Sociology
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The course introduces Political Ecology as a theoretical approach and as a development critique under global capitalism. Political Ecology distinctly applies the principles of political economy to understand the relationship between social ecology, culture, and the environment. This inter-disciplinary approach synthesizes central social questions on the relationship between political economy, social organization, and humanized nature with specific reference to developing contexts such as India. The advance of neo-liberalism has fostered a critical discourse on the urgent need for global environmental governance and checking environmental degradation under global capitalism. On successful completion of this course, the student will be familiar with debates on political ecology as an analytical frame of enquiry, and criticism of development under market environmentalism at the local and the global level.
This course will familiarize a student with major development issues affecting Northeast India, the shifts in Government of India policy towards North-east India, and how democratization has shaped identity expressions and led to organization of social movements in this region.
This course will introduce students to advanced topics in Sociology as decided by the instructor.
This course will introduce students to inter-disciplinary perspectives on agriculture and rural development across the world using historical and contemporary sources.
• To familiarize students with the debates around agrarian societies and their origins
• To help students understand the problems around simplistic binaries of rural/urban or agrarian/industrial
• To train students to think critically and write effectively about concepts and ideas related to agrarian political economy
• To build a comparative perspective on the agrarian question and its implications for social life
• To help students think about the connections between agrarian histories, emergent futures and policy directions.
This course seeks to critically examine the historical development of capitalism in the context of the advanced industrial and developing societies. It discusses how capitalism as a mode of production has restructured itself over the centuries. Specifically, it discusses the various theories of capitalism and the processes of transformation from classical industrial capitalism to contemporary neo-liberalism.
This course will examine how civil society or associational community interacts with the state and the market in India and what implications has it had for the broader processes and institutions of democracy, citizenship and governance.
The course will familiarize students with contemporary sociological theorists and trace the interlinkages with narrative theory and political thought. It will enable students to critically evaluate theories, concepts, and ideas in an understanding of the contemporary moment.
The course introduces students to theories and critical perspectives pertaining to multiple sites and practices of education. It explores the processes that bring education in relationship with varied social structures such as caste, class, gender and race. Students will also be engaging with ethnographic studies from diverse social and cultural contexts to understand questions of inequality, aspirations, and mobility in schooling, higher education and informal learning. The course will situate cultures of learning and the making of ‘knowledge economy’ in the neoliberal context. It will tackle questions of inequality and access that have come to acquire a much greater significance in educational policy in the post-covid world.
Students will be exposed to contemporary themes and debates on connection between environment, development, and society; industrialization and risk society; challenge of sustainable development; perception of the environment, dependence for livelihood, identity, and power on natural resources; social ecology; what is the role of religion in determining our world view and relation with the environment?; recognition of indigenous knowledge; rise of environmental movements, development projects and recent conflict over natural resources; understanding major environmental disasters and industrial accidents; global climate change negotiations; gender and environment.
This is a seminar-style course designed to critically interrogate the concept of the state as an object of ethnographic enquiry. The course will attempt to disaggregate the state as a taken-for-granted entity or institution and focus on the multiple ways in which the state can be realized as an idea or ‘effect’.
This course seeks to train PG students in ethnographic methods of research in sociology and social anthropology. The course will engage with theoretical, philosophical and methodological debates that have framed the ethnographic project. Issues and challenges in ethnographic research will be discussed in addition to framing academic debates on questions of reflexivity, subjectivity and representation. The course will also introduce students to some of the basic tools of ethnographic research, such as participant observation.
This course introduces students to sociological perspectives on the study of family, marriage and kinship. It will help students engage with classical and contemporary understanding of the three institutions and their relationship with other social structures. The course will frame disciplinary and theoretical perspectives on concepts such as procreation, relatedness, care and love -- all of which have continued to shape the multiple meanings of family, kinship and marriage across cultures. The course maps significant debates that have marked kinship and family studies, including the nature-culture divide, alternative forms of family and the shifts beyond genealogy.
This course will start with key debates in the practice of ethnography and proceed to introduce students to techniques of fieldwork such as observation, participant observation, interviewing, recording conversations, thick description and writing fieldnotes.
