Sociological Bulletin

A cursory glance at the century-old history of Indian sociology reveals its relative under-engagement with economic phenomena and processes. Although the ‘economic’ did get studied under the influence of agrarian and village studies, and certain apparently economic themes such as industry and labour did attract scholarly attention from some sociologists, we notice the absence of a sustained and robust academic tradition of sociological studies of the economy in India. There appears to have been an intellectual division of labour, where the study of economic issues was ceded to economists whereas sociologists remained jubilant with their studies of primordial institutions. This study attempts to locate this persistent disjunction between the social and the economic from the perspective of the disciplinary history. Of necessity, this calls for an examination of the relationship between sociology and economics, and the way it unfolded in post-independence India. To this end, this study...

Contrary to the popular imagination of Kerala as a secular, rational left bastion, the state is witnessing Sangh Parivar’s active presence in the domain of temples and everyday culture. This study attempts to examine the anxiety of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and its sympathisers about the ‘true’ knowledge on temple culture, and their efforts to teach everyday Brahmanical rituals and other forms of worship such as srividya and kuladevathas. I argue that Sangh Parivar is interested in heterogeneous worship practices in Kerala as part of their ideological expansion. Their obsession for the didactics of temple culture is a response to the modern secularisation process and ambition to educate the Other Backward Classes and Dalits in Brahmanical knowledge, for they are not traditionally inclined to the Brahmanical temples. Finally, the study aims to document the ethnographic details of Sangh Parivar activities in the world of worship and temple culture.

Sudha Sharma. The Status of Women in Medieval India. New Delhi: SAGE Publications, 2016, xi+269 pp., ₹750 (hardback). ISBN 978-93-515-0566-2. Alice W. Clark. Valued Daughters: First Generation Career Women. New Delhi: SAGE Publications, 2016, xii+199 pp., ₹595 (hardback). ISBN 978-93-515-0888-5. Zarina Bhatty. Purdah to Piccadily: A Muslim Woman’s Struggle for Identity. New Delhi: SAGE Publications, 2016, xiv+196 pp., ₹595 (hardback). ISBN 978-93-515-0824-3.

Larry B . Carr Mr . and Mrs . Jan Eric Cartwright Doris Marie Caskey Richard Louis Cella Mr . and Mrs . John Francis Cheadle Charles Walter Cherry Mr . and Mrs . Jack Martin Cochran Mr. and Mrs . Stephen Patrick Condon Mr. and Mrs. Markham Connolly Gary Lee Cook Mr. and Mrs . James Frederick Cook Mr. and Mrs . Mark Errol Copilevitz Robert B . Couch Don Allen Coulter Mr . and Mrs . Lavoise Crittenden Jr . Mr . and Mrs . Joseph G. Crow Mr. and Mrs . Earl Stanley Crowder

Disability remains an obstruction in attaining the full potential of an individual. Each community has its characteristic way of understanding disability and coping with its disabled population. Disability locates the individual in a compromised position not only for biological reasons, ...

The articulation of psychosocial distress is increasingly being modified from descriptions of possession, healing, and prayers to pains, aches, loss of interest, and medicines. Expression of distress is through the language of illness, which in turn is explained through the biomedical paradigm. Amongst women living in a low-income neighbourhood in Delhi both discourses of healing and cure (biomedicine) co-exist. But the usage of biomedical idioms in understanding and explaining distress is increasing. Although women frequently give psychosocial causes as reasons for their distress, the help they seek is often biomedical. In order to be ‘legitimate’ sufferers, women describe their distress through biomedical terminologies. This paper presents the ways in which women seek to legitimise their distress which is often unrecognised by resorting to the use of somatic idioms and how this influences their help-seeking behaviour.

At the Census of India, 1881, the former princely state of Baroda published data for every village and town, called Dehzado. After presenting the general demography of Baroda state, this article presents an analysis of data on caste, tribe and religion. It provides classification of villages and towns by the number of castes and tribes found in them, and discusses the issues posed by them, especially the issue of single-caste villages. This article describes the horizontal spread of various castes, tribes and religious minorities and points out its implications. In the end, it discusses the problem of urbanisation, classifying the towns by ethnic groups found in them.

Manipur is a multi-ethnic state located in Northeast India witnessing a divisive politics of identity and acute ethnic conflict. Following a socio-historical perspective, we identify the causes and manifestations of transformations in ethnic identity and ‘tribal’ affiliations, the marriages and the divorces that are reconstituting Kuki identity in contemporary Manipur. Our argument is substantiated with specific examples of the Nagaisation of some Kuki tribes and the re-definition of Hmar identity. The politics of identifying the self, differentiating from the other, and distancing from historical affiliations has become an interminable quest in Manipur and submerged the state completely in mindless violence.

