Breaking down the question
The verb here is precise. To delimit is to draw boundaries — to say where sociology begins and ends in relation to its neighbours. The examiner is not asking for a general essay on what sociology is, but for a considered account of its distinctive province set against economics, political science, history, anthropology and psychology.
The phrase in relation to other social sciences signals that comparison is the core task. You must show both the overlap sociology shares with cognate disciplines and the feature that marks it out. The tension between the formal school, which claims a narrow special field for sociology, and the synthetic school, which treats it as a general science of society, gives the answer its analytical spine.
At 10 marks, the answer should be tight — a clear statement of the debate about scope, a comparison across at least three disciplines, and a reasoned position rather than a mere catalogue.
How to approach it
Open by noting that the scope of sociology has itself been contested, and frame the formal versus synthetic debate at once. This shows the examiner you understand that delimitation is a live question, not a settled fact.
Then compare sociology with its neighbours in turn — economics, political science, history, anthropology — identifying what each studies and how sociology's concern with social relationships and the whole of society differs. Our discussion of the scope of sociology and other social sciences develops each comparison further.
Conclude by resolving the tension: sociology is distinctive not in owning an exclusive subject matter but in its holistic, relational perspective on social life, which lets it integrate the insights of the specialised disciplines.
Model answer
The scope of sociology has been debated since its founding, and two broad positions frame any attempt to delimit it. The formal school, associated with Georg Simmel, Ferdinand Tonnies and Leopold von Wiese, holds that sociology should confine itself to a special field — the abstract forms of social relationships, such as cooperation, conflict, competition and subordination — leaving concrete content to the other social sciences. The synthetic school, represented by Emile Durkheim, Pitirim Sorokin and L. T. Hobhouse, regards sociology as a general and integrating science of society as a whole, drawing together the findings of the specialised disciplines.
Delimiting sociology therefore means comparing it with its neighbours. Economics studies a single, abstracted aspect of social life — the production, distribution and consumption of wealth — assuming much about human behaviour that sociology treats as problematic. Sociology, by contrast, situates economic activity within its social context, examining how kinship, status and values shape markets. Political science concentrates on the state, government and power in their formal, organised expression, whereas sociology studies power and authority as they permeate all social relationships, including the family and the workplace. History is concerned with the concrete, unique sequence of past events, while sociology seeks recurring patterns and general regularities in social life, though the two disciplines increasingly borrow from one another.
Social anthropology and sociology are especially close, both studying culture, institutions and social structure; the conventional distinction — anthropology examining small, simple, non-literate societies and sociology modern, complex ones — has largely dissolved, and today they differ more in method and emphasis than in subject matter. Psychology addresses the individual mind and behaviour, whereas sociology attends to collective phenomena and the social forces acting upon individuals, though social psychology bridges the two.
What emerges is that sociology cannot claim an exclusive territory untouched by any other discipline. Its distinctiveness lies rather in its perspective: it studies society as a whole, focusing on social relationships, institutions and structures, and it views every dimension of human life — economic, political, religious — as socially embedded and mutually connected. This holistic and relational standpoint allows sociology to synthesise the partial insights of the specialised sciences into an understanding of the total social reality.
In conclusion, sociology is best delimited not by fencing off a subject matter denied to others, but by its integrating, relational and holistic approach. It overlaps everywhere yet duplicates nowhere, because it asks a distinctive question — how the social whole shapes and is shaped by its parts.
Examiner's perspective
The examiner rewards candidates who treat delimitation as an argument rather than a list. A weak answer simply describes economics, then politics, then history in isolation; a strong one keeps sociology in the frame throughout, using each comparison to sharpen sociology's distinctive claim.
The best responses name the formal and synthetic schools with their proponents, compare sociology with at least three neighbouring disciplines, and close with a clear position — that sociology's identity rests on its holistic, relational perspective. Mentioning the blurring of the sociology-anthropology boundary and the rise of interdisciplinary work signals awareness that these limits are not fixed, which lifts the answer within the 10-mark scope.