “As a boy this does not seem a correct choice” or “As a girl, is your choice practical?” Fourth, a family pressure — “We need you to earn soon, so why pick a long course?” or “You will join the family business, so why study this?”

Now look closely at the first advice. It says success depends entirely on individual effort — the onus rests upon the student. The other three contradict it. The second advice admits that effort alone is not enough; the job market matters. The third and fourth admit that social expectations and family circumstances shape what you can even choose. So the first advice is misleading: it hides the fact that your chances depend on things far beyond your control.

What are those things? The needs of the economy, which are themselves determined by the economic and political policies of the government. And the social background of your family — its class, caste, gender norms, resources. A student’s fate is affected by both these broad political-economic measures and by the family’s position in society. This single example gives a preliminary sense of what sociology does: it studies human society as an interconnected whole, and it studies how society and the individual interact with each other.

The problem of choosing subjects in senior secondary school feels intensely personal — it is a source of private worry for each student. Yet it is also a public issue, affecting students as a collective. One of the tasks of sociology is to unravel the connection between a personal problem and a public issue. This is the first theme of the chapter.

The chapter then raises a second theme. A “good job” means different things in different societies. The social esteem attached to a particular kind of job depends on the culture of the individual’s “relevant society.” But what is the relevant society? Is it the neighbourhood? The community? The caste or tribe? The professional circle of the parents? The nation? In modern times, an individual belongs to more than one society at once. And societies are unequal. The chapter therefore examines this multiplicity and this inequality.

Third, the chapter introduces sociology as a systematic study of society — distinct from philosophical and religious reflections, and distinct from our everyday common-sense observations about society. Common sense is not enough; sociology is a disciplined, methodical way of knowing.

Fourth, this distinct way of studying society becomes clearer if we look back historically at the intellectual ideas and material contexts within which sociology was born and later grew. These ideas and material developments were mainly western, but they had global consequences.

Fifth, the chapter looks at this global aspect and at how sociology emerged in India. Just as each of us has a biography, so does a discipline. Understanding the history of a discipline helps us understand the discipline itself.

Finally, the chapter discusses the scope of sociology and its relationship to other disciplines. That is the full map of the chapter: personal problems versus public issues, multiple and unequal societies, sociology as a systematic science, its western birth and global spread, its emergence in India, and its place among the social sciences.