IGNOU MSO 003 FREE Solved Assignment 2022-23 PDF  : MSO 003 Solved Assignment 2022 , MSO 003 Solved Assignment 2022-23, MSO 003 Assignment 2022-23, MSO 003 Assignment, IGNOU Assignments 2022-23- Gandhi National Open University had recently uploaded the assignments of the present session for MEG Programme for the year 2022-23. Students are recommended to download their Assignments from this webpage itself.

Section -I

1. What is Development? Contrast the evolutionary models of development as elaborated by Marx and Parsons.

Ans. Development is a process that creates growth, progress, positive change or the addition of physical, economic, environmental, social and demographic components.  The purpose of development is a rise in the level and quality of life of the population, and the creation or expansion of local regional income and employment opportunities, without damaging the resources of the environment.  Development is visible and useful, not necessarily immediately, and includes an aspect of quality change and the creation of conditions for a continuation of that change.

The international agenda began to focus on development beginning in the second half of the twentieth century.  An understanding developed that economic growth did not necessarily lead to a rise in the level and quality of life for populations all over the world;  there was a need to place an emphasis on specific policies that would channel resources and enable social and economic mobility for various layers of the population.

Sociologists in the 19th century applied Charles Darwin’s (1809–1882) work in biological evolution to theories of social change. According to evolutionary theory, society moves in specific directions. Therefore, early social evolutionists saw society as progressing to higher and higher levels. As a result, they concluded that their own cultural attitudes and behaviors were more advanced than those of earlier societies.

Identified as the “father of sociology,” Auguste Comte subscribed to social evolution. He saw human societies as progressing into using scientific methods. Likewise, Emile Durkheim, one of the founders of functionalism, saw societies as moving from simple to complex social structures. Herbert Spencer compared society to a living organism with interrelated parts moving toward a common end. In short, Comte, Durkheim, and Spencer proposed unilinear evolutionary theories, which maintain that all societies pass through the same sequence of stages of evolution to reach the same destiny.

Contemporary social evolutionists like Gerhard Lenski, Jr., however, view social change as multilinear rather than unilinear. Multilinear evolutionary theory holds that change can occur in several ways and does not inevitably lead in the same direction. Multilinear theorists observe that human societies have evolved along differing lines.

Functionalist theory

Functionalist sociologists emphasize what maintains society, not what changes it. Although functionalists may at first appear to have little to say about social change, sociologist Talcott Parsons holds otherwise. Parsons (1902–1979), a leading functionalist, saw society in its natural state as being stable and balanced. That is, society naturally moves toward a state of homeostasis. To Parsons, significant social problems, such as union strikes, represent nothing but temporary rifts in the social order. According to his equilibrium theory, changes in one aspect of society require adjustments in other aspects. When these adjustments do not occur, equilibrium disappears, threatening social order. Parsons’ equilibrium theory incorporates the evolutionary concept of continuing progress, but the predominant theme is stability and balance.

Critics argue that functionalists minimize the effects of change because all aspects of society contribute in some way to society’s overall health. They also argue that functionalists ignore the use of force by society’s powerful to maintain an illusion of stability and integration.

Conflict theory

Conflict theorists maintain that, because a society’s wealthy and powerful ensure the status quo in which social practices and institutions favorable to them continue, change plays a vital role in remedying social inequalities and injustices.

Although Karl Marx accepted the evolutionary argument that societies develop along a specific direction, he did not agree that each successive stage presents an improvement over the previous stage. Marx noted that history proceeds in stages in which the rich always exploit the poor and weak as a class of people. Slaves in ancient Rome and the working classes of today share the same basic exploitation. Only by socialist revolution led by the proletariat (working class), explained Marx in his 1867 Das Kapital, will any society move into its final stage of development: a free, classless, and communist society.

2. Discuss in detail the concept of Modernization and its various perspectives with examples.

Ans. Modernization, in sociology, the transformation from a traditional, rural, agrarian society to a secular, urban, industrial society.