This article traces traditions of sociological thinking in India and suggests that in order to write the disciplines’ history, it is important to identify the episteme that governs these traditions. It suggests that there are two broad epistemes that have defined sociology as a discipline in India—colonial modernity and methodological nationalism—and it argues that they organise theories, perspectives, methodologies and methods, teaching and research practices of the discipline. The history of the imprint of these epistemes is investigated at four levels: first, in the way one or both defined the discipline’s identity and, thus, organised its characteristic mode of thinking methodologically; second, in the way this identity defined its theoretical direction and the theories that it borrowed, adapted to and reframed; third, in the way the first two organised its professional orientation and made it choose its identity as an academic discipline whose main role is restricted to teachin...

The forest, for the inhabitants of Mirra village in Jharkhand, is home, renewed and re-established through their labour every year. This process of renewal and restoration of home is termed as 'homecoming', wherein the latter not only secures a home for the villagers in the forest, ...

A cursory glance at the century-old history of Indian sociology reveals its relative under-engagement with economic phenomena and processes. Although the ‘economic’ did get studied under the influence of agrarian and village studies, and certain apparently economic themes such as industry and labour did attract scholarly attention from some sociologists, we notice the absence of a sustained and robust academic tradition of sociological studies of the economy in India. There appears to have been an intellectual division of labour, where the study of economic issues was ceded to economists whereas sociologists remained jubilant with their studies of primordial institutions. This study attempts to locate this persistent disjunction between the social and the economic from the perspective of the disciplinary history. Of necessity, this calls for an examination of the relationship between sociology and economics, and the way it unfolded in post-independence India. To this end, this study...

People's movements have been viewed as possible ways in which people's participation or empowerment of the marginalised may be achieved. This paper, through a review of literature and using the metaphor of space, explores the role of mediating factors between people's movements and participation. The presence and the relationship of people's movements with the state, political parties, support groups, and transnational networks create the enabling environment in which popular spaces may be enlarged. Using illustrations of movements in India, Brazil, and Mexico it has been seen that, through enlargement of popular spaces, a social movement can achieve participation.

Malaysia has a multiracial population consisting of 49.8 percent Malaysians (including Malays, Indonesian migrants, and aborigines), 37.2 percent Chinese, 11.1 percent Indians, and 1.9 percent others (including Pakistanis and Ceylonese) (Tilman 1964: 16). One of the problems facing Malaysia today is the development of a national culture which would partake of the distinctiveness of all three cultures represented in the country and yet be Malaysian in essence. The emergence of such a culture is impeded by the great differences between the three communities. It is accepted that due to differences in religion, language, dress, food, occupational patterns, residence, geographical distribution, style of life, and historical factors, there is a wide cultural chasm between the three main communities of Malaysia (Tilman 1964: 23-24). However, there also seems to be an implicit assumption that the English educated group bridges this gap to some extent by virtue of a common language, education, and exposure to Westernization (Smith 1963: 4). It is in this context that this study focuses on the following problems. First, what is the nature of social interaction between the English educated groups of different races ? Second, is this interaction leading to the emergence of a Malaysian culture ?

The post-1959 migration of Tibetans due to Chinese incursion in Tibet impelled them to seek refuge in many countries. Due to socio-cultural, historical and religious ties between Sikkim and Tibetan for centuries and also due to geographical proximity, Sikkim was one of the most desired destinations. Based on the study of Tibetan settlement of Rumtek Dharma Chakra Centre, the largest monastery of Karma Kagyu Lineage in Sikkim, the article is an attempt to make an exploratory study to enquire the process of migration and socio-economic adaptation faced by the migrant Tibetan communities of Rumtek. By revisiting historical references and comparative evaluation of the field carried out in two phases, the article is a sociological exploration to examine the changes and challenges faced by the community.

We examine whether the widespread adoption of mobile technology is associated with changes in core social networks over the main decade of mobile diffusion in India. We focus primarily on network size, as well as the type and location of relationships. Grounded in interaction ritual theory, Ling’s bounded solidarity thesis suggests that mobile communication may reconfigure social bonds, leading to a focus on family and friends over workmates and acquaintances, as well as more local networks. This study analyses data from three waves of data (2002–2013) from the state of Kerala. Our key findings are generally consistent with bounded solidarity: family ties increased at the expense of work ties, and there was a shift away from regional and international ties towards local relationships.

