Course Catalog

Marx, Weber and Durkheim are essential thinkers for understanding sociology. All three thinkers are foundational to the discipline and among the foremost theorists of modernity and its ensuing complexities. This course will introduce students to the three thinkers, and how they may be interpreted in the current context. The course shall work through original and other significant readings, and elaborate upon key themes relevant to each thinker, focusing on how their ideas have helped shape and forge the discipline of sociology till the present time.   

Course description not available.

This course is designed to introduce students to the emergence of the idea of the sociology of science in the discipline and how these ideas aid in engaging with science and scientific objects sociologically. To understand this, the course will be divided into two sections: Concepts and Approaches; and Ethnographies of Science. The first section – Concepts and Approaches – will trace the historical emergence of the sociology of science, by laying emphasis on central concepts and varied theoretical approaches that have become seminal to understanding not only how the sub-discipline has developed but how an analysis of ‘science’ can be undertaken sociologically. The second section – Ethnographies of Science – will highlight how ethnographic studies of science and scientists have been undertaken in different domains such as laboratories, environment planning, technological warfare and biomedicine amongst others.   

: Modernity has become a defining feature in contemporary societies. It marks the coming together over the centuries of philosophical principles and technological developments, the two trends strengthening each other. Through those means the modern human aims at freeing itself from the previous bounds of former beliefs in which human actions were defined and limited. Modernity defines itself as a point of departure from pre-existing societies and locates its genesis in the Renaissance and 18th century scientific investigative mind embodied by the encyclopedists. From the 19th century onwards, modernity has defined the core principles of policy making and philosophical debates or atleast acted as the reference to define them. Stemming from modernity are notions such as the traditional, the folk, the backward, the classic, the pre-modern and the post-modern. It accompanies the building up of nation states and imposes a vision of society and humanity as well as a set of values. As such, it has driven societal choices but has also been the object of critique and questioning from the 19th to the 21st century. Modernity will be looked at both as a phenomenon and as a notion through multiples angles and perspectives with lectures by faculty from Sociology, Literature, History and Fine Arts departments. How does one locate him/herself in regard to modernity? Have humans defined themselves as master of their own destiny only in the modern period? Has modernity allowed humans to achieves their goals to free themselves from the bounds of beliefs? The notion won’t be looked at as only a western and recent concept. Other historical and cultural influences constitutive of modernity will also be considered.

How do we value goods and commodities? Is the value of the gift any different? Are gifts commodified and are commodities gifts? What are the forms of indebtedness created by gifts and commodities? This course explores gifts, commodities and debts as different types of exchange. Commodities and debts are thought to rationalise the world of exhange and erase the gift. As we shall discover, not only has the gift persisted in modern life (for instance, philanthrophy, development aid) it also revitalises our understanding of the world of commodities and the notion of debt.

Magic, science and religion are thought to be mutually opposed to each other. This course will explore the intersections between these three themes. What are the ways in which a religious view of the world is influenced by magical and scientific elements? Are scientific practices coloured by magical procedures? Do religious ideologies orient scientific practices? What is the importance of such ideologies in our understanding of contemporary politics?

The course focuses on studying culture in Modern India. Drawing upon theoretical materials and insights from the fields of Cultural Studies, Critical Theory, Sociology and Anthropology the course proposes to build an understanding of the concept of culture and its relation to the concepts of power and social formations. The focus on Modern India will be developed through an emphasis on caste and gender. In this the course addresses two issues: the shits and transformations in the cultural formations and their constituent agents and the representation of caste and gender in cultural forms, especially in music, theatre, other performance forms and literature. At another level the course aims to develop methods of ‘textual’ analysis as the primary mode of understanding cultural forms and using archival and ethnographic material as for enhanced understanding of textual analysis. The course will be divided into the following main units 1. Colonial period: Emergence of new cultural forms, issues in tradition and modernity, shifts in the agents of cultural forms, issues of appropriation and exclusion, processes of classicization, cultural nationalism and radical cultural movements. 2. Contemporary cultural formations: Issues in post colonial period, making of the nation and its problematization, emergence of identity formations, political and cultural resignification, feminist interventions and emergence of the studies of popular culture. The attempt will be to develop teaching units that juxtapose the contemporary with the past for developing an understanding of ‘tradition’, history, genealogy and the archive. The first two weeks of the course will focus on acquiring the skills for analyzing cultural practices and arriving at basic and working definitions of the three concepts in the title. After two weeks the course will require to watch/read or listen to a sample of a cultural practice and read theoretical and informative material to build an understanding of how studying cultural practices allow us to understand and study caste and gender in Modern India. Assessment Scheme This is a 3 credit course. Assessment of the course is divided as follows Assignments and participation: 1 credit (total 40%) This consists of Short class assignments such as response papers and assigned homework: 20% Participation in class: 5% Short term paper due two weeks after mid semester class test: 15% Mid –semester class test: 1 Credit (Total 25%) A sit down open book class test: 25% End of Semester Class Test: 1 Credit (Total 35%) A sit down open book class test requiring to analyze an unseen sample of a cultural practice: 35%

This course will engage with how the notion of ‘Land’ is conceptualized and realized through relationships that are formed between different entities. In order to explore the different processes in which this is possible the course will explore three main types of relations that allow for the conceptualization of ‘land’ – how man acts on nature, how man exists ‘in’ nature and how man & nature constitute one another, to comment on how differing notions of ecology emerge. These engagements will be detailed through different theoretical vantage points that will be supplemented with detailed ethnographies that bring out how ‘land’ specifically and ‘ecology’ generally can be understood. The intent of the course will be to problematize how ‘land’ is understood, conceptualized and emerges through different lenses that allow for an apprehension of ecological relationships.

Designed specifically for advanced undergraduate students and offered in the sixth semester, the Research Workshop is both a stock-taking of the discipline as it is taught in the Department, and a rigorous study of qualitative methods. The course will emphasise the significance of field-based research, explore the challenges and possibilities of fieldwork across diverse sites and subjects, and pay close attention to the practices of reading and writing ethnographies. During the course, students will also have an opportunity to engage with field research conducted by departmental faculty and by our Ph.D scholars who have recently returned from the field.

“I am spiritual but not religious” is a phrase we have often heard, perhaps even said ourselves. But what does it mean to be spiritual? This course will explore the many discourses and practices that are labelled as “spiritual”. In the process, we will examine some of the central characteristics of spirituality – its supposed opposition to religion and “materialism”. Does spirituality really offer the possibility of a cosmopolitan world, drawing seekers from a range of ethnic, class, and religious backgrounds? Can spirituality overcome the differences thought to be reinforced by religion? And does spirituality represent a critique of “materialism”, or is spiritual seeking a product of the culture of choice? The course will combine instructor based lectures with seminar style presentations by students. Assessment will be based on presentations, a short paper, and an end-of-course assignment.

Undergraduate Thesis- part I

How can we understand ourselves as persons and our relationships with family, community and nation? This course will examine some of the basic categories of sociology and anthropology that are crucial in this understanding: person/body, kinship/family/love, inequality/difference, nation and nationalism. We will consider approaches that examine small or micro processes first, and building on this basic understanding consider larger or macro processes that encompass the micro. At the heart of this course will be an elaboration and interrogation of the concept of relatedness.

Independent Studies in Sociology