Modern society is industrial society. To modernize a society is, first of all, to industrialize it. Historically, the rise of modern society has been inextricably linked with the emergence of industrial society. All the features that are associated with modernity can be shown to be related to the set of changes that, some 250 years ago, brought into being the industrial type of society. This suggests that the terms industrialism and industrial society imply far more than the economic and technological components that make up their core. Industrialism is a way of life that encompasses profound economic, social, political, and cultural changes. It is by undergoing the comprehensive transformation of industrialization that societies become modern.

Modernization is a continuous and open-ended process. Historically, the span of time over which it has occurred must be measured in centuries, although there are examples of accelerated modernization. In either case, modernization is not a once-and-for-all-time achievement. There seems to be a dynamic principle built into the very fabric of modern societies that does not allow them to settle, or to achieve equilibrium. Their development is always irregular and uneven. Whatever the level of development, there are always “backward” regions and “peripheral” groups. This is a persistent source of strain and conflict in modern societies. Such a condition is not confined to the internal development of individual states. It can be seen on a global scale, as modernization extends outward from its original Western base to take in the whole world. The existence of unevenly and unequally developed nations introduces a fundamental element of instability into the world system of states.

Modernization is a continuous and open-ended process. Historically, the span of time over which it has occurred must be measured in centuries, although there are examples of accelerated modernization. In either case, modernization is not a once-and-for-all-time achievement. There seems to be a dynamic principle built into the very fabric of modern societies that does not allow them to settle, or to achieve equilibrium. Their development is always irregular and uneven. Whatever the level of development, there are always “backward” regions and “peripheral” groups. This is a persistent source of strain and conflict in modern societies. Such a condition is not confined to the internal development of individual states. It can be seen on a global scale, as modernization extends outward from its original Western base to take in the whole world. The existence of unevenly and unequally developed nations introduces a fundamental element of instability into the world system of states.

If one imagines all of human social evolution charted on a 12-hour clock, then the modern industrial epoch represents the last five minutes, no more. For more than half a million years, small bands of what we may agree were human beings roamed the earth as hunters and gatherers. With simple stone tools and a social order based on kinship ties, they successfully preserved the human species against predators and natural calamities.

About 10,000 BCE some of these hunters and gatherers took to cultivating the earth and domesticating animals. It is this process that is somewhat misleadingly called the Neolithic revolution, implying that new stone tools were at the root of this vast change. It is now generally accepted that the new technology was not the principal factor. Nevertheless what took place was undoubtedly a revolution. Mobile bands became settled village communities. The development of the plow raised the productivity of the land a thousand fold, and in response the human population of the planet increased dramatically. More significantly, herding and agriculture for the first time created a surplus of food. This allowed some members of the population to abandon subsistence activities and become artisans, merchants, priests, and bureaucrats. This division of labour took place in a newly concentrated physical environment. In the 4th millennium BCE cities arose, and with them trade, markets, government, laws, and armies.

3. What is Sustainable Development? Discuss critically the future of sustainable development in the context of globalization.

Ans. Sustainable development is an organizing principle for meeting human development goals while also sustaining the ability of natural systems to provide the natural resources and ecosystem services on which the economy and society depend. The desired result is a state of society where living conditions and resources are used to continue to meet human needs without undermining the integrity and stability of the natural system. Sustainable development was defined in the 1987 Brundtland Report as “development that meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. As the concept of sustainable development developed, it has shifted its focus more towards the economic development, social development and environmental protection for future generations.

Sustainable development was first institutionalized with the Rio Process initiated at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. In 2015 the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (2015 to 2030) and explained how the goals are integrated and indivisible to achieve sustainable development at the global level. They address the global challenges, including poverty, inequality, climate change, environmental degradation, peace, and justice.