Histories of modern science in India have been written in which Ambedkar receives barely a mention or in which he appears as a latecomer to ideas about the social function of science that others had pioneered. This article uses seminal ideas of Bhimrao Ambedkar (1891–1956) to interrogate the nature and representation of science in modern India. Ambedkarian science (AS) can be accessed through Ambedkar’s own speeches and writings and through the wider project of science, which he identified—critiquing colonialism, challenging Hindu metaphysics and cosmology and the ethics of natural inequality they sanction. The article makes a case for looking at AS as a way of structuring the predicament of postcolonial science, particularly in relation to understanding the authority of science and its evaluation in terms of its capacity to deliver social and economic change. It accordingly seeks to outline AS while revisiting the concept of scientific temper.

Even though scholars and feminists have accused intersectional theory for being superficial, inadequate, context bereft and fashionably more populist than academic, its applicability in addressing multi-layered forms of discrimination cannot be ignored. It is against this background that the article, through a deconstructive reading of an Urdu short story, Do Haath, highlights the challenges of the protagonist, the Dalit household, comprised primarily of women. Besides discussing the intersectional subjects of the story, this article questions the deliberate omissions of the multiply disadvantageous people such as the Dalit-Muslim women, also known as the Pasmanda women from feminist, Dalit and subaltern discourses. Furthermore, this article foregrounds intersectionality framework to understand the multiplicative nature of oppression and discrimination that Pasmanda women are subjected to, and how by excluding them from their respective agenda, feminist and Dalit activists have cont...

Based on data from field survey, this paper analyzes the dynamics of evacuation behaviour in the super-cyclone affected coastal Orissa. Particularly, it identifies the perceptions that motivate evacuation and factors that direct perceptual outcomes. It examines three variables - (i) warning systems, (ii) risk-perception formation, and (iii) risk level of the area - that have been found significant in research on evacuation of the victims. It underscores the importance of numerous variables responsible for evacuation, specifically the social psychological perception of risk and the social structural processes.

We examine whether the widespread adoption of mobile technology is associated with changes in core social networks over the main decade of mobile diffusion in India. We focus primarily on network size, as well as the type and location of relationships. Grounded in interaction ritual theory, Ling’s bounded solidarity thesis suggests that mobile communication may reconfigure social bonds, leading to a focus on family and friends over workmates and acquaintances, as well as more local networks. This study analyses data from three waves of data (2002–2013) from the state of Kerala. Our key findings are generally consistent with bounded solidarity: family ties increased at the expense of work ties, and there was a shift away from regional and international ties towards local relationships.

Culture for long has been undermined in development planning by setting it in opposition to future thinking development. Through the concept of cultural ‘capacity to aspire’, Appadurai offers a method of intervention in bringing culture to the forefront of development. The paper uses this method in explicating the Konda Reddis’ (Andhra Pradesh state, South India), capacity to aspire through their engagement with the state’s development policy envisaged and implemented for them. In the process, the paper questions, can the Adivasi; or have the Adivasis; or do the Adivasis; engineer the capacity to aspire within and outside the rhetoric of poverty and development. The conversations and group discussions carried out with the Konda Reddis show their ‘capacity for voice’, how they build ‘consensus through dissensus’ and negotiate development by altering their ‘terms of recognition’. These three aspects which together reflects their capacity to aspire, voices a counter knowledge productio...

Studies on microfinance have highlighted the relation between women and their use of credit. Drawing data from 1,116 women members of sixty self-help groups (SHGs) functioning in Kerala, this paper argues that the patterns of savings and credit-use of women in SHGs are related to their marital status. Marital status acts as a determinant in both the savings of the members, manifested in their contribution to the groups and the deposits they accumulate with the groups during the span of their membership, and their credit-use. The difference in the patterns of savings and credit-use due to one's marital status reflects the family responsibilities of the members which they share with their parents or husbands.

The article explores the equation among nature, nation and gender in the nationalist context. Developing the argument that both nature and nation were feminised and deified as mother and mother goddess in the nationalist context, the article deploys feminist perspectives to critically examine this on a fourth-axis science. By looking at the relationship of the scientist, J. C. Bose, to these categories, the article hopes to unravel the complex relationship of the Indian scientist to nation, nature, gender and science. It is argued that due to being a ‘Sakta’, Bose had a symbiotic relationship to nature, and consequently to science, thereby presenting an ‘alternative’ to Western modes of relating to science and nature. The article submits that this alternative was cast in patriarchal constructions of both science and nature and views the associations of mother with nation and nature within larger feminist critiques of science. The article submits that while these sleeping metaphors s...