The course will familiarize students with contemporary conceptual understandings of gender and its relationship with other dimensions of human social life. It will explore the relationship between ‘sex’ and gender and focus on the socio-cultural processes that produce gendered identities in time and space. It will further examine the relationship of gender and gendered identities with work and economy, family, kinship, reproduction, marriage, religion and the political sphere.
The manner in which gender is conceptualized and performed is foundational to the understanding of human social relationships. Gender identities are not fixed or determined purely by physiology; their social construction affects ideas of masculinity and femininity or other sexual identities. Besides understanding how sex and gender are interrelated, we will look at how gender intertwines with societal areas of economy, technology, polity, religion and demography. The important role played by social structures and institutions such as caste, kinship, family, marriage, ethnicity, religion and class in structuring gender and vice- versa will be brought out. Technologies associated with population and biological sciences have transformed and are continuing to transform society and human relationships in particular directions. The course will examine these transformations at the global and local levels and consider their impact on individual lives. Challenges posed to intimate human relationships and identities by new reproductive technologies such as invitro-fertilization, surrogacy, sex selection will be explored. What does the emergence/ institutionalisation of new social forms - such as same sex marriages and parenthood by surrogacy - tell us about the possibilities and limits of human relationships?
To introduce students to current and ongoing debates on challenges posed by various aspects of globalization and debates therein. Globalization is impacting our everyday life and this course enables us to understand how social-cultural, political and economic aspects of globalization interact and are shaping the emergent world.
The basic aim of this course is to introduce students to the study and understanding of modern industrial societies.
Globalization and Globality; Classical theories to understanding work and industry; Understanding Work, Work Ethic and Work Culture; Post-industrial society and rise of informational economy; Job-satisfaction and alienation; Equalization of Opportunities and the Flattening of the World; Outsourcing as a Business Strategy; Important changes in industry and rise of IT sector and BPO industry; Governance and Collective Organization of Workers in select sectors; Corporate Social Responsibility
The main objective of this course is to introduce PhD students to the basics elements of research design and methods such as identify their paradigm of inquiry, research questions, variables of interest and sample of respondents for their research studies.
The course will introduce students to the study of sociology and some basic underpinnings of sociological theory and methodology. The emergence of sociology as a scientific discipline is examined in the context of the development of Industrial society in Western Europe. The course will examine the writings of key classical social thinkers such as Marx, Durkheim and Weber as well as more contemporary theorists such as Michel Foucault, with a view to understanding various sociological approaches to modern industrial society.
This course will begin with a discussion on the various constructions of Indian society from colonial to contemporary times. The structural and cultural dimensions of Indian society are explored at the level of village, city, region, nation and civilization. Sources of differentiation, diversity and unity are explored through institutions such as caste, class and tribe; kinship, family, marriage and gender systems, religious traditions and political organisations. Transformations in these institutions are analysed and fault lines explored by studying contemporary issues of secularism, communalism, religious conversions, caste and identity movements. The sociological perspective remains key to interpreting changes in Indian society in the era of globalization and rapid economic change.
The course seeks to undertake a study of language as a social and cultural product. The role of language in the construction of collective identity, nationalism, ethnic and religious movements will be considered. Theoretical orientations to the study of language such as Structuralism and Marxism will be followed up with case studies on the interface between language and nationalism, language as social capital and language policy.
This course explores theories and perspectives on the idea of the everyday in social anthropology. It will help students engage with the numerous dilemmas and complexities that have been written about while making sense of the quotidian, mundane, and banal ‘everyday life’. Departing from the fuzziness and ambiguity that envelopes the commonsensical notion(s) of the everyday, the course will draw upon debates and critiques that have shaped the epistemology of the everyday.
The course examines the construction of the 'media- event', the 'spectacle' and the fetishism of the image- object and its role in determining the collective consciousness of our times. Some of the questions addressed in this course are: how are 'media-events' created? What is the role of the media (this includes mass media, advertisements, as well as forms of social and digital media) in determining the nature of the 'self' and 'society.'?
This module draws on methodological debates in history and sociology/social anthropology in order to better understand how the ‘past’ can be used as a resource in ethnographic work. It reflects on the social turn in history writing as well as the historical turn in sociology, both the doing of ‘historical fieldwork’ and the notion of conducting ‘ethnography in the archives.’