Sustainable development is interlinked with the normative concept of sustainability. UNESCO formulated a distinction between the two concepts as follows: “Sustainability is often thought of as a long-term goal (i.e. a more sustainable world), while sustainable development refers to the many processes and pathways to achieve it.” The concept of sustainable development has been criticized in various ways. While some see it as paradoxical (or an oxymoron) and regard development as inherently unsustainable, others are disappointed in the lack of progress that has been achieved so far. Part of the problem is that “development” itself is not consistently defined.

Sustainability is a societal goal that broadly aims for humans to safely co-exist on planet Earth over a long time. Specific definitions of sustainability are difficult to agree on and therefore vary in the literature and over time. Sustainability is commonly described along the lines of three dimensions (also called pillars): environmental, economic and social. This concept can be used to guide decisions at the global, national and at the individual level. In everyday usage of the term, sustainability is often focused mainly on the environmental aspects. The most dominant environmental issues since around 2000 have been climate change, loss of biodiversity, loss of ecosystem services, land degradation, and air and water pollution. Humanity is now exceeding several “planetary boundaries”. Reducing these negative impacts on the environment would improve environmental sustainability.

Sustainable development has its roots in ideas about sustainable forest management, which were developed in Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries. 6–16  In response to a growing awareness of the depletion of timber resources in England, John Evelyn argued, in his 1662 essay Sylva, that “sowing and planting of trees had to be regarded as a national duty of every landowner, in order to stop the destructive over-exploitation of natural resources.” In 1713, Hans Carl von Carlowitz, a senior mining administrator in the service of Elector Frederick Augustus I of Saxony published Sylvicultura economics, a 400-page work on forestry. Building upon the ideas of Evelyn and French minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert, von Carlowitz developed the concept of managing forests for sustained yield. His work influenced others, including Alexander von Humboldt and Georg Ludwig Hartig, eventually leading to the development of the science of forestry. This, in turn, influenced people like Gifford Pinchot, the first head of the US Forest Service, whose approach to forest management was driven by the idea of wise use of resources, and Aldo Leopold whose land ethic was influential in the development of the environmental movement in the 1960s.

Following the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962, the developing environmental movement drew attention to the relationship between economic growth and environmental degradation. Kenneth E. Boulding, in his influential 1966 essay The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth, identified the need for the economic system to fit itself to the ecological system with its limited pools of resources. Another milestone was the 1968 article by Garrett Hardin that popularized the term “tragedy of the commons”. One of the first uses of the term sustainable in the contemporary sense was by the Club of Rome in 1972 in its classic report on the Limits to Growth, written by a group of scientists led by Dennis and Donella Meadows of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Describing the desirable “state of global equilibrium”, the authors wrote: “We are searching for a model output that represents a world system that is sustainable without sudden and uncontrolled collapse and capable of satisfying the basic material requirements of all of its people.” That year also saw the publication of the influential A Blueprint for Survival book.

In 1975, an MIT research group prepared ten days of hearings on “Growth and Its Implication for the Future” for the US Congress, the first hearings ever held on sustainable development.

In 1980, the International Union for Conservation of Nature published a world conservation strategy that included one of the first references to sustainable development as a global priority and introduced the term “sustainable development”.   Two years later, the United Nations World Charter for Nature raised five principles of conservation by which human conduct affecting nature is to be guided and judged.

Since the Brundtland Report, the concept of sustainable development has developed beyond the initial intergenerational framework to focus more on the goal of “socially inclusive and environmentally sustainable economic growth”.  In 1992, the UN Conference on Environment and Development published the Earth Charter, which outlines the building of a just, sustainable, and peaceful global society in the 21st century. The action plan Agenda 21 for sustainable development identified information, integration, and participation as key building blocks to help countries achieve development that recognizes these interdependent pillars. Furthermore, Agenda 21 emphasizes that broad public participation in decision making is a fundamental prerequisite for achieving sustainable development.

The Rio Protocol was a huge leap forward: for the first time, the world agreed on a sustainability agenda. In fact, a global consensus was facilitated by neglecting concrete goals and operational details. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) now have concrete targets (unlike the results from the Rio Process) but no methods for sanctions.

Section-II

4. Discuss the changing perspectives on women’s development. 

Ans. Women in development is an approach of development projects that emerged in the 1960s, calling for treatment of women’s issues in development projects. It is the integration of women into the global economies by improving their status and assisting in total development. However, the priority of Women in Development later became concerned with how women could contribute to development, away from its initial goals of addressing equity. Later, the Gender and development (GAD) approach proposed more emphasis on gender relations rather than seeing women’s issues in isolation.

In Africa, one of the first to recognise the importance of women in farming was Hermann Baumann in 1928, with his classic article The Division of Work According to African Hoe Culture. Kaberry published a much-quoted study of women in the Cameroon in 1952, and empirical data on male and female activities was documented in Nigerian Cocoa Farmers published in 1956 by Galletti, Baldwin and Dina. Ester Boserup’s pioneering Women’s Role in Economic Development brought greater attention to the importance of women’s role in agricultural economies and the lack of alignment of development projects with this reality. In the preface to her book, Boserup wrote that “in the vast and ever-growing literature on economic development, reflections on the particular problems of women are few and far between”. She showed that women often did more than half the agricultural work, in one case as much as 80%, and that they also played an important role in trade.

In other countries, women were severely underemployed. According to the 1971 census in India, women constituted 48.2% of the population but only 13% of economic activity. Women were excluded from many types of formal job, so 94% of the female workforce was engaged in the unorganized sector employed in agriculture, agro-forestry, fishery, handicrafts and so on. With growing awareness of women’s issues, in the 1970s development planners began to try to integrate women better into their projects to make them more productive. The WID approach initially accepted existing social structures in the recipient country and looked at how to better integrate women into existing development initiatives. The straightforward goal was to increase the productivity and earnings of women.

The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) established a special Division for Women in Development, promoting concrete action to ensure that women participate in UNDP projects. The United Nations paper International Development Strategy for the Third United Nations Development Decade, issued in 1980, recognized a number of Women in Development issues. It called for women to play an active role in all sectors and at all levels of the Program of Action adopted by the World Conference of the United Nations Decade for Women, both as agents and beneficiaries. Policies on industrialization, food and agriculture, science and technology and social development should all involve women.

A 1985 report by the OECD Development Center surveyed a broad sample of development projects aimed at women. It concluded that many were too welfare-oriented. It said “future projects should avoid the home economics approach and focus on income-generating activities which are relevant and useful to the women participating”. It also noted the lack of information about women’s roles and activities, and called for greater research as input to development projects.

The Harvard Analytical Framework attempted to address these concerns. The framework has its origins in 1980 with a request to Harvard University for WID training from the World Bank. James Austin, who was well known for case-method training at Harvard, led a team with three women experienced in WID work: Catherine Overholt, Mary Anderson and Kathleen Cloud. These became known as the “Harvard Team”. The framework was elaborated by the Harvard Institute for International Development in collaboration with the WID office of USAID, and was first described in 1984 by Catherine Overholt and others. It was one of the earliest of such frameworks. The starting point for the framework was the assumption that it makes economic sense for development aid projects to allocate resources to women as well as men, which will make development more efficient – a position named the “efficiency approach”.

In November 1990 the leaders of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) countries endorsed recommendations of the second SAARC ministerial meeting of Women in Development held in June 1990, agreeing that the years 1991–2000 should be observed as the “SAARC Decade of the Girl Child”. A wide range of recommendations for improving the development of female children were accepted.

5. Write a critique of the Marxian perspective of development. 

Ans. Criticism of Marxism (also known as Anti-Marxism) has come from various political ideologies and academic disciplines. This includes general intellectual criticism about dogmatism, a lack of internal consistency, criticism related to materialism (both philosophical and historical), arguments that Marxism is a type of historical determinism or that it necessitates a suppression of individual rights, issues with the implementation of communism and economic issues such as the distortion or absence of price signals and reduced incentives. In addition, empirical and epistemological problems are frequently identified.