This course is an advanced undergraduate sociology course on the political ecology of water. It discusses people's historic and current engagement with water, sustainable development and water, the recent controversies and emergent resource conflict over water in the context of industrial development, design and implementation of hydropower projects, water pollution management, and conservation strategies (modern and traditional) and relates them to relevant national policies.
This course covers an in-depth understanding of the theory and practice of ethnography. Students will engage with a wide variety of ethnographies from diverse contexts while exploring the debates and tensions that have shaped ethnographic practice. The course will investigate the many dimensions of ethnographic writing as the genre continues to be situated as text, narrative, and often, as a form of storytelling. The course will draw upon classical as well as contemporary ethnographic monographs to bring together the themes of methods, field, fieldwork, location, representation, epistemology and ethics.
The course introduces students to the study of religion in contemporary society. It addresses the constitution of religion as an epistemological and cognitive category. The course covers sociological, anthropological, philosophical and psychological approaches to religious belief and practice. Key themes include: religious boundaries, identity, conversion, syncretism, ritual, ethics, symbols, nationalism, secularism, conflict and change in the context of South Asian religions.
The course will begin with social theories on the production of technology and scientific knowledge systems, stratification within the community of technologists and scientists, discrimination (race, class, gender, caste) and the role of power in shaping the production of technology and scientific knowledge. Scientific controversies, both historical and emerging, and the organization of innovation and its geographies will be discussed. Case studies exploring ethical questions arising from new technologies such as information technology, nanotechnologies, biotechnologies, etc. will be used. Discussions on public understanding of science and role of the public and of experts in influencing policies related to science and technology will conclude the course.
The course will introduce students to selected topics in Sociology as decided by the instructor
Distinction between 'growth‘ and 'development‘; historical genesis and evolution of the concept of development; theories of development and underdevelopment; the political nature of the development process. Role of state, market, culture and civil society in development. Gendered nature of development. Post-independence Indian experience (centralized planning and socialism) of development; selected comparisons with China, East Asia, South Asia, Africa, Latin America. Explaining India‘s slow progress in human and social development, poor record in reduction of poverty and inequality. Impact of globalization, foreign aid and economic reform on India‘s development. Experiments with decentralization and sustainable development.
This course is designed to provide graduate students with a broad perspective on classical and modern theoretical perspectives in sociology and social anthropology.
This course introduces students to classical and contemporary theories and debates in Indian sociology including the various concepts and approaches used to study Indian society. It provides a historical overview of Indian society from colonial times to the present, focusing on processes and drivers of social change.
This course will introduce students to theories in the sociology of science, explore how scientific knowledge is produced and validated, and study its relationship to other forms of knowledge in society.
This course will introduce students to sociological approaches to the study of religion in contemporary society. Religion will be understood in terms of its social and cultural structure; in addition the course will also encourage a critical perspective on religion and society – its interface with society, polity and the economy. Religious conflict and change, syncretism, popular religion, revivalism and fundamentalism will also be considered.
This main objective of this course is to introduce PhD students to a set of tools for empirical research in Sociology in particular, but it would also be useful for other disciplines in social sciences such as Economics, Psychology and Policy Studies.
• Students will understand the processes in the making of the ‘urban’, as habitat, space and culture, and also as an object of study from an anthropological perspective.
• Examine the concepts around the urban – such as urbanism, urbanisation- and their applicability in cities of the global south
• Gain theoretical knowledge of urban anthropology/sociology, and gendered perspectives on the ‘urban question’, and demonstrate a critical understanding of theories of urbanization, population movements and colonialisation
• Students will learn to critically examine diverse contexts and experiences of marginalisation and exclusion in the cities of the global North and South. They will be able to examine the social forces in the processes of marginalisation.
• To explore the methodological implications of ethnographic research in urban contexts. This will be done through a close reading of some ethnographies of urban life in diverse geographic locations to gain familiarity with local and global urban settings.
This course aims at a critical examination of the production of the city and the urban as a way of life.The student will be introduced to important theoretical perspectives on the study of the urban – Marx, Weber, Simmel, Castells, Lefebvre, Wirth, Harvey, de Certeau and Appadurai besides others.
Students will learn how to analyse images, visual and online new media resources and utilize them in social and Internet research. This course enables a student to get some exposure to innovations in visual anthropology and digital culture that are part of our everyday life.