Some democratic socialists and social democrats reject the idea that societies can achieve socialism only through class conflict and a proletarian revolution. Many anarchists reject the need for a transitory state phase. Some thinkers have rejected the fundamentals of Marxist theory such as historical materialism and the labour theory of value and have gone on to criticise capitalism and advocate socialism using other arguments.

Some contemporary supporters of Marxism see many aspects of Marxist thought as viable, but they contend that the corpus is incomplete or somewhat outdated in regard to certain aspects of economic, political or social theory. They may therefore combine some Marxist concepts with the ideas of other theorists such as Max Weber—the Frankfurt School provides one example of this approach.

Conservative historian Paul Johnson wrote: ” It must be said that he developed traits characteristic of a certain type of scholar, especially Talmudic ones: a tendency to accumulate immense masses of half-assimilated materials and to plan encyclopedic works which were never completed; a withering contempt for all non-scholars; and extreme assertiveness and irascibility in dealing with other scholars. Virtually all his work, indeed, has the hallmark of Talmudic study: it is essentially a commentary on, a critique of the work of others in his field.”

He continues: “The truth is, even the most superficial inquiry into Marx’s use of evidence forces one to treat with skepticism everything he wrote which relies on factual data”. For example, Johnson stated: “The whole of the key Chapter Eight of Capital is a deliberate and systematic falsification to prove a thesis which an objective examination of the facts showed was untenable”.

Historical materialism remains one of the bases of Marxism. It proposes that technological advances in modes of production inevitably lead to changes in the social relations of production. This economic “base” of society supports, is reflected by and influences the ideological “superstructure” which encompasses culture, religion, politics, and all other aspects of humanity’s social consciousness. It thus looks for the causes of developments and changes in human history in economic, technological and, more broadly, material factors as well as the clashes of material interests among tribes, social classes, and nations. Law, politics, the arts, literature, morality and religion are understood by Marx to make up the superstructure as reflections of the economic base of society. Many critics have argued that this is an oversimplification of the nature of society and claim that the influence of ideas, culture and other aspects of what Marx called the superstructure are just as important as the economic base to the course of society, if not more so. However, Marxism does not claim that the economic base of society is the only determining element in society as demonstrated by the following letter written by Friedrich Engels, Marx’s long-time contributor:

According to the materialist conception of history, the ultimately determining element in history is the production and reproduction of real life. More than this neither Marx nor I ever asserted. Hence if somebody twists this into saying that the economic element is the only determining one he transforms that proposition into a meaningless, abstract, senseless phrase.

According to critics, this also creates another problem for Marxism. If the superstructure also influences the base then there is no need for Marx’s constant assertions that the history of society is one of economic class conflict. This then becomes a classic chicken or the egg argument as to whether the base or the superstructure comes first. Peter Singer proposes that the way to solve this problem is to understand that Marx saw the economic base as ultimately real. Marx believed that humanity’s defining characteristic was its means of production and thus the only way for man to free himself from oppression was for him to take control of the means of production. According to Marx, this is the goal of history and the elements of the superstructure act as tools of history.

Marx held that the relationship between material base and ideological superstructure was a determination relation and not a causal relation. However, some critics of Marx have insisted that Marx claimed the superstructure was an effect caused by the base. For instance, Anarcho-capitalist Murray Rothbard criticized historical materialism by arguing that Marx claimed the “base” of society (its technology and social relations) determined its “consciousness” in the superstructure.

IGNOU MSO 003 FREE Solved Assignment 2022-23 PDF get here all ignou solved assignment 2022-23 , ignou guess paper , ignou help books and ignou exam related material. We help students to get their assignment done with our handwritten services, you can access our all material and services through WhatsApp also , 8130208920